Chaoshan usually refers to the coastal areas of eastern Guangdong, including Chaozhou, Shantou, Jieyang and other cities. The Chaoshan people of southern Fujian are good at cooking a variety of gourmet snacks, especially all kinds of seafood, of which fish rice (also known as cooked fish rice) is deeply rooted in the daily preferences of Chaoshan people, which can be described as often eaten.
What is fish rice? There are several interpretations of the origin of the term "fish rice", but they are basically named because of the way fish rice is served or because fish rice is widely consumed in daily life. Eating fish as rice is amazing.
01
How to make fish rice?
/ Preserve the deliciousness of the fish itself as much as possible /
The preparation of fish rice is not complicated, except for a little sea salt, it is completely dependent on the fish itself to highlight the delicious taste of the food.
Traditional fish rice production, the selection of freshly caught low-value fish on the shore, mostly with the whole fish without scraping scales, do not open the belly for processing, as far as possible to retain the fresh flavor of the fish; of course, there are also some scraping scales but do not open the belly, or scraping and opening the scales and opened after washing (especially the larger fish) for processing.
After pretreatment, the fish are washed with seawater and placed in a bamboo basket. In the traditional way of making, the placement is also exquisite, most of which require the fish head to face outward and to the left, and the fish are stacked in a tight disc. This is so exquisite that the fish body is heated evenly when cooking, maximizing the use of space, and at the same time facilitating the rapid drainage of excess soup when drying in the later stage.
Once neatly arranged, the fish body is coated with a thin layer of sea salt and briefly marinated before cooking; finally it is fixed with a heavy object so that the fish cannot move in the basket, and it is cooked in a large water pot for about fifteen minutes.
The water used to cook fish is not simply tap water, but seasoning water that is added to deep-sea water or other exclusive salt-ratio recipes. The fish out of the pot are quickly poured in hot brine to clean the impurities such as oozing fish residue that may be left in the steaming, and then drained cold to form a basket of fresh fish rice.
02
How to eat fish rice?
/ Eat better when raw and cold /
How to make fish rice to be delicious? The most important thing is that the ingredients are fresh. In addition, each fish rice maker has a unique technology to make the fish rice cooked fresh and delicious. Among them, there are special aspects such as the new bamboo basket that is used only once, the precise control of the time of cooking and salting, the selection of the catch that has been digested in the belly of the fish at the time of fishing, and the unique ratio of steaming water mentioned above.
Although the taste of the final fish rice is slightly different due to different techniques, the fresh sweetness of the fish meat and the light salty taste are still the mainstream taste of fish rice.
Fish rice is mostly eaten when it is raw and cold, and basically does not carry out secondary heating, so it is also called "frozen fish". Do not think that cold fish will taste bad when eaten, raw and cold state can keep the original released fish fresh in the fish meat without spilling, to maximize the preservation of the sweetness of the fish. Although the steaming fish rice is equally delicious, secondary heating will cause some of the sweetness of the fish to be lost, so it is rarely recommended to reheat the cold fish rice.
Sandwich a piece of cold fish meat, dipped in local watercress sauce, accompanied by white porridge, cold and sweet and nutritional, many times unconsciously can eliminate a whole fish.
Fish rice can be described as a real test of whether a fish is sweet and fresh cooking. It is quickly cooked in light salt water, and no other seasonings or ingredients are introduced to enhance or match the taste of the fish, so the taste is almost the flavor of the fish itself.
Some of the fish rice still has the boiled soup residue on the fish body to form fish jelly, which can be described as the essence of fish soup. Fish rice can be stored for several days at room temperature, and in the old days, when there was a lack of refrigeration equipment such as refrigerators, it was loved by many families. Fish rice is also a way for many fishing boats to save too much catch in the past; when there are more catches on the boat but cannot all be sold or preserved in time, it is made into fish rice, which can meet the dietary needs of the people on board, and can still be sold as "fresh" fish after landing.
03
What are the "fish" in the fish rice?
/ Almost all fish can be made into fish rice /
It's hard to count what fish can make into fish rice— in short, almost all fish can be made into fish rice.
In addition to the principle of adopting local aquatic products, there are probably two main directions for Chaoshan people to choose fish near the sea: first, medium and low-value fish are the mainstay; second, wild-caught fish are the mainstay.
A common type of fish and rice in the local market in Shantou, which can be sold both by weighing and baskets | Seafood knows
Blue round trevally, tái (tái) fish, golden sardines, etc., are the most mainstream raw materials for Chaoshan people to make fish rice. This type of fish has a large catch, timely disposal, and is also cheap to make fish rice, so it is widely recognized by local consumers, and it is also the most common and inexpensive fish rice species in Chaoshan area. In addition, snake mullet (including several species), mullet, big-eyed seabream, striped-tailed carp, flower perch, true seabream, fine scales, long-spined silver perch, green-finned horse-faced pufferfish and many other species are common.
In recent years, fish rice made from farmed fish has also gradually appeared in the market. The emergence of this type of fish rice is more due to the decline of traditional fish resources and the rise of alternative aquaculture, including yellowfin seabream, golden pomfret, flower perch, giant yellow croaker and other common species originally inshore. Today, the amount of wild resources is too small to support a large number of acquisitions, and a small number of locally farmed exotic fish, such as spotted totoabas. Although it belongs to the farmed fish, as long as the selection of materials is appropriate and the disposal is timely, it still tastes delicious.
There are also alternative fish rice, made from non-fish aquatic products, such as shellfish rice made from the meat of the xunshi muscle clam (i.e., "thin shell"), cephalopod fish rice made from small squid such as musket squid, and crustacean fish rice made from shrimp and crabs such as rusty spotted crabs.
In recent years, there have also been improved fish rice made from high-value fish, such as high-end ingredients such as Dongxing spot (leopard-print gill perch), which are made according to the production process of fish rice, but this kind of fish rice can only be tasted in a very few high-end restaurants. There are also restaurants that use imported ingredients such as tuna and saury to make fish rice, but it is not common compared to local types. The fish rice in the market is still the world of low-value local fish.
The taste of the fish rice follows the taste of the fish. Although the fish rice made from snake mullet has many bone spurs, this fish is fresh and sweet, so it is loved by old food. Although the salmon family such as blue round trevally and mackerel are fishy, they are full of chewiness, and the mackerel rice is sweeter than the blue round trevally rice. The fish rice made of mullet is more full of fish oil, and the meat is soft and fragrant, especially in the fat migration season of mullet.
Snake mullet fish rice, fish species with more bone spines are mostly used to make fish balls, but the old food does not mind the thorns more than | Seafood knows
The fish rice produced by different kinds of aquatic products has different flavors, but they all retain the freshest side of seafood, which allows people to taste the most simple food. The next time you visit the Chaoshan area, you may wish to taste a variety of flavors of fish rice, find your favorite taste in the delicious fish rice, with light white porridge, and start a day of Chaoshan food exploration.