Which fish to buy?

[ChTTay]

Hey there,

 

I used to eat a lot of different kinds of fish back home. I would just buy a fillet of some sort - boneless mostly - real easy to cook either in the pan or oven.

 

However, in China I don't really eat any fish. I don't know which fish to buy or how to buy it. Say I go to a supermarket with live fish, what are my options? Do they just kill the fish and give the whole thing to me or can thing gut or even fillet it?

 

I also see a wide variety of frozen fish too.

 

Any advice here? What kind of fish do you regularly buy and how  do you cook it?

 

Thanks!

[skylee]

I eat sushi at sushi bars. It is easy.

Now that I think of it, I don't eat much fish besides sushi.

[kdavid]

I ate a wide variety of fish back home as well, but stopped here as I can't be bothered to pick around the bones. And even then, there are still more bones.

 

I know at the local supermarket salmon filets are available, but are very expensive.

 

Honestly, I wouldn't even trust "filets" here.

[msittig]

My wife mostly steams all sorts of fish, but I can only bread/fry 龙利鱼 (flounder?) fish fillets from Carrefour. My family never really ate seafood, so it's all new to me.

[Kobo-Daishi]

Go for 黃腳



The last character is a Unicode extension b character so might not show on your computer depending on the fonts installed.

http://q.26vv.cn/s_sp_d_baomihua_d-c/11302162/12836584

According to Chua Lan in this episode on sea food from his 蔡澜叹名菜, at about the 4 minute mark, he says that it's the best tasting fish in the world.

The fish is steamed here.

The video above is in Cantonese but has standard Chinese subtitles. The last character comes out as a question mark. 

At one time I had the entire series on video, but lost it all because of a catastrophic hard disk failure. I've only ever been able to re-download 3 of the 11 (?) episodes. I know it's available on streaming video but still...

 

Kobo.

 

Edit:The character didn't show even though I inputted it into the forum editor. It's a fish character on the left and a "li" as in "guoli", "national" on the right.

 

Edit 2: According to Chua Lan, it's called "黃腳 lap" or quite literally "yellow foot lap" is because at the tail end, or "foot", of the fish is yellow.

[abcdefg]

I don't know which fish to buy or how to buy it. Say I go to a supermarket with live fish, what are my options? Do they just kill the fish and give the whole thing to me or can thing gut or even fillet it?

 

ChTTay -- When I buy live fish here in Kunming, the vendor asks if I want it killed and cleaned. When I answer yes, he or she knocks the fish in the head and guts it, then scrapes off the scales. When asking to have that done instead of taking the fish home live for later use, my friends have suggested I use 清洁 as the verb. I've also heard 洗净 and 洗干净 used, but am pretty sure the latter is a regionalism.

 

If you want the tail cut off, that's the 尾巴。It's OK to request 剁尾巴. But it would be really weird to ask for them to remove and discard the head, since that's a prize part. I don't know how to ask the fishmonger to cut fillets, though I have seen it being done.

 

You can buy dead fish on ice in the supermarket as well as live ones. 活鱼 means the live ones, and that's what I usually buy. Dead ones are usually slightly cheaper, but you have to know how to tell whether or not they are still fresh.

 

I don't buy a lot of fish here, but I do buy some. The main thing to decide is whether you want several small fish or one larger fish. People here love small crucian carp that are no longer than your hand. It takes four of five to feed one person and they are cooked up in the wok as an aromatic milky soup. These small fish are called 鲤鱼 here.

 

Though I think they taste good, they sure do have lots and lots of tiny bones, and I seldom make them because of that. The word for these small fish bones is 鱼刺 (not 骨头）。These fish are very inexpensive (don't remember an exact amount.)

 

I usually buy one or another large fish instead. I don't know the names of the main varieties that are on offer here. I point to one that looks healthy (not floating belly up.) They are raised in estuaries and don't have as much flavor as the salt water fish that I used to buy and cook when I lived in Zhuhai. I'm also usually unable to find flounder or sole, like I could on the Guangzhou coast.

 

My solar hot water pipe that runs down from the roof and along the outside of my house broke during the hard freeze about 2 weeks ago, so I'm without hot water at the moment and haven't been doing much cooking. They should have it fixed in the next day or two, and I'll buy a fish and show you how I make them here. One method is steamed and the other is wok fried.

[lechuan]

I'd buy this one.

[abcdefg]

I agree, that's a good one.

[Lanchong]

You can get salmon fillets for about 90yuan/500g. Taobao will even deliver it.

[ChefSiu]

Well   I like salmon     Tuna   For filet steak.  For whole fish  sea bass Rock or flounder great for steamed or fired   

[Kobo-Daishi]

@Chef Siu

 

It's good to have you back.

 

I also went to your YouTube web page and see that you've just added a few new videos to your site.

 

I hadn't visited in quite some time because it hadn't been updated in months.

 

Good to see you're back into video blogging.

 

Kobo.

[abcdefg]

 

For whole fish  sea bass Rock or flounder great for steamed or fired  

Thanks, Chef. What would those fish be called in Chinese?

[ChTTay]

Thanks for the feedback.

@ Chefsiu I second that request for Chinese names... Also, do you know that these are available in mainland China?

I am more looking for something local and locally priced rather than splashing out on salmon.

To get my occasional fish fix I buy tinned John West Mackerel fillets. They are imported but not expensive and it's the same brand i would eat at home. Usually just get it already in a tomato sauce, mash them up a bit with a fork and eat them on toast. They are boneless/skinless. Get them i. Carrefour import section.

[Summer Song]

I love steamed fish, it's very easy to cook! I usually buy fresh fish from the market, the seller will help me kill the fish. For steamed fish, I usually use 鲈鱼, only take me 15 mins to steamed it.

[roddy]

Summer, what vocabulary would you use to get the fish seller to kill / clean the fish for you?

[ChTTay]

What to say to get them to fillet it would be good to know too

[Summer Song]

@roddy@ChTTay

 

You can ask the seller :"hi dear, can you help me kill the fish?" 

If you wanna speak in Chinese, it's “老板，你可以帮我把鱼给杀了吗？” In Pinyin, it's "lao ban, ni ke yi bang wo ba yu gei sha le ma?"

But here, "lao ban" means boss, seller, keeper, etc. 

[Summer Song]

According to my personal experience, most of the fish I bought is not longer than 30mm. Fish as this small will only be cooked as a whole. If you buy some big fish, like snakehead or grass carp, you can ask the seller to fillet it for you. I usually use filleted fish to make spicy boiled fish. So if you only buy small fish, you'd better not ask the seller to fillet it for you, since it will confuse him or her, lol. But if the small fish you buy is very expensive sushi fish, of course you can ask the seller to fillet it for you directly.

[roddy]

Summer, thanks for your suggestion, but it seems much longer and more polite than what I think Chinese people would actually say. What do people actually say in real life ?

[Summer Song]

Hmm, I think it is the sentence we actually will use in daily life. At least, my friends, my family and I will use this sentence when we go to the market. If too short, it will seems too bossy and impolite.