The same techniques for steamed whole fish can be applied to smaller pieces of seafood. Enjoy the same restaurant-level experience at home.

Time: 3/5
Fish cooks fast, and you definitely don’t want to overlook.

Effort: 3/5
A bit of fiddling with precise timing and hot oil.

A Small Piece of Tradition

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• Ingredients (skip to recipe)
• Instructions
• Step by step pictures

Cantonese cuisine prizes freshness above all else, and steamed seafood is the epitome of that spirit. In banquets and formal occasions, the center piece is often a huge saltwater fish (like a whole Grouper), still alive and swimming up until the moment it’s cooked, steamed whole and seasoned simply to preserve the delicate taste. Some restaurants even keep fish tanks where you can pick out your meal.

Even though it’s great and I love it, steaming whole fish is a lot of work. The fishmonger can gut it and scale it, sure, but it’s still a lot of food that is hard to finish in one setting for a small household. It’s much more manageable to enjoy other types of fresh steamed seafood, like scallops or shrimp under buttery and garlicky glass noodles. 

One way around the portion problem is to steam a smaller fish, but that entails more bones and less fun. Instead, I wanted to try my hand at steaming a small part of a big fish – and I’m happy to report that it worked out.

I just substituted the big grouper with some boneless fillets. I used hoki, but any fish would work as long as they’re in big pieces. I used all the traditional techniques otherwise, from the seasoned soy sauce, to the aromatics lining the dish to get rid of any fishy smell, to pouring smoking hot oil over the finished dish to amp up the aromas.

A word on timing. Steamed seafood is finicky because it’s prone to turn out tough and rubbery if it’s overdone. A very rough rule of thumb is to give it a minute per 100g, plus a minute or so extra if it’s bone-in.

But the exact timing is an art rather than a science because it depends on so many things: the type of fish, the size and thickness of the fillets, the peculiarities of your stove and setup etc. 

So don’t worry if you don’t nail the doneness exactly right the first time, and take the opportunity to practice your steamed seafood skills whenever you can. Perhaps one day you too can have the intuition and experience of a Chinese mom when it comes to Cantonese style steamed fish.

Posts since the last recipe that was actually served with rice: 0

Dramatis Personae

Served 2.

• 400g hoki loin fillets, or any large piece of fish
• 2 tbsp sugar
• 1 tbsp light soy sauce 
• 1 tsp dark soy sauce
• A thumb of ginger
• A few sprigs of cilantro
• One bunch green onions
• 4 tbsp cooking oil

Also served with a cucumber and garlic stir fry, plus some leftover Tom Yum Kung. Always eat your veggies!

Executive summary

1. Dissolve sugar in a bit of hot water. Add light and dark soy sauce, mix well, and reserve.
2. Bring water to a boil. Meanwhile, cut half of the ginger into slices, and julienne the rest. Cut scallions into sections.
3. Line the bottom of a heat proof dish with ginger slices and scallion whites, then lay the fish on top.
4. Place the dish into the pan of boiling water on a steaming rack. Cover and steam over a rolling boil for about 5 minutes, or until the flesh barely flakes.
5. While the fish steams, heat up the oil in another pan until it’s smoking hot.
6. Once fish is done, cover the top with julienned ginger and scallion greens. Pour the hot oil over everything, followed by the soy sauce mixture.
7. Optionally, garnish with cilantro. Serve hot.

Play by Play

Last things first. The sauce has to begin with dissolving the sugar in hot water. After that it’s a matter of adding light and dark soy sauce until you like the taste and colour. I like it more sweet than it is salty.

Next, it’s getting all the knife work out of the way. Cucumbers and garlic gets reserved for last, and I start building the bed of aromatics for the fish to sit on.

All the while, I’ve been bringing water to a boil off to the side. The fish goes in the dish, and the dish goes over a rolling boil.

Don’t walk away, the few minutes go by fast. I have my oil heating up in a cast iron pan on the side, and it goes over some more scallions and ginger laid on the cooked fish.

The sauce follows the oil, and the cilantro goes last. It’s best to serve this immediately, but I wanted to use the same pan for the cucumber stir fry since it’s going into the dishwasher anyway.

The delay isn’t much of a problem, because it only takes a few minutes. Hold the salt until the very last moment so it doesn’t draw out moisture which stops the vegetables from properly browning.

That’s it! A quick and easy (if somewhat finicky) dinner that’s a scaled down version of something you would only see at a fancy banquet. Bon appetit!

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