Living abroad sometimes gives you challenges in life – especially when it comes to cooking. If you get hungry for a certain food, but cannot get the right ingredients for it, substitutes will just have to make do. Today, I will introduce one of my substitutes. In Korea, people eat a steamed dried fish that has a special sauce topping during big holidays such as Lunar New Year (Seolnal) or Thanksgiving (Chuseok). The dish is rather simple, especially for a holiday food. When I say “dried fish,” you might imagine a dried fish filet or a bag of shredded dried fish. However, in this case, it is a whole dried fish minus the head and guts. I could not get that here so I tried to make that dish with frozen tilapia fillets, which are easily found in these parts of the world. I’m happy to share my successful experiment with you. I love the way it turned out, especially the texture of the fish and the delicious sauce on top. Try it someday. 🙂
Yield: 3 Pieces
Short Korean Lesson
- GungGeumHaDa (궁금하다) = Wonder (Verb)
- SaengGakHaDa (생각하다) = Think (Verb)
Video Instructions
Main Ingredients
Sauce Ingredients
Directions
Obtain 3 Tilapia fillets (½ lb). You can use either frozen or fresh. If they are frozen, thaw them completely and wipe the extra moisture off with a paper towel. Since you will eat this fish with sauce, you do not have to season or salt them.
Obtain about ¼ cup of all-purpose flour. Cover the fish with flour evenly. This is a secret for getting a crispy texture and nice flavor.
Fry the fish in an oiled (2 Tbsp cooking oil) nonstick pan on medium-high.
Meanwhile mix together all the ingredients for the sauce: 1 Tbsp soy sauce, ½ Tbsp water, ½ Tbsp sesame seeds, 1 tsp hot pepper powder, 1 tsp minced garlic, ½ tsp sesame oil, 2 pinches sugar. If you like a lot of sauce for your fish, you can double the sauce ingredients.
Fry one side for about 5 minutes, or until golden brown. Flip the fish and fry for another 5 minutes.
Spread some of the sauce on top of the fish evenly.
Garnish by sprinkling some finely chopped green onion on top of the sauce.
The crispy outside, and soft inside, tastes great with the savory sauce. It is very delicious. You can substitute the tilapia with your favorite white fish. Enjoy!
Thanks for the post. I can taste it already. I’m going to make this next week.
Aeri: I had this for dinner this week. The sauce is delicious with the fish. I did not coat the fish with flour. I just pan-fried the fish fillets without the flour. I doubled the sauce because my fish fillets were quite large and two fillets were 1 pound. It was so good, I may make this again next week. Thanks for the post. 🙂
Lovely post in a great blog….and this recipe look and sounds absolutely delicious…I’m such a big fan of Korean food (and I love everything with fish and soy sauce) I ate similar dishes in restaurants but I’ve never thought of making it myself at home….but since I have this recipe now I think it is time to try it at home….I just hope my cooking skills are good enough and that it will taste like in the restaurant (or even better :D). If you have a dish you want to try at home but the recipe is not in your language make sure that the translation is done by a professional translator so that you won’t miss out on the chance to make it “homemade”.
Thank you for this recipe! My son is Korean and he loved this sauce on fish! My husband and I loved it too.
I posted about it on my blog.
http://bloginspiredcooking.blogspot.com/2013/04/a-sure-thing-korean-sauce-for-fish.html
I’m glad I doubled it, we put it on everything we had for dinner that night.
I tried this recipe and it was absolutely delicious! Thank you so much!
hi Aeri,
Thank you so much for your easy to follow recipe. I tried cooking this dish last yesterday and it was good. I was not able to follow the whole ingredients though due to limited stocks available at my house.. hehhee.. instead of sesame oil i used olive oil, and funny thing is i used black pepper instead of hot pepper(i am thinking of chili powder) i was confused but i just put it hot sauce instead since it’s all i have.. lol i know i completely ruined the recipe.. LOL but still according to my friends it’s delicious. I just made used of the ingredients i have that seems to taste closer to the original ones.. LOL sorry for my long post just want to share my cooking experience.. hahha.. Thank you again i am so encouraged to explore how to make korean food, coz ur recipe looked so easy to follow.. God bless you and more recipes to come ^_^
Hi lougee27,
Thanks for your comment. I enjoyed reading your experience. You did a good job with the ingredients you had in your hand. 🙂
Hi Aeri,
Thanks for sharing this recipe! The fish was so nice and crispy, and the sauce on top was delish! Got the thumbs-up from my Korean boyfriend as well.
hi Alena,
That’s wonderful. ^^ I’m proud of you. Thanks for your comment.
Could i use Hot pepper flakes and just ground them up?? Thank you,Love your website
hi Lisa,
Sure, you can do that. thanks and enjoy !! 🙂
Can’t wait to try it- please let me know calorie content as I am on a limited diet and want to make sure it works for it.
Hi Lauren,
I’m sorry but we don’t have calorie content for my recipes yet. Instead I found this useful tool for you to count calories in your food. Please check it out. https://www.webmd.com/diet/healthtool-food-calorie-counter