MUZIChinese Matrix
Sichuan Cuisine · FFET10176
A Sichuan and Chongqing fish dish: pickled greens, pickled chilies and peppercorns are fried, broth is added, and thin fish slices are poached and finished with hot oil.
A deep white china bowl has pale egg-white-coated grass carp slices in oily yellow broth, pickled mustard, pickled and dry chiles, Sichuan pepper, ginger, garlic and green onion, with wood chopsticks resting beside the bowl.
The regional cooking of Sichuan and Chongqing, known for its wide range of flavour types.
Suan cai yu is a Sichuan and Chongqing fish dish: thin fish slices are poached in a sour, spicy broth of Sichuan pickled mustard greens, pickled chilies, ginger and Sichuan pepper, then finished with hot oil. It belongs to Sichuan cuisine; its Chongqing origin account rests on a 1994 magazine article. Zhouyu eatery in Jinfu township, Jiangjin, served it from the mid-1980s; this claim comes from one self-published article dated November 5, 2019, without documentary support.
Suan cai yu is a Sichuan dish of fish slices poached in a sour, spicy broth made with Sichuan pickled mustard greens, pickled chilies, ginger and Sichuan pepper. Grass carp and catfish are commonly used, and other meats can replace the fish.1,2,4,5
The Chongqing origin account rests on a 1994 magazine article. Zhouyu eatery in Jinfu township, Jiangjin, served it from the mid-1980s; it spread nationwide with Sichuan and Chongqing hotpot in the 1990s. This history comes from one self-published article dated November 5, 2019, without documentary support; no dated record was found to establish an inventor or year.1,3
Suan cai yu belongs to Sichuan cuisine, with its origin placed in Chongqing. Several origin accounts center on Jiangjin on the Yangtze.1,2,3
Fry the chilies, ginger, garlic and pickled greens until fragrant, add broth, briefly poach thin fish slices, then pour hot oil over them. This differs from shui zhu yu, where hot chili oil is poured over blanched fish. Preparations can use a whole fish, with the bones used for broth, or fillets alone.1,4,5
Sichuan households pickled greens in early winter and ate them into the next summer. The sour greens cover the muddy taste of freshwater fish.1,3
Suan cai yu became common in restaurants nationwide in the 1990s alongside Sichuan and Chongqing hotpot; this account comes from a single self-published article.3
The tale goes that on the Yangtze at Jiangjin, fishermen sold their large catch and cooked the leftover small fish with pickled greens swapped from farmers on the bank, making a pot of sour soup, which is told as the boat-side forerunner of suan cai yu.
Told in: Jiangjin, Chongqing; told in a self-media article of November 5, 2019 that gives no document.
One popular account says that young people sent to the countryside cooked river fish with pickled greens to hide its muddy taste, and brought the method back to the cities when they returned in the late 1970s.
Told in: Sichuan; told in the same self-media article, whose author holds that this is the root of the dish but gives no document.
Grandma Li
This is a simplified home version, not the traditional restaurant method.
This is the Sichuan and Chongqing suan cai yu in a simplified home version. Both recipes come from food blogs, their authors are named, and they make the same dish: recipe A uses a whole fish, with the fillet marinated and the head and bones made into broth; recipe B uses fillets alone, with ready-made pickled greens and chicken broth. The home version follows recipe A for method and amounts (it serves two), and recipe B for the wine and sugar. The recipes poach the slices for different times, about 30 seconds in recipe A and 1 to 2 minutes in recipe B, so I go by how the slices look.
Allergens: fish, egg, soy, wheat
