-
Preparation
1 hour 15 minutes
-
Cooking
30 minutes
-
Difficulty
Easy
Steamed Red Tilapia with Fermented Soybean is a familiar and nutritious dish often found on Vietnamese family dining tables. Let’s join TasteVN into the kitchen today and make this delicious steamed dish to enrich your family meal!
Ingredients for Steamed Red Tilapia For 3 people
Red tilapia 1 kg (1 fish) Straw mushrooms 200 gr Wood ear mushrooms 100 gr (black fungus) Fermented soybeans 150 gr Bitter leaves 100 gr Noni leaves 100 gr Minced garlic 2 tablespoons Minced shallots 2 tablespoons Green onions 2 stalks Cooking oil 2 tablespoons Common spices a little (sugar/pepper/seasoning powder/msg)
How to choose fresh ingredients
How to choose fresh red tilapia
- To ensure the dish is delicious, you need to select fresh red tilapia, with clear eyes, a slimy texture when touched, pink gills, firm scales, and flexibility.
- If the slime on the fish becomes sticky, the eyes are sunken and cloudy, the scales are easily detached, the gills are white or dark, and the flesh is soft and lacks elasticity, floating on the surface of the water, that indicates the fish is spoiled and should not be purchased.
See details: How to choose fresh fish
How to choose delicious dried wood ear mushrooms
- Choose dried wood ear mushrooms that have large, thick ears and a stem with few young mushrooms.
- To ensure the mushrooms are tasty and crunchy when used, choose ones with an amber brown color on the top and a coffee milk color on the bottom.
How to choose fresh straw mushrooms
- It is best to choose mushrooms that are still buds, not yet opened, fresh, with a slightly round or cylindrical shape; straw mushrooms should be of uniform size when preparing dishes.
- Choose straw mushrooms that are black or gray; these will taste better than the white ones.
- Choose mushrooms that feel firm and solid when touched and squeezed lightly.
What are leaf of cách and leaf of nhàu and where can they be bought?
- Leaf of cách, also known as vọng cách, is a type of leaf commonly used for medicinal purposes, making drinks, or as a seasoning herb in cooking. The leaf has a fragrant aroma and helps eliminate fishy odors in food; additionally, it has many other benefits for the body such as cooling, detoxifying, liver cooling, and enhancing digestive function.
- Leaf of nhàu is a precious medicinal herb in Vietnam, often found along rivers, canals, and ponds, and is used to treat some cold and body ache illnesses.
- Currently, you can find nhàu leaves and cách leaves at markets, supermarkets, food stores, or reputable e-commerce sites, as well as traditional medicine shops.
-800x450-6-1.jpg "Delicious and Unusual Steamed Red Snapper with Soy Sauce, Extremely Simple to Make 2")
How to prepare Steamed Tilapia with Soy Sauce
-
Prepare the fish and ingredients
When you buy tilapia, to clean and eliminate the fishy smell, you should gut the fish to remove all internal organs, discard the blood vessels, fins, and gills, then wash and rub with salt for about 10 minutes, and finally rinse with clean water.
How to clean tilapia effectively, without a fishy smell
- First, clean the fish by scaling and gutting it thoroughly. Be careful to cut away any clotted blood and the cloudy white areas inside the fish.
- Eliminate the fishy smell by rubbing coarse salt on the fish for about 10 minutes and rinsing it with water. Alternatively, you can dilute lemon juice with a bit of salt in water and soak the fish for about 10 minutes before rinsing it clean.
- Additionally, you can use vinegar or white wine to wash the fish, which will also help effectively eliminate the fishy odor!
See details: How to prepare fish clean without a fishy smell
Wash the bitter leaves and noni leaves, and discard any rotten leaves. Clean the green onions and cut them into bite-sized pieces.
For straw mushrooms, cut off the stems and wash them thoroughly. For wood ear mushrooms, soak them in cold water for about 1 hour to expand. Rinse them in water and cut into strips.
How to soak dried wood ear mushrooms quickly and correctly
- Before soaking wood ear mushrooms, you should rinse them in cold water to remove sand and dirt.
- You should only soak wood ear mushrooms for a maximum of 3 – 4 hours, do not soak them too long, and do not soak them in hot water as it may cause the mushrooms to produce toxins harmful to health.
See details: How to prepare common types of mushrooms
-
Marinate the red tilapia
Marinate the red tilapia with 120g fermented soybeans, 3 teaspoons of sugar, 2 teaspoons of seasoning powder, 1/2 teaspoon of monosodium glutamate, and 1/3 teaspoon of pepper, allowing the fish to absorb the flavors for 30 minutes or overnight in the refrigerator.
-
Steam the red tilapia
Heat a pan on the stove with 1 tablespoon of cooking oil, add 2 tablespoons of minced garlic and 2 tablespoons of minced shallots and sauté until fragrant, then add the fish and marinade into the pan along with about 500ml of water.
When the water boils, cook and turn the fish for 30 minutes over medium-low heat, then add mushrooms, cook for another 10 minutes, adjust the seasoning to taste, and then turn off the heat.
-
Stir-fried Noni Leaves and Kach Leaves
Place another pan on the stove and add 1 tablespoon of cooking oil, sauté 1 tablespoon of shallots and 1 tablespoon of garlic until fragrant, then add 30g of soybean paste, 1/3 teaspoon of sugar, 1/3 teaspoon of monosodium glutamate, 1/3 teaspoon of pepper, and then add the kach leaves and noni leaves, stir-frying them evenly for 5 minutes.
Then, layer the stir-fried vegetables on a plate and place the fish on top to enjoy.
Tip: If you have small children who cannot eat noni leaves or kach leaves, you can omit these two types of leaves from the dish.
-
Final Product
The red tilapia steamed with soybean paste is delicious, flavorful, and does not have a fishy smell, combined with various mushrooms, noni leaves, and kach leaves creates an appealing dish that promises to be very rice-consuming!
See more
Steamed red tilapia with soy sauce is delicious and really easy to make, isn’t it? TasteVN wishes you success!
*Image and recipe source shared from Facebook: Nguyễn Thanh Trúc.
