Iron-Pot Stewed Fish 铁锅炖鱼
Iron-Pot Stewed Fish is featured among the local specialties of Jilin.
Iron-Pot Stewed Fish (铁锅炖鱼) in Songyuan (松原) is fish from Chagan Lake (查干湖) stewed with bean paste in a large iron wok. In winter, when the lake's ice fishing is under way, one lakeside restaurant visited by Xinhua had dozens of these iron-pot stews going at once, and Jilin Daily describes big iron pots steaming on the snow-covered ice itself.
Where it comes from
Chagan Lake, called Chagan Naoer (查干淖尔) in Mongolian, meaning a white or sacred lake, lies mostly in Qian Gorlos Mongol Autonomous County (前郭尔罗斯蒙古族自治县) in Songyuan. Its winter fishing custom was put on the national intangible heritage list in 2008. Restaurants by the lake serve whole-fish banquets to go with the catch, and Xinhua counts stewed bighead carp (炖胖头鱼) among the banquet dishes.
People's Daily Online names bighead carp as probably the lake's most plentiful fish, with individual fish commonly weighing 20 to 30 jin (10 to 15 kg); at the year's end the fish carries the wish for a surplus every year.
How it is made
In the kitchen of the Shenghu Hotel (圣湖宾馆) at the lake, Jilin Daily watched a cook put freshly cleaned fish into hot oil in a big iron wok, add scallion, ginger and garlic, then a large spoonful of bean paste (豆瓣酱). Water goes in to cover the fish, the lid goes on and the stew simmers. When the lid comes off the sauce has thickened; the cook turns the fish gently so it does not stick and finishes the pot with a handful of coriander.
Jilin Daily calls Northeastern soybean paste (大酱) an indispensable seasoning. A Songyuan resident told the paper that fish sent to a cousin in the south without the paste did not taste good when the cousin's family stewed it.
Flavour and texture
The finished sauce is red, and the fish is fresh-tasting and fine-textured.
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.