Homemade fish stock is essential in my home cooking. Apart from the flavour, it is packed with nutrients that our body requires. It makes a great soup base for noodles, rice vermicelli, pasta or it can be served as daily nourishing soup with added tomatoes and vegetables.
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| Macaroni in homemade fish soup, served with tread-fin slices, fish cake, quail eggs and spinach. Photo updated: November 30, 2016. |
I normally make fish stock once a week and keep it in 3-4 freezer-safe containers to be stored in the freezer. Whenever I need it, just take out and thaw a little and boil it, add some rice vermicelli or Japanese Somen, meat/ prawns/ fish slices and vegetables, my son will finished eating everything served in his bowl just like this....
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| The picture on the top left was fish soup rice vermicelli served with vegetables, prawns and fish cake. A very simple and nutritious meal that I prepared after picked my son from school late in the afternoon. The cooking time is less than 10 minutes. What's better than a comforting meal home cooked by mom? Glad that my son enjoy my food ;) |
All these while, I have been making fish stock the conventional way - Pan fry in a pot, add water and simmer for 1 hour. When it's done, I have to wipe all my kitchen cabinets because there were some water droplets all over due to the continuous boiling/ simmering.
Now that I have my pressure cooker, everything seems to be easier for me. After pan fry as usual, the pressure cooker will get the soup done without messing up my kitchen cabinets ;) Besides time and energy saving, I must share what's the BIG difference of fish stock cooked with conventional pot and pressure cooker: The texture of the flesh!
I used to throw away the fish head after I made fish stock out of it because after one hour of simmering, the flesh turned out to be rough and dense. However, the fish head cooked in pressure cooker, remain soft and flavourful that I classified it as 'still edible' and yes, we eat the flesh and my son keep asking for more :)
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| This is how it looks like when it is chilled, just like jelly. It will return to liquid form after heat up. |
Ingredients:
1kg Fish Head (Thread-fin/ grouper/ snapper, just get the fresh one!)
6 slices Ginger
1 Onion (cut into chunks)
1 Large or 2 Medium Size Carrots (cut into chunks)
1 tbsp Cooking Wine (Shao Xing Hua Tiao or Chinese Rice Wine)
1 litre Hot Water
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Method:
1. Heat some oil in a skillet, add in ginger and onion, cook until fragrant.
2. Add in fish head, pan fry until both sides are golden brown. Add cooking wine and hot water, bring to boil. Turn off heat.
3. Transfer the fish head into the pressure cooker. I used 4.5L WMF Perfect Pro pressure cooker. Add in carrots.
4. Carefully pour in the soup.
5. Close with the cover and set the knob to 1.
6. Use medium heat until the cooking indicator rises to the first orange ring.
7. Reduce heat to low and let it cook for 30 minutes.
8. When the cooking is over, turn off heat. Wait till the indicator (orange ring) go down or until there's no more pressure, turn the knob to unlock. The fish stock is ready by now. You may let it sit in the warm pressure cooker for another hour to enhance the flavour or just let it cool and keep in the freezer for later use.
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