How to Fry Fish Without It Sticking 豉油香煎鱼 Chinese Restaurant-Style Fish in Fragrant Soy Sauce Recipe

Hi and welcome to Spice & Pans. I'm Roland. Today we're making pan-fried fish with fragrant soy sauce. If you've ever struggled with fish sticking to the pan or breaking apart while frying, this video is for you. I'll show you how to make this simple and delicious Chinese-style dish complete with a fragrant savory sauce and crispy aromatics. So without further ado, let's start Hi friends, before we start cooking, just a quick live update. You probably know my wife Jamie as the person who's always behind the camera. Well, she recently started a new career. It's something she's been working very hard on and we are both really excited about it. So I'll let Jamie tell you herself. Hi everyone, I'm now a property advisor in Singapore and it feels good to finally say that. Don't worry though, we'll still be sharing recipes with you every week on this channel. But if you, your family and friends are thinking about buying, selling, renting or investing property in Singapore, I hope you'll think of me. Just send me a WhatsApp message for a chat. Thank you for always supporting us. It really means a lot to us. All right, enough talking. Let's start cooking. Now we're going to season our fish. I have with me over here one whole piece of black pomfret. You can use golden pomfret, seabass, it's really up to you. This is approximately 440 grams. Make some cuts along the fish so that they will cook more evenly. Now when choosing a fish, it is important to note that the eyes must be clear and the flesh is firm to touch. When you clean the fish, make sure that all the blood has been cleaned out properly. Otherwise it will taste fishy. Now we'll season it. White pepper. Sprinkle some white pepper on the fish on both sides. About a teaspoon of salt. Sprinkle on both sides. We need to rub it down a little bit in a while. Rub it down a little bit. Rub it into the cuts also. Sprinkle a little bit of the salt inside the stomach of the fish also. Rub it in. A fish this size will take about a teaspoon or maybe slightly less. When you're done with this step, I have with me over here some corn flour. This is approximately one tablespoon. We don't have to use everything. Just sprinkle a little bit on the fish and then just pat it down. This will prevent the fish from splattering when you fry it and of course the skin will be crispier. A little bit on the head. A little bit in the stomach too. And we flip it to the other side. Do the same. After you're done with this, we'll just set this aside and fry our aromatics. Now we're going to fry our aromatics first. Using medium low heat, add in a little bit more oil. Two pieces of spring onion. The white stalk. I've halved them or for the thicker part I've actually quartered them. Put them in first. Remember don't turn the heat up too high. About five or six pieces of shallots. Sliced thinly like this. Put them all in first. Remember to move them around. We want to make the oil aromatic so that later when we fry our fish, it will have this very beautiful flavour. Once you see the spring onions have separated out like this, we'll add in our ginger. 20 grams of young ginger. Julienne or sliced thinly like this. Put it all in. Don't turn up the heat too high. We want the flavour to actually be infused with the oil. Remember to move them around. We'll fry them until they are about to get a little bit light golden brown. Then we'll add in our garlic. We need to add them in at different stages because they cook at very different temperature and also the size as to how we cut them. This will take a while and I'll show you before I add in my garlic. I've been cooking this for approximately three or four minutes around there. Now as you can see they're turning a light golden brown. We'll add in our garlic now. Four cloves of garlic chopped. Add them all in. Give it a stir. Mix it up well and now we'll remove them from the heat and separate the aromatics from the oil. Now for the aromatics, put them on a kitchen towel. Separate them out so that they'll be crispy and we'll set this aside. Now we're going to fry our fish but before that make sure that your wok or your pan is clean from any of the aromatics otherwise they will be burnt. You don't have to wash it, just use a paper towel to clean it. Using the oil, turn up the heat to medium. We'll wait for the oil to heat up a little bit before we add in our fish. How do we know whether this is hot enough or not? Using a bamboo chopstick, just push the oil or rather throw it to one corner and then just put it in. When you start to see bubbles rising rapidly around the chopstick like this, it means the oil is hot enough. We'll add in our fish. Gently add in your fish. Don't move the fish, let the skin set. If you move it now the skin will break. Now normally when I pan fry my fish I like to use a little bit more oil because it'll be so much easier but I understand at home we don't want to use too much oil because it might be wasteful to use so much oil and it might splatter. Hence I'm doing a very shallow kind of frying on the fish. Now we'll let the fish fry for about one minute to about two minutes and then we'll give this a check. You can also move the oil around like what I'm doing over here. You can just check on the other side and then we'll just turn this over. We'll slowly fry the fish because we're not using too much oil so about every one or two minutes we'll just flip it to the other side. You can also push it to a corner where there's more oil so it has more contact with the hot oil so that it will be cooked faster. It's very important that the oil is hot before you put the fish in and do not move it until you have crisped up the skin otherwise the skin will break very very easily. Look at how pretty this is. Now the fish is approximately around 70 to 80 percent cooked. We'll just cook this for a little while more and if you are using those iron woks there's a few tricks to it. First is of course you must season your iron wok well. When the wok is hot then add in the oil. Sprinkle a little bit of salt before you fry the fish. This will prevent the fish from sticking onto your iron pot also or iron wok. But for most of the family if you are using a non-stick pan it will be so much easier. How do you know whether it's cooked or not? It depends on a lot of factors. The heat you are using, how much oil you are using but generally we know that it is done when you actually feel that the flesh is very firm like this okay or when the eyes pop up like this okay. Beautiful charred color. This is what we want. So we're almost done. Just take a little bit to cook the tail also. I've been cooking this fish for about seven minutes or so. Now the fish is done. We'll remove it from the heat. Now we are going to prepare the sauce. Pour out most of the oil leaving behind about one tablespoon of oil. Don't turn the heat on first. Add in 80 milliliters of water, 2 tablespoons of light soy sauce. Now for the light soy sauce please estimate I'm using the premium one. It's not that salty hence I'm using 2 tablespoons. Half a tablespoon of oyster sauce. Now we can turn the heat up to medium or medium high. Get this to a boil before we add in our sugar. Once the sauce starts to boil, add in about half a teaspoon of sugar. Sprinkle in a little bit of pepper and give this a mix. Now we'll turn this off and this is to be poured over the fish. Now before we serve, we'll sprinkle a little bit of spring onion on the fish as well as a little bit of coriander leaves. These are of course all optional. Pour the sauce over the fish and top with our crispy aromatics. Ladies and gentlemen, it's time for lunch and now the dish is done. Let's have a taste. Wow, the fragrance is incredible. You can smell the shallots, the ginger, the spring onions. Let's try. Oh, savory, fragrant with a very very nice hint of the ginger. This is really fantastic. So ladies and gentlemen, I hope you like our video. Do click like on our video and subscribe to our channel. Thank you for watching and now it's a turn to cook. See you, bye-bye. Wow, really really good.