My Method for Steamed Fish

[jgp12000]

We started getting keto bread products the tortillas are better
Than original IMO,side note.

[reelynew]

Nice work.  There's a good steamed eggplant, garlic and fried shallots dish that my wife will make with this. 

Hey Dave, have you made this dish with anything you've caught locally? 

[jurelometer]

This is our attempt to duplicate with what we had on hand,it was good although I was out of fish sauce. It was a little bland to my liking. My wife liked the broth she does low carb mostly, but I had to have rice. It was a nice change to our normal fried or grilled .We buy some fish, but the freezer is full of fish from our pond.

Thanks for the report.  Looks like it came out pretty good!  Some thoughts if you want to shoot for something closer to what I learned:

It looks like you did not steam the fish on the platter.  Without the platter, the broth gets diluted with the steaming water, turning it into  a less concentrated soup- which is probably still good, but is different than the method that I learned and use.


The fish sauce is also a key component- a small amount provides some umami without overpowering the taste of the fish.

The stronger broth and fish sauce will make it less bland, especially with farmed tilapia, which is going to be quite mild.
 
The herbs should all be fresh- we are shooting for a fresh lively taste.

And maybe try it with a whole fish fresh from the pond if the folk in your house are whole fish eaters.

-J

Nice work.  There's a good steamed eggplant, garlic and fried shallots dish that my wife will make with this. 

Hey Dave, have you made this dish with anything you've caught locally? 

Don't fish locally much any more, but I made it all the time with whole local rockfish (Sebastes).  The smaller school rockfish with the flatter heads and bodies are ideal for this dish (blues, blacks, olives), but they all work if you can fit them in your steamer, and they all taste about the same.

IMHO, whole rockfish are delicious, but rockfish fillets are sort of bland.  All the stuff that contributes to making a rockfish tasty is around the skin and bones that is gone once you fillet it.Plus with about a 30% recovery rate, there is next to nothing left when you fillet a small rockfish.

If you are hitting the local markets, look for one that has freshly caught chili pepper rockfish - they are a good size and shape.

-J

[jurelometer]

Made it again with some halibut.  This time, I stuck closer to the typical  Vietnamese set of ingredients - just fish sauce, green onions, chiles, and a bit of ginger.



Cooked to an internal temp of 140 F and pulled the plate quickly- about 6 minutes.  I really struggle with halibut fillets, because they do not take kindly to even a slight amount of overcooking, becoming dry and a bit tough. But I hit the timing window jackpot this time.

After cooking, I added some mint leaves, black pepper, and bent my no-sauce-products rule a bit by adding a few dabs of the ubiquitous chili-garlic paste with the rooster on the label.  Halibut is quite a mild tasting fish, and I thought that the broth needed a little punch.



Served with limes and a bit more green onions and mint.

Sorry Quang,  still no whole fish-  this came off a small halibut- about 20 lbs, but even a small halibut is not going to fit in my wok


-J

[quang tran]

Look very good and close to my dish . we normally put "rau thom " in another dish for people enjoy to their taste . You're right Steam on a plate will make it more juicy and taste much better .Never ate Halibut before but I guess similar to flounder that I normal add a little butter as meat is too lean .Can't complain about whole fish as we have nothing can steam whole halibut

[jgp12000]

Looks even better!