Simply Delicious Asian Steam Fish

I love making dishes that are nutritious, delicious, simple to make and light on the wallet where possible.  This Simply Delicious Asian Steam Fish is one of them.

Simply Delicious Asian Steam Fish

This dish is super simple to make.  It can easily cost over $30 if you ordered it at Chinese restaurants.  If you made it at home, it will only cost more or less as much as the fish itself (in this case, $11.15) and the best part is, it only takes 6 ½ minutes to make ..... in the microwave!

For this dish, you can use all sorts of fish such as flounder, pickerel, bass or tilapia.  Today, we'll use turbot.  The texture and look is very similar to flounders and the meat is silky and tender.

All you need are as follows:

1 turbot (this one is around 1.6 lbs)

4 sprigs of sliced onions around 4" long (I prefer to slice them sideways, it looks prettier that way)

2 sprigs of cilantro chopped into 4" long

4 slices of ginger, thinly sliced

1 TB cooking oil

1 TB salt

1 TB sweet soy sauce (if you don't have that, you can always use 1TB soy sauce with 1TB sugar)

1 TB Shao Hsing Cooking Wine

Instructions:

You can purchase this in the freezer section of Asian super markets or you can buy the live fish as well.

Run it under cold water to wash and pat to dry with paper towel.  Make deep slices in the fish a few inches apart:

Salt inside, out and in between the cuts you just made.  Make sure you salt well to ensure full flavour:

Repeat again on the other side of the fish.

Add ginger and cooking wine:

Cover the fish with a plastic lid or else it will make a huge mess in the microwave!

This fish is around 1.6 pounds so you'll need to set the microwave on high for 6 ½ minutes.  Steam fish is cooked perfectly when the flesh is just cooked to the bone - it easily flakes off.  If it's dry that means it's over cooked and if the flesh is stuck on the bones, that means it's undercooked.  Every microwave is different so I would suggest when making it for the first time, set your microwave to cook at a shorter time to start and put it back to cook longer as needed.

Meanwhile, heat oil on medium low heat until hot:

and slice green onions and cilantro:

Once the fish is done, take it out of the microwave and throw away any liquid that you see in the dish as a result of "steaming" in the microwave since this will make the dish taste too fishy.  Add sweet soy sauce:

sprinkle green onions and cilantro on top.  Finally add the hot oil which will release the flavour of the aromatics into the flesh of the fish making it so yummy:

All done! mmmmmmmmmmmmmm!!!

'Till next time,

xox Lily.

2016-3-24