What is Cá Hấp Gừng Hành?
Cá Hấp Gừng Hành, or steamed fish with scallions, ginger, and soy sauce, is a light and easy-to-make Vietnamese dish that’s similar to Chinese and Cantonese-style steamed fish.
The fish is lightly seasoned, steamed, drizzled with soy sauce and topped with thinly sliced scallions, and/or cilantro.
Hot oil is poured over the scallions at the table, releasing their fragrance in a sizzling display.
The result is tender, flavorful fish that’s light and healthy, perfect for pairing with steamed rice for a complete meal.
What You Will Need
To make Ca Hap Gung Hanh, gather the following equipment and ingredients:
- Steamer: You will need a steamer with a lid that will fit the fish in a single layer.
- Fish: Any white, mild fish like sea bass, snapper, or tilapia works. Traditionally, whole is used—complete with skin, head, eyes, and tail. However, if you’d prefer food not staring back at you, remove the head or opt for fillets or steak cuts instead.
- Salt, Sugar and Ground Black Pepper: These ingredients are used to lightly season the fish before steaming.
- Ginger: Fresh ginger gives this dish warmth and a bit of spice that complement the fish. Smashed and thinly sliced and add to dish before steaming.
- Light Soy Sauce: The highlight seasoning that will be added after steaming for the final seasoning touch.
- Scallions/Green Onions: These add a fresh, mild onion flavor. These are thinly sliced and topped the steamed fish.
- Neutral Oil: Oil is heated on high then poured on the fresh thinly sliced scallions for a sizzling finish at serving.
Tips and FAQs
Make sure to clean the fish thoroughly
If you don’t clean the fish well, especially whole fish, the steaming process can intensify any fishy odors.
To clean the fish, usually a good rinse with water will do. Make sure to remove any guts or blood which are usually the culprits for the unpleasant fishy smell.
For an extra thorough clean, you can scrub the fish with coarse salt before rinsing it off.
Skip the Hot Oil
For a lighter or quicker version of this dish, you can skip the hot oil altogether. Simply steam the lightly seasoned fish with the aromatics—ginger and scallions—until cooked through, add soy sauce at the end and you’re done.
What Other Aromatics Can I Use?
This recipe is a great way to use up leftover scallions and ginger. But if you don’t have these on hand, you can substitute cilantro for the scallions/green onions and thinly sliced onions—yellow, white, or even shallots—for the ginger.
What Other Vegetables Can I Add?
During the steaming process, you can add other vegetables to create a more hearty dish.
I like to include mushrooms, such as enoki or straw mushrooms, and sometimes. bamboo shoots for extra flavor and texture.
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