Miao-Style Sour Cured Fish 苗家酸鱼
Miao-Style Sour Cured Fish is featured among the local specialties of Hunan.
Miao-Style Sour Cured Fish (苗家酸鱼) is a jar-cured fish of the Miao people of Xiangxi Tujia and Miao Autonomous Prefecture (湘西土家族苗族自治州), western Hunan. A research group of the prefecture's social science federation names sour fish as the best known of Xiangxi's sour meat foods.
How it is made
A travel feature in the Economic Daily in January 2014 reported that the best fish for it are carp from the rice paddies around the Miao village of Dehang (德夯苗寨). The fish is cured by a traditional local method and keeps at least a year or two, and up to eight or nine years without spoiling. When a jar is opened it gives off a fragrant, sweet-sour smell, and the fish taken out of it can be steamed or deep-fried.
Flavour and texture
The Economic Daily writer describes a long sweet-sour flavour with a fragrant heat, and drank it with baogu shao (苞谷烧), a strong corn liquor. At a restaurant in Wangcun (王村) it was the most popular dish on the table. A villager from Baojing County (保靖县) called it tasty, soft and tender. In Xiangxi it is served as a dish of honour for guests.
Where it comes from
According to the Baojing county news site, Baojing's Miao sour fish originated in Longgong hamlet (龙宫寨) of Baihe village (百合村), Shuitianhe town (水田河镇). A local legend says that Duoge Gulao (多格古佬) taught the method to two brothers of the Long (龙) family there. On 26 August 2016 the hamlet held a jar-opening ceremony: a badai (巴代), a Miao ritual master, offered freshly unjarred fish to the ancestors, villagers beat drums, showed how the fish is made and danced the durong dance (度绒舞).
The Xiangxi social science study groups the prefecture's sour foods into vegetable, meat and grain kinds. Its meat list runs from sour pork, beef and muntjac to chicken, duck and fish. It also lists Miao sour fish among the Xiangxi dishes whose origins are told in folk stories handed down by word of mouth.
Sources & reading
Written from the linked sources and checked sentence by sentence against quoted extracts by a separate reviewer on 2026-09-24. Recipes and servings vary between kitchens.