How to: the Chinese technique for red-cooked Salmon | Marion's Kitchen

Sticky glazed salmon. We're actually going to be using a very traditional Chinese technique here. This is my version of Chinese red cooked salmon. So you might have heard of red cooked pork belly or like master stock braised pork belly. That's probably the more like famous use of this very traditional Chinese technique of red cooking. But this version I'm doing today is a quicker version that doesn't involve fully submerging your meat or your fish or your protein. It's called Hong Shao. So now that we have all the technicalities out of the way, let me show you how to do it. We're going to start off with the sauce part first of all. So I've got some fresh ginger here. I do love that slow braised red cooked pork belly though. So good. But I do love that this one is super quick. This is like totally a midweek thing that you can do, which is great. I'm always after new recipes for salmon midweek. Now into this, I'm going to do some soy sauce and then some dark soy sauce as well. Typically I'm using the light soy sauce or the regular soy sauce for the saltiness. And then the dark soy sauce here, that's actually used more for color and just a touch of sweetness. Because even though you might think the opposite, dark soy sauce is actually less salty than the regular soy sauce. Next up is some Chinese cooking wine. And then here's a really interesting ingredient. So this is fermented bean curd. It's red fermented bean curd. And actually we use this in Thailand to make a really great noodle soup. But in this particular instance, it's used to give you a really salty, funky umami kind of flavor to your dish. Now it's not essential. So if you can't get ahold of it, don't worry, just leave it out. If you are using it, you can find that your sauce will be a little salty on the salty side. So if you are using it, you might just want to sort of dial down on the soy sauce. And just roughly mash that bean curd so it gets incorporated into the sauce. I'm going to put some star anise in here. That's going to give us a really lovely, beautiful background fragrance. And then I want some sugar as well. Okay, so that's our sauce. Just leave that there for the moment. I'm going to grab some salmon. I'm just going to cut that salmon into rather large-ish chunks. And this has got skin on this salmon. I like to keep the skin on here because you kind of get a little crispiness with the salmon. A crispy stickiness, if you like, with the salmon skin. But also it helps to keep the fish together as it cooks. So to get this cooking, I just need a bit of oil. Now make sure that pan's really hot because if your pan's not hot enough, that's when you're going to get fish and fish skin sticking and a big old mess. So pan hot. Make sure your fish skin is actually really nice and dry as well. Mine's very dry. If it's not, make sure you're patting it down with paper towel or something like that. So I'm going to get my salmon in the pan now. Skin down. You want to start skin down because the first thing I'm going to be doing here is trying to crisp up that skin. And actually, cooking the salmon mostly on the skin side for this means that we're going to be trying to protect the salmon itself so that we don't dry out the salmon. It's a really great technique for cooking salmon actually. I just leave that on the skin side for a little bit. We want to get that crispiness going. Now in the meantime, I'm going to make some Asian greens that I love to make at home because they're so simple. I use this recipe, I've got to say, so many times during the week. I start out with any kind of Asian green really. Broccolini and broccoli work well here too. But I'm using bok choy today. You just want to slice through, cut that bok choy in half. These always need to rinse out. Just make sure you get lots of that grit out from inside. Now arrange those pieces into a deep microwave-proof bowl. I'm using some Chinese cabbage here as well. Another one of my weeknight favorites. Just sort of squeeze those in on the side. Now this is the thing that I really love about doing the greens this way because rather than getting a pan or a wok out and stir-frying and steaming the greens, making a sauce, that sort of thing. I just put everything right here into the bowl. I've got some oyster sauce, some sesame oil and some garlic. The trick here is to add just a little bit of water. That'll help things to cook through with a bit of steam. Now pop that into your microwave. These will take about three minutes. If you've got something bigger and chunkier, like say big pieces of broccoli or something like that, then maybe do four minutes. Three minutes is going to be fine for these. Coming back to my salmon, what I want to do is pour in that sauce. Things are going to start bubbling straight away here. Almost immediately that sauce is going to start getting all caramelly and yum. Now I think the trick here is to leave the salmon on that skin side for most of the cooking. I'm just going to let that skin really soak up all that delicious sauce. Now just let that salmon cook in there a few minutes or until that sauce starts to really thicken up. That sauce is looking really glossy and lovely right now. I'm going to turn the salmon pieces over. You can see that that skin has really soaked up a lot of that deliciousness. That sauce is nice and thick. I like to just give that pan a bit of a swirl, spoon over some of that sauce. Now let's grab my greens. I can smell that garlic and the sesame oil. Such an easy cheats way to make Asian greens. We are good to go here. Now I would typically do some steamed rice or some fried rice here as well. Just pop some of those lovely greens into your bowl and the salmon. Don't waste any of that amazing caramelly kind of sauce. Just give that a really good drizzle. I quite like a little sprinkle of sesame seeds here. There you go, red cooked salmon. This is something that I love to eat during the week a lot. I love how easily it all comes together. Look at that salmon. That sauce is so ridiculously complex. The salmon has really soaked it up and you've got that beautiful ginger flavor and just that hint of funkiness from that fermented tofu as well. Great way to use a very traditional Chinese cooking technique. Yum! Hey guys, I've got so many really quick, easy midweek dinner ideas. If you'd like to see more from my channel, why not subscribe? Also, if you hit that little bell button, you'll always get notified when I'm releasing something delicious. See you!