With Chinese New Year coming up, here are three classic Cantonese dishes my dad almost always features in his epic 9-course feasts. In line with tradition, he always cooks pork, chicken, and fish for the table. To start, weāll make the Cantonese BBQ favorite, Chinese Crispy Pork Belly. Hello, friends. How are you? Today, we're learning how to roast pork belly at home. Crispy roast pork. This is about 2 lb 10 oz of pork belly. Before we start, we'll briefly parboil the pork belly. Let's add the water. 2 cups of water is enough. Just a bit. Turn the heat on. High heat. When it comes to a boil, add the meat to briefly parboil it. In a large wok, weāll bring 2 cups of water to a boil. Good, the water's boiling. Place the meat in, skin down. Give it a wiggle. Shirley asked, "How do you buy the pork belly with the skin on top?" You can get it in Chinatown. 99 Ranch as well. One day, when we went to Costco to buy meat, Daddy wanted to buy pork belly for this recipe, but because the meat was frozen, we couldn't see it well. When we went home, we opened it "Oh, there's no skin!" But the most attractive thing about crispy pork belly is the crunch of the skin! So if you don't have the skin, there's not much to this dish. Boil it until the skin is cooked, and it's easy to pierce through. This is quick, it only takes a few minutes. Is it on high heat? Yes, high heat! After a minute of boiling with the skin side down, weāll flip the pork belly. Great, this side is done. Flip it over. After just 30 seconds of boiling with the meat side down, we can remove it. Great, we've parboiled the meat. Take it out. Okay, next! Place the meat in some cold water. Scrape it with a knife. Scrape off any debris from the surface. Scrape it clean. Do you have to scrape it? Pork skin can have hair on it. Scrape that off. After you scrape it, you see this debris, right? With a knife, weāll scrape off any hair or dirt on the skin. Is that water for rinsing, or is it about the temperature? Yes, it's both. It's for rinsing it clean and to shock it with cold water. Now it's clean. When it's clean, pat it dry with paper towels. Soak up the water. Then, weāll dry the pork belly with a kitchen or paper towel. Next, we'll poke some holes. You can use a toothpick, just poke holes like this. Some pieces of pork belly have very thick skin. You want to choose thicker skin. Don't buy pork belly with a thin layer of skin. Thicker skin makes crunchier skin. What does poking holes do? After the skin absorbs the vinegar, the holes will expand into fluffy bubbles when it cooks. The more holes you poke, the better. Make them very close together. You can also use a fork, but toothpicks are best. Toothpicks are sharper. Weāll poke holes into every part of the skin with toothpicks or a fork. How deep do you have to poke the holes? Not too deep, because the skin is not too thick. So through the skin? Yes, just go through the skin. Notice how heās using two toothpicks to do it more quickly here. For restaurants, or 99 Ranch or Chinatown, when they're making this en masse, they can't sit there with a toothpick and poke all day, is there a tool that they use to roll across and get a lot of holes at once? They use a steel tool. A lot of thin nails together. so they can poke many holes at once. We gotta get one of those. After weāre done piercing the skin side thoroughly, weāll flip over to the meat side. After poking the holes, cut three slashes along the bottom. Not too deep. Into thirds, like this. Why? This helps the flavor penetrate better. Heāll first score the meat lengthwise into thirds. This is how we'll cut it after cooking. Then heāll score perpendicularly along the length to form squares. This is how it looks after cutting. After it's cut, we'll season it. How do we season it? With five spice powder! 1/2 a tsp. 1/3 tsp of black pepper. Then 1/4 tsp of white pepper powder. 1 tsp of garlic salt, and 1/2 tsp of salt. Mix it all up. Do you have to use five spice powder? Yes, that makes it aromatic. If you don't like five spice, of course you can omit it. That's fine. Once it's all mixed up, we'll rub it onto the pork belly. Use a spoon. Sprinkle it on. Get into the lines. Inside? Yes, get it inside. In any case, rub it thoroughly all over the pork belly. Weāll rub in the dry seasoning on just the meat side, making sure to get it into the gaps we just cut. It's covered in the spice rub. 2 tsp of ground bean sauce is enough. Add 1 tsp of sugar. You can't mix it into the spice rub? No. We'll paint it right on. Lots of people don't add this, but I like to. It'll taste even better. You can skip it. Just brush it on. With the ground bean sauce and sugar mixture, weāll do the same, lathering just the meat side of the pork belly and getting it into the gaps as well. We have all of these ingredients listed on our blog at madewithlau.com along with step-by-step instructions and video clips to guide you as you make the recipe at home. After adding the marinade, get your aluminum foil out. Make a sort of dish to hold it. It should be longer than the meat. As long as it's bigger than the meat. Put in on your cutting board. Place the meat on the foil, skin side up. Weāll put our pork belly onto a large piece of foil with the skin side up. Make a sort of dish. You're not seasoning the skin? Not yet. We're going to work on that later, using vinegar. Weāll now fold the edges of the foil up to form a sort of dish around the pork belly. What's the purpose of folding it like that? Wrapping it up like this helps prevent the bottom from burning in the oven. It also preserves the juiciness at the bottom. So you'll put that whole thing in the oven? Yes! It goes into the oven like this. As my dad mentioned, the name of this dish is siu yuk, which literally means roasted meat. Like char siu, it belongs to the epic family of siu mei, which means Cantonese-style roasted meats. This dish uses the fatty cut of pork belly. "How do you identify high quality pork belly?" You can tell when you buy it. You'll see alternating layers of fat and muscle. We call it five-layered pork, because it has five layers. What heās referring to is the Chinese name of this cut of pork, ng faa juk, which translates to five-flower or five-pattern meat. So when buying your meat, look for those luscious layers of fat & meat to create the perfect bite. Traditionally, these meats were painstakingly roasted on spits and open fires, but nowadays, itās impossible to walk through a Chinatown without running into a Chinese BBQ shop with dozens of delicious roasted meats hanging by the window. Is there symbolism for this? The symbolism for this is just, it's good food. In our history, we didn't have a lot of meat to eat, so when you had a piece of pork or meat, you'd make it look good and taste good. Most of the time, we'd do this for someone's birthday, or New Year's and holidays. Now, we'll put it down onto the plate. We'll sprinkle some salt on top. Now, weāll sprinkle some salt onto the skin and rub it all over. Salt draws out the moisture in the skin, resulting in a crispier final result when we cook it. A bit more salt. Weāll use a total of 1 tbsp of salt here. Now that we've put the salt on there, we'll soon see it draw the moisture out from the pork skin. It's already getting wet. It'll only take 5 minutes to draw all the moisture out. Would longer be even better? As long as you dry it out, it's fine. Now, weāll wait 5 minutes for the salt to do its thing. It's all wet, see? Now, after finishing this process, wipe the salt off. After 5 minutes, weāll wipe the salt off. Look, it's all wet. Scrape it all off. My dad uses a knife here to scrape off all the salt. Once it's dry, use this important item: vinegar! This is white rice vinegar. Now, weāll pour on 1 tsp of white rice vinegar and spread it around to make sure itās covering all the skin. What does the vinegar do? It makes the skin even crispier. Do other vinegars work? White vinegar would be best. Someone said, "I made it once and the skin was still so hard. What did I do wrong?" They needed to poke the holes better, and closer together. The skin didn't crisp up well. I used salt to draw out all of the moisture, right? The skin will crisp up better the more you dry it out. I also sprinkle vinegar on top at the end, and that really helps the skin get crispy. Vinegar gets rid of a bit of fat. Whether it's crispy chicken or roast duck, you need to put some vinegar on it. After adding the vinegar on top, weāll need to refrigerate it to dry out the skin even more. Then, put this in the refrigerator for at least 10-12 hours. Let the skin dry out completely before roasting. That's how you get the skin crispy. So let's refrigerate it. We're putting it on the top shelf. because the vent is at the top of the fridge so the air will be stronger there. While we wait, weāre super excited to launch our new course, The Cantonese Feast, just in time for Chinese New Year. The Cantonese Feast is our step-by-step guide to cooking the most epic family-style feast for holiday dinners and celebrations. Itās one of my favorite family traditions and one of my dadās most impressive displays of his cooking experience. So, in this course, my dadās walking us through how he single-handedly cooks his famous 9-course meals, from shopping, prep, to cooking. Youāll be learning every little detail, tip, and technique to ensure that crafting your own feast is effortlessly successful. Visit club.madewithlau.com/feast or click the link in our bio to see whatās on the full menu, and to get the beginnerās guide to cooking the best holiday dinner your familyās ever had. All right, friends! The pork has marinated overnight now. We'll take it out and get ready to roast it! After 10-12 hours in the fridge, we can take out our pork belly. As far as tools, weāll need a baking pan and a rack thatāll fit into it. Today, weāre using a toaster oven, but an air fryer or conventional oven will work just as well. Having waited overnight, the skin is perfectly dry now. If you touch it, you can hear how dry it is, so it's ready to roast. First, we'll preheat the oven. Weāll preheat the toaster oven to 400Ā°F (205Ā°C). Heat up the oven to 400. I'm going to add some water to the pan. What does this do? If it gets too hot, the pork will burn. That's why we add water. About 1/2 a cup. Why is there a rack? We prop it up so that the bottom of the pork won't burn. Now, we'll put the pork belly onto the roasting rack. Set it nicely. Wait until the oven is fully at 400Ā°F before putting the pork in. If you're using a full-size oven, you don't need to set it as high. 375Ā°F would be fine. Our small toaster oven isn't as powerful. I use this toaster oven more often because I don't want to clean the big oven! I rarely bake. Would the timing be the same in a full-size oven? It should be about the same. Now that the oven is hot, we'll set it to 375Ā°F. When the oven is done preheating, weāll lower the temperature to 375Ā° F (190Ā° C). Great, that's 375Ā°F Let's put the pork in. Now weāll put the pork into the oven. Close the door. The first half of cooking time cooks the pork through. Then we'll raise the heat to crisp up the skin. After how long? 20-25 minutes. As a summary, weāll cook the pork belly a total of about 1 hour. After preheating the toaster oven to 400Ā°F (205Ā°C), weāll lower the temperature to 375Ā°F (190Ā° C) and put in our pork. After 20-25 minutes of cooking, weāll turn up the heat to 425Ā°F (218Ā°C) and cook for another 30-35 minutes to crisp up the skin. For a conventional oven, you can lower the temperatures by 25Ā°F respectively. These times are approximate and will depend on your particular oven. Definitely check on the skin 10-15 minutes before the end of the hour to make sure itās perfectly crispy but not burnt. To be extra safe, you can use a meat thermometer to check if the interior is at the minimum temperature of 145Ā°F (62.8Ā°C) The pork belly's been roasting for an hour, let's take it out! Okay! Isn't that incredible? Follow my recipe for guaranteed results! Now, we can't cut it yet. Let it rest for 1 hour. Let it cool down and reabsorb the juices before cutting. If you cut it now, the juices will all flow out, and it won't be as tasty. "Can you freeze it after it's cooked?" You could refrigerate it for 2-3 days, if you're not eating it for a week, sure, you can freeze it. How would you thaw it? Just take it out and let it thaw. After we let our cooked pork belly sit for an hour, we can cut it. We can chop up our roasted pork belly now. See? Beautiful! You can hear how crispy the skin is. Let's start chopping it up. With a cleaver, weāll first cut the pork belly into slices lengthwise along the already scored cuts. Wow, look! Oh, my god! Paddy from Patreon asked, "How do you keep the skin crispy when you store the leftovers?" Arrange the pieces neatly and roast them in the oven. Roast it to get the skin crispy again. Microwaving or steaming won't crisp it. Use an air fryer or an oven. Once we have long slices, we can lay them down and chop into smaller pieces like so. Now, letās see just how crispy it really is. Crispy and crunchy! Oh, that's so good! Made With Lau ASMR... Our Crispy Pork Belly is roasted and chopped up. I hope everyone enjoys it! Cheers! Ooh, wow! This is so good! This is for sure one of the best I've ever had. Of all the crispy pork belly in Chinatown, Daddy Lau's is the best. Yeah, superior! We bow down! Thank you! Next, for a milder dish, my dad will teach you how to make Cantonese poached whole chicken along with the delicious ginger scallion sauce to pair with it. Hello friends! I hope all of you are well! Today, I'll be explaining how to make white cut chicken. White cut chicken (Bak Chit Gai) is very popular during Lunar New Year and itās a must-have dish. First, we'll start boiling water in a big pot. We need enough water to fully submerge our chicken. Great, now I'll start adding water. To speed things up, I've already boiled water in advance. Now, I'll pour the boiling water into the pot. Then, we'll add 1 tsp salt. 1 teaspoon is enough, we donāt need too much. Weāve added water, next we need to add our chicken. The most important thing is to pierce a hole here in the neck. We have to pierce a hole in the skin so there will be openings on both side of the chicken. This prevents the water from just sitting in the cavity. The hot water can flow through it. This helps chicken cook more easily. We'll first stretch the thighs away from the body to prevent the meat from sticking together. If it's stuck together, then it will be more difficult to cook evenly, understand? Otherwise, the rest of the chicken will cook, and this part won't be done. The stretching helps everything cook evenly. Now, we'll dip the chicken in the pot. Make sure the water is already boiling before you do this step. Your stove's heat should also be on its highest setting. After we place it in the pot, weāll lift it up again. The inside of the cavity is cold, right? By dipping the chicken a few times, We allow the cavity to heat up, right? Now, this isn't enough water. We need to add enough boiling water to submerge the chicken. This way the chicken will cook more quickly. Watch, we'll fill the pot with more boiling water. Great, now we'll cover the pot. Once we've covered the pot, we'll bring it to a boil for 5 minutes. We'll let it boil before turning the heat down to a simmer. We do it this way at home because our pots are a lot smaller than the ones at restaurants. At restaurants, it will cook a lot faster. As for timing, we'll need to cook this for 35-40 minutes. We started out on high heat. Now, we'll set the heat to low. Poach it gently. After we turn the heat down, weāll cook for another 35-40 minutes. Let it cook slowly. Don't cook it at a boil. If you boil it hard, the chicken won't taste as good. It will become tough and overcooked. Poach it gently, and the chicken will be very tender. So in Mandarin, chicken is "jÄ«". We always say during the New Yearā¦ dĆ jĆdĆ lƬ, dĆ jĆdĆ lƬ "dĆ jĆ" means good luck Nothing bad happensāno accidents, no tragedy. Nothing bad, always good luck. And "daai lei" means good profit, you make a lot of profit in the new year. We usually in the New Year say, "daai gat daai lei", "dĆ jĆdĆ lƬ". It symbolizes a lot of good things. When we have banquets, family reunions, birthday parties, the meal always has chicken on the table. It's not complete, itās like necessary? It's not to say it's not complete, it's just one of the meats that's a good symbol of good things. You have to have 3 things. Why three? Saam saang, saam saang, 3 things Fish, pork, and chickenā3 meats You have to have 3 things. Saam saang means 3 animal meats We call these animals saang: chicken, fish, pork. But most of the time we go out to buy roast pork. Great, now that the chicken is cooking, we'll start on our ginger scallion sauce This is the most important part. I'll be using 4 pieces of green onion. We'll be using the stems, the white parts. Why? It's more beautiful! One, it's more beautiful. Two, it's more tasty. We can save these pieces for other dishes. We can use this for anything. First, we'll cut them in half. Cut them into strips. You can make as much as you want. If you have sauce left over, you can use it for anything. You can use it on rice, noodles, anything. To second what my dad said, I use this on basically everythingāit's really good. We're done mincing our scallions, now weāll cut our ginger. We'll thinly slice the ginger. This sauce is an absolute must-have when youāre eating bak chit gai, and itās an addictive sauce that goes well with everything. Iām way more particular than my dad is about weighing and measuring things, but my dad emphasized that the specific amounts of ginger and green onion donāt really matter too much. In this specific instance, my dad is using 42 grams of green onion and 36 grams of ginger. Most recipes Iāve seen elsewhere tend to use more green onion than ginger. My dad spent about 4 minutes total mincing the ginger and scallions, so it needs to be pretty finely chopped for the perfect flavor and texture. You can make as much as you want. Use whatever amounts you want. If you want to make a lot and eat it over time, that works too. Now, we'll mince it into small pieces. Watchāgo slowly, no need to rush. If you have a food processor at home, you can use that too. One thing to note is that my dad is using two separate plates to hold the ginger and the scallions, since weāll be cooking the ginger first. Now, we'll cook our ginger scallion sauce. We'll add 5 tbsp of corn oil. We'll heat the oil until it's around 350-400Ā° F, then we'll add the ginger. Use your thermometer, what's it at now, son? If you don't have a thermometer, a good visual cue is to wait until the oil starts āshimmeringā, or forming ripples across the bottom of the wok. Generally, if we were cooking at a restaurant, they'd get the oil extremely hot pour it over the aromatics, and itād be ready. But at home, we have to add the ginger first. Cook it for a bit, before we add the scallions. Now, we'll be adding our ginger. Cook the ginger for about 15 seconds before adding the green onions. Let's cook the ginger for a bit. Great, the ginger is cooked enough, now we'll add our scallions. Cook everything for another 20-30 seconds before transferring the sauce to a bowl. That's it, it's ready! It's really quick, really easy. It's done already! See? Let's pour it into a bowl. See that? Let's pour! Wow? Right? It's really quick. Once we heat up the oil, pour the ginger and scallions in, that's it. Why do you need to heat up the oil? Heating the oil helps release the flavors and aromas from the ginger and scallions. This helps bring the ginger flavor out, understand? Next, we'll add 2 tsp salt. If you feel like it's not salty enough, you can add more. Sesame oil is very important. Without it, it won't taste as good. We'll add 1 tablespoon of sesame oil. You can't skip the sesame oil. Without it, it won't taste as good. Remember that! Mix it up, see how it tastes. With this amount, we probably won't use it all with one chicken. If you have leftovers, just use it on other dishes. This is delicious. At our houseāthis is always in our refrigerator. We have some now. Try it out and see if there's enough flavor. If it's not salty enough, then add more salt. Let's try it. Mmm! You try it, son. Right? Great, we're done with this step. Very easy, right? The chicken will be ready in 10 minutes. Now, I'll prepare some ice. Let me tell you why we're doing this. Right after we lift the chicken out of the pot, we immediately cool it off in the ice. This helps seal the juices inside of the chicken. The chicken is still hot, right? If it stays hot, all of the juices will gradually leak out. Then, the chicken will be drier. Also, the chicken skin will be more crispy after this ice bath. This is why we use the ice bath. In a bit, I'll transfer the chicken to the ice bath. The chicken meat will immediately contract, preventing the juices from leaking. This is the reason we do this. Wait a bit, we're almost done. The chicken is almost done. Now, I'll stick a chopstick into the thickest part of the meat. If there's no blood or red liquid leaking out, then it's cooked. The thickest part is near the thigh. Poke it here, deeper. If there's no red fluid or blood coming out, it's ready. Like my dad said, if you poke it and see any blood or reddish water leaking out, then just cover the pot and let it cook for a few additional minutes. You can repeat this poke test until the fluid that leaks from the chicken is clear. Once that happens, you can transfer it to the ice bath. We've confirmed that the chicken is done. Great, now we'll lift it out of the pot and transfer it over. It cooked for 35 minutes, not quite 40 minutes. When you're transferring it out, use the chopsticks to pierce the wings. You can use chopsticks to do it. Poke through the chicken wings. That's it, right? We lifted up the whole chicken, see? Great, now we'll place it in the ice bath. Okay? Great. Let it cool down immediately. Let the chicken sit in the ice bath for about 5 minutes, occasionally rotating it around so every part of the chicken gets cooled by the ice water. The chicken is beautiful. See? It's beautiful, right? We'll let it sit for a bit. It will be quick. If you don't use ice water, will it not taste as good? It won't If we cut it immediately without cooling it down, all of the juices will leak out over the cutting board Cooling it down quickly helps the juices stay inside the meat. Understand? That's why the skin is so tasty, right? And the meat has so much juice. Our friend that asked about the skin falling off when cutting. It's because the chicken isn't cold enough. chicken from Costco or Safeway can also be poached the same way. Just buy chickens that aren't too big. Right around 4 pounds is ideal. Don't get a chicken that's too big. This one is right under 4 pounds. If you get a chicken that's too big, after cookingā¦ I think the meat would turn out too dry and tough. For the other chicken (Kwai Fei), would you cook it for less time? Yes, that chicken is smaller. That one is about 3 lbs, this one is about 4 lbs. If it's bigger, just let it poach for longer. Let's flip it over. Oh, this chicken is beautiful. Once the chicken is done cooling, transfer it to another bowl to let the water drain out from the cavity. Now, we'll start to cut our chicken. For chopping chicken, I usually don't use my vegetable cleaver. This knife is very beautiful, itās not for cutting bones. For vegetables, boneless meats, it's fine. This knife is high quality. This knife, I'm gifting it to my son. This knife is also incredibleāit's a Jiangmen knife. You can hear the sound. This knife is fine for cutting bones. Okay, let's start to carve the chicken. We'll cut the chicken feet first, then the neck. When I first started Made With Lau, documenting how my dad carves a chicken was high on the list of traditions I wanted to learn and share. There are lots of different ways to cut a whole chicken, but it always feels like Iām watching an artist at work when I see my dad gracefully chop and plate everything. Every cut has an intention, and every piece has a place. Almost everything goes on the plate, and nothing is wasted. Especially for Lunar New Year and other celebrations, bak chit gai is meant to be one of the main decorative centerpieces on the dinner table, and carving it up into beautiful bite-sized pieces is an honor that I hope to take on one day for my own family. Great, now we'll remove the wings. Place it here. If you don't have a cleaver, Western chef's knives are a lot harder to use. Cleavers are more convenient. Chef's knives are more difficult to use. Let's remove the thigh first. There are a few things to keep in mind as you do this. My dadās done this hundreds of times, and it took him about 10 minutes from start to finish. Itāll probably take a lot longer if youāre a beginner like me, but the main thing is just to make sure your cleaver is sharp and that youāre moving carefully and deliberately. We can tear it away. The right thigh goes on the right, left on the left side. Make a note so you'll know how to do it yourself. Great, now we'll do the breast area. If you donāt already have a cleaver, itās still technically possible, but I highly recommend getting one if you plan on making this dish. We have links to a few great options in our description and on our blog post. For easier, safer cutting, you should use a larger, thicker cutting board thatās preferably made of wood, and you should place a moist towel underneath it to increase its stability. And finally, if youāre following Cantonese tradition, each piece of chicken is laid out on a large plate according to where it was on its body, head to toe, right to left. Okay, this is the chicken breast. This piece is the chicken butt. Place it here, understand? It's for completeness, perfectionāwe have to place it there. Great, we'll split the chest in half. A technique my dad uses a lot involves making a shallow slice to wedge the cleaver, and then hitting down on the blade with his palm to drive the blade through the bone. There are two pieces, see? Left goes to the left (of the plate), right goes to the right. Place it here, this is the left side. In our knife skills interview, my dad talked about the 3 different parts of the bladeāthe root, the belly, and the tip. When chopping through bone, he always makes contact with the root, or the part of the blade closest to the handle. Scoop it over here, this is the right side. Wait a second, let me arrange these. Great, now we'll remove the breast bone. You can just pull on it, and it will come off. Right? Greatāthis is the breast meat, no bones. Let's cut it. Now we've cut it up. A whole chicken. Let's move it over Yeah! Place it in the middle. We'll place the butt here. If the bones are red, is that good? If it's not red, does that mean it's overcooked? Yes, that means it's been overcooked. If the entire bone has no red, then it's been cooked for too long. If there's a bit of red left in the bone, that's normal. This is normal. If the bone is not red anywhere, then it's too cooked. Ohh! That's good to know! If the entire bone has no red, then it's too cooked. This is very tender. It's very tender, right? When I was a kid and I saw the red, I'd think, "So scary! Not good!" Now we'll prepare the thighsāthis is the right thigh. Big pieces? Why would we eat it like that? This is how we chop chicken. This is how we do it. We wouldn't eat big pieces of chicken, right? Okay, we'll place it here Chicken wings. Let's place the chicken wings here. Great, now we've plated everything. The plate is too small for this chicken. Gung hei faat choi! World peace! We're done making Bak Chit Gai. Finally, weāll tackle another must-have New Year dish, whole steamed fish. Hi friends! Good to see you again! Today, I'll be explaining how we typically make Steamed Fish at home. Usually we eat this type of fish, which we buy from Costco. It's red tilapia. This recipe works with lots of different types of fish, and my parents elaborate on their favorites during meal time, and also how they buy fish in separate video. In general, you should try to buy fish thatās in season, since it will generally be fresher and cheaper. If possible, you should also try to buy fish from sustainable sources. Monterey Bay Aquarium runs a free website called Seafood Watch, which has a bunch of recommendations for sources to buy from or to avoid. Generally, when we buy it from Costco they've already removed all of the scales and cleaned the fish. First, we'll remove the belly fa.t If you remove it, youāll remove a lot of the fishy taste. Can you see it? This is the belly fat. We'll need to remove it. Use a paper towel to pull it out. Here, see that? Pull it out. After we've removed it, the black stuff in the middle is fish blood. Can you see the black? Scrape it away with the knife. When the fish is done steaming, the meat will be more white. There won't be any more blood. Just scrape it away from the middle. There's blood along the bones. Next, we'll rinse it clean with water. It's clean now, right? Wipe it dry, absorb the moisture. It's best to do it this way. Since the fish has usually been frozen before, the blood gets stuck to the insides of the fish. It's best to get rid of it. If you don't want to, it's fine. If you don't mind the fishiness, that's okay. Now there's no more blood. Right? See that? It's clean now, which will make the fish taste much better. Usually, when you buy the fish from the market, they've already removed all of the scales, If you buy live fish in Chinatown, the workers usually remove the scales for you. You won't have to do it at home. If you have to remove it yourself, you can use this to scrape the scales off. Just like thisāscrape it clean. Or you might use a knife to descale. Another method, if you want to avoid a mess, is to put it in a bag. Once the fish is in the bag, you can scrape the scales off. The scales won't fly everywhere. You can just use your fingers. Then, all the scales will remain in the bag. You don't need any tools, just your fingernails. I generally use a knife. You "young menā, right? You can justā This works! This works! This way is very clean, very clean. Understand? See? Understand? Okay. When you buy it, is the middle already cut open? When you buy it, it's already like this. When you get it from Costco, all of the fish are already cut. All of the innards have been removed. They've already removed all of the guts? Yeah, they've already removed the guts. When I come home, I remove the other parts I don't like. I have another tip. If you want your fish to cook more quickly and evenly, if your fish is bigger, cut the middle open here, like this. It will cook faster, understand? Right here. Cut it at the thickest part, the meatiest part. If you cut it here, then both sides will cook evenly. How much faster will it cook this way? How many minutes? It's not a matter of minutes. It's that it will cook through evenly. It's to avoid one part cooking more than another. If you don't, this part is thinner, there's less meat here, then this part will be cooked, and this part won't. Understand? Kat, understand? Yeah, got it! Great, our fish is prepared. Next, I'll be preparing ginger and dried orange peel. Generally when I make fish, I always use dried mandarin peels. If you don't have it at home, or if you don't like it. You don't need to add it. Just use ginger and green onion. You don't have to use it. Also, if you like spicy food, chop up a little bit of chili pepper. Now, I'll start preparing theseāwatch. First, Iāll be cutting the (rehydrated) orange peels. We talk about this more in our Steamed Spare Rib video, but my dad has been caring for a mandarin orange tree and curating his own stash of dried peels for decades. The one heās currently using here is probably aged anywhere from 5-15 years. Mandarin orange peels are one of my dadās secret ingredients in a bunch of his recipes, Especially for fish, since it helps reduce some of the āfishyā taste that some of you were asking about. But you can also buy some on Amazon or create your own stash by drying mandarin orange peels for 2-3 days, and sealing them in a bag. Make sure you store it in a cool dark area. We'll also mince a tiny amount of dried chili. If you prefer spicy food, then add it. If you don't, then skip it. Julienne the ginger into strips. About 1/2 ounce. Green onion. With these, we'll be placing them on top of the fish after steaming. Here, we'll split it open down the middle. How does the taste differ between the shoots and the stem? There's not much of a difference, it just looks better. If you layer it on top, it will look better. It's more pleasing to the eye, more beautiful. See? Split it down the middle, cut it. These, we'll leave to the side until the fish is done. Also cilantro, we'll be placing on top of the fish. I grew this cilantro in our gardenāthere's a lot more. To a bowl, weāll add 1 tbsp ground bean sauceāmore on this later, our ginger and chopped green onion shoots 1/2 tbsp light soy sauce, a dash of white pepper, 1/2 tsp salt, a dash of chicken bouillon (which is optional), 1/2 tsp sugar, 1/2 tsp cornstarch, and 1/2 tbsp olive oil, Weāll give the bowl a good mix for about 20-30 seconds. For the ground bean sauce, it might get confusing since there are a few different types of Asian bean sauces out there. In Cantonese, we call it min si zoeng, but most brands call it āGround Bean Sauceā in English. This sauce is made with ground up fermented yellow soybeans, and is packed with umami flavors. We have a link to buy the exact sauce my dad uses in our description. Great, now everything is basically done. We'll add sesame oil at the very end. After we heat up and pour the corn oil, then we'll add the sesame oil. We've mixed up the sauce. Now we're done cutting everything, we'll prepare our fish. This has all of the flavors: ginger, everything. We'll add some of the sauce to the inside. My dad is only using about half of the sauce. To brush inside of the fish, saving the other half to pour on top of the fish later. Great, letās move the wok over. Let's start adding some water. Generally, when we steam fish, we wait for the water to boil before we add the fish to the wok. Since you didn't cut up all of the ginger, how do you keep it for longer? If it's not peeled, you don't have to wrap it up. If you peeled it, then use plastic wrap and put it in the refrigerator. We'll add water that's already been boiledāit's faster, right? See? If the water is just touching the bottom of the plate, itāll cook faster. The more water you steam with, the faster it will cook. There's more steam, right? If you use less water, then there's less steam. Right? Understand? Before we start steaming the fish in the wok, weāll pour the rest of our sauce on top of the fish. See? See? There's a lot of ginger in here, green onion, right? There's mandarin peel. Let's place the fish in the wok. As for the timing, this stove isn't as powerful. It isn't like the roaring restaurant stoves. Cooking at home, once the water is boiling, we'll cook for 12 minutes. Since the fish we buy is frozen first, we'll want to cook it just a bit longer. If it takes 12 minutes to cook, then I'll cook it for an extra minute. Let it cook a little bit more. It's healthier, more sanitary. If the fish is bigger, then cook it for an extra minute or two. This fish is about 1 lb. This fish, the meat is a little more thin. Steaming for 12 minutes at home is fine. Let's say for one ounce, how many minutes would you add? You can't calculate it like that, son! How much do you add for one ounce? You can't calculate it like that! Usually for larger fish, since fish cook very quickly, even if it was a huge fish, you wouldn't be able to cook it in this wok anyway. If it was a big fish, 2 pounds, steaming for 15 minutes would be fine. But for Chinese New Year, we always have fish. In Cantonese, it's jyu. Surplus, abundance, and leftovers; in Cantonese, it's jyu. It means, a lot, a lot. With our life, in the New Year, we always have enough of everything. Whatever we need, we have. Right? So, jyu (fish) and jyu (surplus), it's the same sound. So we eat good fish but we also use the meaning for the New Year. We expect that in the New Year, weāll have enough left over from the last year. Oh, also, why does it have to be whole? Like why not fish fillets? Jyun mei, , jyun jyun zing zing. Perfection. We have the whole fish, we have the whole chicken. We're not missing anything, right? There's nothing missing. That's just the meaningāit's complete. Nothing inside is missing. Plus for the New Year, you want to be abundant. So you want to have the full fish, not just parts of it. Yeah, yeah. On a normal day, it's okay, but if you're using it for the meaning to celebrate the New Year, we always use the whole thing. I was reading there's a saying, nin nin jau jyu. Nin nin jau jyu, it means every year we have abundance, leftovers, plenty. That means every year we have plenty - it carries over to the next yearāwe donāt have to worry. So that's why we always have a fish on the table for the New Year How do you know when it's cooked enough? Look at the eyesāthey should be white. Right now, the eyes are black Once it's cooked, the eyes will turn white Or, you can use chopstick to poke the thickest part How do you know if it's overcooked? You'd need to actually eat it to know if it's overcooked. The meat will be more rough, not as smooth. If you're not cooking it for too long, it won't get overcooked. 12 minutes is fine, don't go to 15, 20 minutes, understand? How do you adjust for a different stove? Other stoves are the sameāit's all boiling water. Boiled water maxes out at 100Ā° C. Boiling is boilingāthe water won't get any hotter. Depend on the stoves temperature is lower or higher If it's undercooked, he can still put it back in? And cook it longer? Is that true? If it's not cooked enough, you can take the whole fish. You can boil the water again and steam it. Or you can cover the fish and microwave it for 2-3 minutes. Then it will be done. If the fish isn't cooked enough, the meat won't separate from the bone. The meat towards the bone will be red. There will be some bloody juices. But a lot of Chinese prefer to have some bloody juices. They prefer it slightly less cookedāit's more tasty, more tende.r In restaurants, do they use ceramic plates like this? Or metal? Generally they use ceramic plate.s Some use metal plates. There's not a huge difference, but usually restaurants donāt serve food on metal platesāusually just with ceramic plates. Someone askedāhow do you prevent the skin from breaking? The skin... it usually doesn't break. The skin is quite tough. It usually won't break, no matter the fish, unless you cook it for a really long time. The skin won't break, but the meat might. Once the eyes are white, how long do you wait? It's done, we'll take it out now. Since the fish was frozen (in the store), we'll cook it for another minute. This is better, more sanitary. Cooking it for a little longer isn't a big deal. See? I'm going to lift the lid. Poke it. It's done, right? If you can't poke it through, then it's not done. Great, now I'll add the green onion. Okay, now let's heat some oil. We'll be using 2 tbsp corn oil. We already have some oil in the sauce. Some people dump the water before adding the oil. If we hadn't seasoned the fish, we'd dump this liquid. But we had already added the sauces and flavors. It's not just water, understand? If we hadn't seasoned the fish, we'd dump this liquid. Then add the oil, and add the flavors. Use your thermometer, see how hot it is. How hot? About 250Ā° F. 250Ā° F? That's not hot enoughāshould be about 300Ā° F. 370Ā° F. Okay, that's enough. See? Good, we'll add the cilantro. It's beautiful! Okay, our fish is done! This is our family's recipe for steamed fish. Okay, let's eat! Call Mommy, call Hong Doy! Hong Doy, let's eat fish! Hong Doy, we're ready! Hong Doy, let's eat fish! I also wanted to capture how my dad removes some of the bones before serving the fish, since he always does it so gracefully for our family. Iāve always been a little intimidated by this step, but my dad breaks it down very simply for us. Now we'll remove the bones from the fish. We'll place the vegetables to the side. First, we'll remove the spine. Cut into the meat like this in the middle. Remove it from the middle, see? This is the spine. Tilapia doesn't have too many tiny bones. Mainly just the spine. See? The whole spine has been removed. Here, we have some small bones, push them to the side. See that? Great. All the bones have been removed These other bones in the middle, not a big deal. This part is fine. Now they're all removed. Now you can serve yourself and eat as much as you want, understand? This is the fish tail. This is the fish head. Restaurants are like thisāif it's a good restaurant, the waiter will do this. They'll remove the bones, leave the fish head, the tail. The whole fish is on the plate. Cheers! Hi! You want to eat some fish?
