Yingshang Balihe Fish Banquet 颍上八里河鱼宴
Yingshang Balihe Fish Banquet is featured among the local specialties of Anhui.
Yingshang Balihe Fish Banquet (颍上八里河鱼宴) is the fish banquet of Balihe in Yingshang, Anhui, built around a milky fish-head soup made from large carp heads fried golden and simmered in a clay pot.
How the soup is made
The recipe published by Zhong'an Online is specific. Start with a bighead carp head of more than ten jin, split in half, rinsed and dried. Heat oil in a wok — the cook says lard is better — and fry the head golden on both sides with ginger slices and spring onion sections, then add water, cooking wine and star anise. When it boils, move everything into a clay pot and simmer on medium-low heat for half an hour, then salt at the end and finish with garlic sprouts or houttuynia.
The technique behind the colour is the fry: the head is seared before any liquid goes in, which the article presents as the source of a thick, milky broth.
Flavour & texture
The soup is described as milky white, savoury and clean-tasting, with a head whose skin is crisp from frying while the flesh stays soft. Garlic sprouts or houttuynia go in at the end, over the richness. Zhong An Online notes that a fish head has no fine bones in the way a body does.
Local roots
Balihe is a lake, not just a menu name. Zhong An Online describes the Balihe provincial nature reserve around a water surface of more than fifty square kilometres on the north bank of the Huai river, and the fish served there come from a fishery with 8,000 mu of ponds that the business says imitate a wild environment.
Fishing is woven into the local year: Zhong An Online notes a collective winter catch and a winter-fishing festival that has run for several editions. Beyond the soup, the all-fish banquet is the area's wider attraction.
Ingredients & dietary needs
The documented ingredients are a bighead carp head, oil, ginger, spring onion, water, cooking wine, star anise, salt and either garlic sprouts or houttuynia. Zhong An Online adds that the fishery raises its fish without feed on natural lake food and keeps its water at class II quality, with six consecutive years of national organic certification.
Two things are worth asking. Chilli is not part of the documented version, so a bowl can arrive plainer than expected, and the fish is freshwater carp, so anyone avoiding freshwater fish has no substitute here.
How to order
The head is sized, not portioned, so ask how large the head in the kitchen is today: the documented version starts above ten jin, which is why the bowl is usually shared. Ask as well whether the fried head comes in the soup or is removed before serving.
For a group, treat the soup as the centre and add two or three other fish dishes from the banquet. Because the garnish goes in last, say at the start if you would rather have the houttuynia on the side.
How to eat it & plan a meal
Serve the soup hot from the clay pot and eat it as a shared dish, lifting the head onto a plate once the broth has been taken. The flesh around the head is the main eating, and the thick broth is meant to be drunk rather than kept as a sauce.
The local fishing year peaks in winter with the collective catch and the winter-fishing festival, while the soup is served through the year at the farm restaurants along the lake. As a freshwater fish dish it is best eaten where it is cooked.
More dishes to compare
Explore related local specialties and compare their names, preparation notes and ordering guidance.
Huizhou fermented mandarin fish 徽州臭鳜鱼 →
Huizhou fermented mandarin fish (徽州臭鳜鱼) is the other freshwater fish dish in this catalogue, from Huizhou in the south of the province, and its name announces a fermentation step that the Balihe soup does not have. The Yingshang dish takes a large carp head, fries it and simmers it for half an hour; the Huizhou dish works from a different fish and a preservation technique. The two share only the province and the category of freshwater fish.
Questions before you order
What is in the Balihe fish-head soup?
A bighead carp head of more than ten jin, fried golden with ginger and spring onion, then simmered in a clay pot with water, cooking wine and star anise for half an hour and finished with salt and garlic sprouts or houttuynia.
Is the fish farmed or wild?
Zhong An Online says the fish come from Balihe fishery ponds that imitate a wild environment, with no feed and class II water quality, and reports six consecutive years of national organic certification. Those claims come from the business rather than from an independent check.
Sources & reading
The supplied food list supports this name and regional association. The culinary terms below are explained as menu vocabulary; a local recipe, origin story and venue availability have not been independently verified.