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jyl_gw

Miso Simmered Fish

7 years ago
last modified: 7 years ago

I have done very little cooking for a few months now, and even less posting about cooking. My typical meal has been two boiled eggs, a can of tuna, and 100 grams of cheese. Hard to get an interesting post out of that, for the Cooking Forum.


However, we are in Berkeley staying with friends so I actually cooked a meal. One of the courses was to be fish. I went to Tokyo Fish Market on San Pablo - a very nice local Japanese food shop - with nothing particular in mind, and returned with two whole saba (mackerel).


Saba is a very pretty fish, about a foot long, torpedo shaped with dramatic black on silver markings. It looks like a miniature tuna, and disassembles like one. The flesh is strongly flavored and rather oily. It is a fishy tasting fish, if you know what I mean.


Other than as sashimi, I think saba is most often grilled with an assertive sauce. Like tuna, it is easily overcooked and then becomes dry and coarsely textured. As such, many people won't necessarily like saba or look forward to preparing it.

Here is a way that is simple and tasty.


Fillet the saba, which simply means cut from behind the gills to the backbone, then, right behind the head, cut from the back through to the belly and pull the knife backwards along the backbone, all the way to the tail. Clean off any entrails that come off with the fillet. Leave the skin on. Soak the fillet in cold fresh water, changing the water a couple times. Then place the fillet in cold salted water and soak until ready to cook.


Dissolve some red miso in a pot of water. Measurements aren't important but something like 4 tbsp miso to 2 qt water. Boil and stir until miso is well dissolved. Add some sake or white wine if you want.

Turn off the heat and let the liquid cool to 140 F.


Slide the saba fillets into the liquid and let them sit in the hot liquid, with the heat off. The liquid will gradually drop to around 120-130 F; if it falls below 120 F, use just a little heat to get the liquid back to the 120-130 F range. After about 7-10 minutes, remove fillets, spoon a little miso liquid over the fillets and serve. A very little bit of soy sauce or other sauce is nice but not needed.


This results in a soft, almost buttery flesh, with no coarseness. It tastes like saba, but most of the oily notes are gone, and there is just a little salty miso tone. The pretty skin markings are still vivid and you can eat it with a spoon or at least with just a fork.

You could do this with a sous vide machine too, and probably use less miso.

Miso-simmering works for many other kinds of fish as well.

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