• Skip to main content
  • Skip to header right navigation
  • Skip to site footer
Umami Days

Umami Days

Meaty with a dash of veggies

  • Course
    • One Bowl Meals
    • Breakfast
    • Lunch / Dinner
      • Appetizers
      • Salads
      • Soups
      • Main Courses
      • Side Dishes
      • Sweets
    • Snacks
    • Drinks
      • Summer drinks
      • Cold weather drinks
      • Cocktail hour
  • Ingredient
    • Chicken, duck & turkey
    • Meat
    • Seafood
    • Eggs
    • Mushrooms
    • Tofu
    • Vegetables
    • Rice & grains
    • Noodles
    • Bread
  • Kitchen
    • How-tos
    • Ingredients
    • Tools
  • Subscribe
  • Food Tales
    • Edible Garden
    • Dining
  • Subscribe
  • Recipe index
    • By Meal
      • One Bowl Meals
      • Breakfast
      • Lunch / Dinner
        • Appetizers
        • Salads
        • Soups
        • Main Courses
        • Side Dishes
        • Sweets
      • Snacks
      • Drinks
        • Summer drinks
        • Cold weather drinks
        • Cocktail hour
    • By Main Protein
      • Chicken, duck & turkey
      • Meat
      • Seafood
      • Eggs
      • Mushrooms
      • Tofu
      • Vegetables
    • By Carb
      • Rice & grains
      • Noodles
      • Bread
  • Kitchen
    • How-tos
    • Ingredients
    • Tools
  • Food Tales
    • Edible Garden
    • Dining
  • About
  • Privacy
  • Copyright
  • Contact
Seafood Lunch / Dinner Main Courses

Baked whole fish with oyster sauce

Published: 04.06.2008 » Last updated: 03.09.2023

The fish is baked but, after cooking, it has the texture of steamed fish. Moist, tender and swimming in a shallow pool of briny liquid. The trick is to cover the fish with a foil tent during baking.

Baked fish with oyster sauce

Why not just cook the fish in a steamer and call it steamed whole fish with oyster sauce? Well, I have this nagging suspicion that this cooking technique was developed by cooks outside Asia where oversized steamers that can contain a whole fish is not a regular cooking equipment in the home kitchen.

So, if you do own a large steamer, go ahead and just steam the fish. Ditch the foil, lay the fish directly on a heatproof plate and steam.

If you don’t own a steamer but you have an oven, and you love the texture of steamed fish, just follow the procedure laid out in the recipe below.

But… fish with the head? Served with the eyes staring at you? This is Asian cooking and, in Asia, we know that value of cooking a fish whole with the bones and with the head intact.

You prefer a sanitized appearance? No head and with all the fish bones removed? You will get a bland dish. Fish fillets have their place in Asian cooking but for steamed fish, substituting fillets means sacrificing flavor for appearance. I really urge you not to go in that direction.

Baked whole fish with oyster sauce

Connie Veneracion
This baked fish with oyster sauce cooks inside the oven in a tent of aluminum foil. Technically, it's a combination of baking and steaming but who's splitting hairs, right?
Baked fish with oyster sauce
Print it!
Save it!Saved!
Prep Time 10 minutes mins
Cook Time 25 minutes mins
Total Time 35 minutes mins
Course Main Course
Cuisine Asian, Asian Fusion
Servings 4 people

Ingredients
  

  • 1 whole fleshy fish about 1.5 kg. in weight, scaled and gutted
  • ½ head garlic
  • 1 onion
  • 1 thumb-sized piece ginger
  • 2 tablespoons oyster sauce
  • salt
  • pepper
  • 2 tablespoons sesame seed oil
  • 1 small bunch cilantro snipped
  • 1 small bunch flat-leaf parsley snipped (optional)

Instructions
 

  • Rinse the fish, including the cavity, then pat dry with a kitchen towel.
  • Score the fish by making 3 to 4 diagonal incisions on both sides, about half an inch deep.
  • Season with salt and pepper, rubbing the seasonings into the incisions.
  • Finely mince the garlic.
  • Cut the onion into very thin slices.
  • Cut the ginger into matchsticks.
  • Take two large pieces of aluminum foil. One should be about six inches longer than the fish and the other should be three-fourths longer than the first piece.
  • Brush a tablespoonful of oyster sauce on each side of the fish.
  • Lay the fish on the smaller piece of aluminum foil.
  • Scatter the onion, garlic and ginger over the whole length of the fish.
  • Cover with the longer piece of foil, pulling up the center to create a “tent”. Gather the edges of the top and bottom pieces of foil and fold inward two to three times. Do this with all four sides of the foil.
  • Transfer the fish in the foil on a baking sheet and cook in a preheated 180C oven for 20 to 25 minutes.
  • Take the fish from the oven, unroll the edges and carefully peel off the top piece of foil.
  • Heat the sesame oil in a small pan until smoking and pour over the fish.
  • Sprinkle the snipped cilantro and parsley over the fish and serve at once.

Connie Veneracion

Lawyer by education. Journalist by accident. Writer by passion. Photographer by necessity. Good food, coffee and wine lover forever. Read more about me and Umami Days. Find me on Flipboard, Substack and Pinterest.

Recipes and stories in your inbox

  • #40 A toast to the awesomeness of Filipino adobo
    09.18.2023
    No, Filipino adobo is an not adaptation of Mexican adobo. I’ll explain why. Plus, there’s a recipe for a not-your-usual Filipino pork or chicken adobo.
More Seafood
Chili lime shrimp skewers served over grilled pineapple and flatbread

Chili lime shrimp skewers

Steamed whole fish with lemon and olive oil

Bangus a la pobre: fried milkfish fillets with sauce and onion rings

Bangus (milkfish) a la pobre

Steamed whole tilapia with ginger, scallions and chilies

Steamed whole tilapia with ginger, chilies and scallions

Fried fish with lime orange sauce

Crispy fish fillets with lime orange sauce

Chinese broccoli-wrapped mackerel in coconut milk

Chinese broccoli-wrapped mackerel in coconut milk

Braised sea cucumbers and shiitake with broccoli on the side

Braised sea cucumbers and shiitake

Spicy tuna tartare

Spicy tuna tartare

Crab furai (Japanese-style crab cakes)

Crab furai (Japanese-style crab cakes)

Moo shu shrimp served over rice

Moo shu shrimp

Salmon trimmings with soy honey sauce served with scrambled egg over rice

Salmon trimmings with soy honey ginger sauce

Claypot rice with shimps and dumplings

Claypot rice with shimps and dumplings

Sidebar

Green beans tempura
  • About
  • Recipes
  • Privacy
  • Copyright
  • Contact

No AI is used in the creation of Umami Days content · Copyright © 2023 Connie Veneracion · All Rights Reserved