Youting Braised Crucian Carp 邮亭鲫鱼

How it is made

The method is close to ordinary Sichuan cooking. The owner of one Youting carp restaurant describes it like this: the carp is gutted and cleaned, scored with a criss-cross pattern and marinated with ginger, spring onion, salt and cooking wine. Pickled red chillies and Pixian broad-bean paste (郫县豆瓣) are chopped fine, and celery is cut into short lengths.

The fish is deep-fried until golden. Oil is then heated in a wok to about half of full heat, and the pickled chillies, bean paste, chilli powder, ginger and Sichuan pepper go in and are fried until the oil turns red. Stock, cooking wine and pickled radish are added and simmered to draw out the flavour, then the fried carp and the celery are braised in the sauce until the fish is cooked. Chicken bouillon goes in last, and the whole pot is carried to a hotpot table.

How it is eaten

The burner under the pot is not lit at first. In place of the fresh-oil and dry-oil dips usual at a Chongqing hotpot, the table has crushed peanuts, finely chopped zhacai (榨菜, pickled mustard tuber) and chopped spring onion. Each diner lifts a whole fish onto a plate, adds condiments to taste, stirs in a small ladle of the carp broth and eats it together. The result is numbing, hot, fresh and tender, with the crisp fragrance of peanut and the mellow pickled mustard.

Once the fish is finished the burner is lit, and diners can order beef tripe (毛肚) or seasonal vegetables to cook in the pot. Youting carp restaurants have also added new dishes such as carp soup with fried egg, carp with crispy rice (锅巴) and carp with pork intestine.

Where it comes from

Youting lies where western Chongqing meets eastern Sichuan, on the route between Chengdu and Chongqing, and was once a staging post that every traveller between the two cities passed. The town was first called "邮停" (post stop) and is recorded in history as Youting Pu (邮亭铺) and Youting Yi (邮亭驿), both names for the post station. Because travellers stopped there, local fishermen opened roadside carp shops beside the station, and the fresh, tender fish won them customers.

After the 1980s the dish became known across Chongqing and the southwest, and signs for Youting carp appear in nearby Rongchang (荣昌), Yongchuan (永川), Tongliang (铜梁), Bishan (璧山), Anyue (安岳), Nanchong (南充) and Mianyang (绵阳). On the Dayou road (大邮路) from Shuanglu subdistrict (双路街道) to Youting, a Youting carp street almost two kilometres long holds no fewer than a hundred restaurants named after the fish. The local government has also set up ecological fish farms to supply the dish.

More dishes to compare

Explore related local specialties and compare their names, preparation notes and ordering guidance.