Refreshing Sheatfish Sour Soup for Summer
The Sheatfish sour soup is incredibly aromatic, with an enticing and aesthetically pleasing color. This soup has a gentle sourness, refreshing taste, and the Sheatfish meat is sweet with few bones. This is a delicious sour soup that you should not miss out on during the summer.
Ingredients
- 850g Sheatfish
- 300g tomatoes
- 350g pineapple
- Fermented rice
- Turmeric powder or fresh turmeric
- 2-3 dry onions, 3-4 garlic cloves, 1 small ginger, hot chilli
- 150g bean sprouts
- Green onions, coriander, culantro
- Salt granules
- Seasoning: Soup powder, MSG, fish sauce, ground pepper
Ingredient Notes
Sheatfish (also known as climbing perch) is a type of slippery fish, quite similar to the catfish, and snakehead fish... The price of Sheatfish meat ranges from 120,000 VND - 150,000 VND/kg.
For slippery fish types, when making sour fish soup, you should use fermented rice or rice vinegar.
Instructions
How to prepare mud loach
Mud loach has a slimy skin. To clean it, pour hot water (about 80 degrees Celsius) over the fish. You will see the slime on the outside of the fish solidify, and then you can scrape off this layer with a knife.
Perform this step quickly and do not soak the fish in hot water for too long, otherwise the flesh will cook and lose its sweetness. After scraping off the slime, rinse the fish.
Next, rub the fish with some coarse salt to clean and deodorize it. Rinse it again and let it drain.
The next step is to cut the fish into pieces, about 2-3cm thick.
After cutting, marinate the fish with some seasonings to enhance its flavor:
- 2 tablespoons of fish sauce
- 1 tablespoon of fermentation residue (Strain the fermentation residue to make it smooth)
- 1/2 teaspoon of MSG
- A pinch of ground pepper
- 1 teaspoon of turmeric powder or you can crush a fresh turmeric stalk to marinate the fish
Mix well and let the fish marinate for 10-15 minutes.
Preparing other ingredients
Chop onions, garlic, and ginger finely. You can also chop 1-2 chili peppers, the spiciness of the chili will override the fishy smell and enhance the sour flavor of the soup, making it more appealing.
Rinse green onions, Vietnamese cilantro, and culantro in saltwater, then chop them finely.
Soak bean sprouts in saltwater, rinse them, and let them drain.
Cut the tomatoes into wedges.
Cut the pineapple into quarters, remove the core, divide into smaller sections, then cut into small triangular pieces.
Pre-cooking the mud loach
After marinating, you should pan-fry or pre-grill the fish. The purpose of this step is to make the fish more fragrant, eliminate the fishy smell, and prevent it from falling apart during cooking. Here, Cookbeo will pre-grill the fish using an air fryer. Preheat the air fryer, then put in the fish, set the temperature at 200 degrees, and grill each side for 5 minutes.
Once pre-cooked, remove the fish and place on a separate dish.
Cooking sour soup with mud loach
Fry onions, garlic, ginger, and chili with about 2 tablespoons of cooking oil. Once these ingredients are golden and fragrant, add all the pineapple and 2/3 of the tomatoes to sauté. Save some tomato wedges to add later for a fresher taste and appealing look.
Add 1 teaspoon of broth mix to enhance the flavor of the tomatoes and pineapple. Once the tomatoes and pineapple are well coated with oil, add the fish. Cover the pot, simmer over low to medium heat for about 5-6 minutes until the tomatoes and pineapple are soft, releasing a gentle sour and sweet flavor into the fish.
After about 5-6 minutes, add hot water to start cooking the soup. The amount of water for 4 servings is about 1.5 liters. Using boiling water prevents the fish soup from being fishy.
When the soup comes to a boil, add the bean sprouts and the remaining tomato wedges. Season to taste with broth mix, a little MSG, fish sauce, and fermentation residue. Adjust the amount of seasonings to suit your taste, but remember that the main flavor of this fish soup is a gentle sourness.
After seasoning, when the soup comes back to a boil, add the green onions, Vietnamese cilantro, and culantro. Stir well, turn off the heat, and ladle the soup into a bowl.
The sour soup with mud loach is very fragrant, with an attractive color. The soup is gently sour, sweet, and refreshing, and the mud loach is delicious, with sweet meat and few bones. This sour fish soup is very tasty, remember to cook it for the whole family to enjoy in the summer.
