April 25, 2007
Nutritional Fish Soup
I learnt to make this Nutritional Fish Soup from my mom and made it some time ago after coming back from Singapore. This soup is so tasty and delicious! I can eat it with plain white rice or just add some DoDo fishballs to leftovers and make it a one-bowl fish soup meal.
There are two ways to prepare the fish, depending on how proficient you are at filleting the fish.
Mom’s preferred method is to fillet the fish. She likes to cook the minced pork with the fish bones first, then when she is about to eat the fish, she would boil the fish fillet for about 10 minutes to cook it. She said that cooking the fish fillet for a short while would give you more tender fish meat.
The first time I fillet the fish, I couldn’t cut out much meat (must be the knife!) - a lot still got stuck to the bones. So for the second time, I just put the whole fish into the soup to boil. I was worried that boiling the whole fish for too long would toughen the meat… fortunately it didn’t.
J enjoys this a lot and his eyes would brighten up whenever I say I want to make fish soup.
Ingredients (Serves 2-3):
- 1 pomfret (washed and cleaned)
- 1/2 lb minced pork
- salt, pepper, corn starch (for seasoning and marinating fish and pork)
- 1 stalk spring onions (cut on the bias into 2″ lengths)
- 4 slices ginger
- a few stalks of cilantro
- 3 dried mushrooms (optional) (soaked in warm water to remove smell)
- 1 tsp dried shrimp
- 1 tsp dried scallops
- 1 tsp dried sole fish
- 8 cups warm water
Cooking Method:
1. Marinate minced pork with 1/2 tsp salt, a few dashes of white pepper and 1/2 tsp corn flour.
2. Same for the fish, sprinkle fish with 1/2 tsp salt, a few dashes of white pepper and 1/2 tsp corn flour. Rub seasoning on the fish skin and inside the fish stomach too.
3. Scoop minced pork into balls and add minced pork and the rest of the ingredients to the warm water. Bring to a boil, then add in fish. Lower heat to a simmer and allow to cook for about 20 mins.
4. Add salt and pepper to taste.
Cook’s Notes:
1. After trying 2 methods of cooking the fish (i.e. filleting the fish first versus cooking the whole fish), I chose the latter as it’s easier for me. Besides, after the whole fish is cooked, it’s easier to remove bigger pieces of meat.
2. When seasoning the fish, you can also choose to insert a few pieces of spring onions and ginger slices into the stomach of the fish, but I think this is unnecessary as they will fall out when you boil the fish anyways.
3. You can still make this soup even if you only have dried shrimp or dried scallops or dried sole fish. They are flavor enhancers. Of course adding ALL THREE of them will give your soup more OOMPH!
4. The mushrooms did not have much taste after the cooking. Maybe all the flavor went to the soup.
5. This Nutritional Fish Soup is so so tasty and easy to make too! If you have leftovers, do not throw away the fish bones. Boiling that again makes the soup even more tasty!
Bite This!
More recipes:
Got Soup? (3) - Stock For Soup And Its Uses
Got Soup? (2) - General Classes Of Soup
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April 25th, 2007 at 9:03 pm
The skin and bones are my biggest turn off for fish. I can eat tuna!
April 26th, 2007 at 11:12 am
I think J and you can be good friends :)
As for me, I got the remove-fish-bones-in-mouth genes from my mom.
April 26th, 2007 at 6:29 pm
My mom used to make fish soup all the time but I’m so lazy. I don’t like dealing with fish so I’m always cooking salmon filets.
April 26th, 2007 at 7:39 pm
I like salmon fillets steamed with ginger and spring onions. That one is an easy dish to make too! And the oil from the salmon is so tasty.
April 27th, 2007 at 6:32 pm
I don’t believe I’ve had fish prepared this way before. It looks interesting and sounds yummy. I bet the dried shrimp, scallop and sole give the soup a wonderful flavor.
April 27th, 2007 at 9:41 pm
Yes they did :) I am glad I had the leftovers all to myself.
September 30th, 2007 at 3:17 am
hi, i chanced upon your blog while hunting for recipes and i love all these recipes that i can whip up easily with ingredients that i already have. very homecooked chinese stuff, i like! i have a question though which i hope you’d be so kind to enlighten me - what’s dried sole fish? is there a chinese name to this? can i buy it easily from the neighbourhood wet market? i’m in Singapore. thanks!
September 30th, 2007 at 6:56 am
[…] I use dried sole quite a bit, like in soups, stir fried vegetables, Minced Pork with Tofu and Wantons. It is packed with flavor! […]
September 30th, 2007 at 6:56 am
Hi Nancy, Thanks for asking… I posted some pictures for you here.