Xiantao Rice-Meal Steamed Fish 蒸鱼
Xiantao Rice-Meal Steamed Fish is featured among the local specialties of Hubei.
Xiantao Rice-Meal Steamed Fish (蒸鱼) is the fish member of Mianyang three steams (沔阳三蒸), the steamed dishes of Xiantao (仙桃) in Hubei, which was Mianyang county until 1986. The fish is cut into pieces, coated in ground rice and steamed. Li Heming (李和鸣), a provincial-level inheritor of the three steams, names rice-meal steamed catfish, black carp and eel as the representative dishes of the aquatic group. Xiantao's government relates a legend that the three steams began when the wife of Chen Youliang (陈友谅), a rebel leader at the end of the Yuan dynasty, mixed meat, fish and lotus root with rice meal and steamed them to reward his soldiers.
Ingredients
At a 2014 demonstration at Wuhan Business University (武汉商学院) Li said that black carp, silver carp and grass carp all suit steaming and that every part of the fish can be used. The dishes he cooked there included rice-meal steamed grass carp tail, called shuaishui (甩水), and a squirrel fish (粉蒸松鼠鱼) cut with fine knife work. When a visiting group from the Wuhan metropolitan area tasted the three steams in Xiantao, rice-meal steamed catfish was served with rice-meal steamed pork and taro.
How it is made
Fish takes a different coating from meat. Li told China Youth Net (中国青年网) that fish, like vegetables, is coated in a raw rice meal finer than the five-spice cooked meal used for meat, and that fish is dipped rather than mixed, with a thin coat that keeps the flesh moist. For black carp shuaishui he cut the tail along the bone into long strips, seasoned them, dipped them in a thin layer of raw rice meal and laid them in the steamer.
The way the fish is divided has changed. Li says a fish used to be chopped entirely into chunks, with head and tail steamed together; now a grass carp or black carp is split into head, belly and tail, each steamed separately for diners with different preferences.
Flavour and texture
China Youth Net's reporter found the black carp tail fresh, tender, juicy and rich. Li insists that the three steams must be eaten hot.
Sources & reading
Written from the linked sources and fact-checked against them on 2026-09-24. Recipes and servings vary between kitchens.
Image credits & notes (1)
- Serving example. Cantonese cuisine steamed fishCantonese cuisine steamed fishPhoto: Kent Wang from (optional) · CC BY-SA 2.0Resized for the web; the photo itself has not been edited.
