Cooking Jellyfish

[weka]

Hello,

When I ate at the Mandarin Kitchen in London, I had the opportunity to try a dish whose main component was jellyfish. Recently, I found some jellyfish in North Carolina of all places. Does anyone have a good recipe for jellyfish?

Sincerely -

Weka

[herbacidal]

It can be cooked?

This'll be interesting.

The only way I've ever had it is as part of a Chinese cold platter.

[FistFullaRoux]

I'm wondering if they can be somehow battered and fried, kind of tempura or thai style. Serve it with a spicy peanut sauce and watch the kids freak out...

[weka]

Ok, the dish I had was a cold dish, as I recall. But even so, I don't know how it was prepared. The tempura concept is intriguing though. I wonder if jellyfish can stand up to something like that.

- Weka

[Pan]

It can be cooked?

This'll be interesting.

The only way I've ever had it is as part of a Chinese cold platter.

I thought the jellyfish cold dishes were cooked and then refrigerated!

[aprilmei]

Weka, was the jellyfish you found in North Carolina fresh or dried? I think for Chinese preparations (and like Herbacidal, I've only ever had it as part of a cold platter) the jellyfish has been salted and dried.

[weka]

Weka, was the jellyfish you found in North Carolina fresh or dried? I think for Chinese preparations (and like Herbacidal, I've only ever had it as part of a cold platter) the jellyfish has been salted and dried.

Checked fridge just now...

Ingred: jellyfish, salt

It definitely looks dried!

Now, does anyone know what to do with it ?

- Weka

[FistFullaRoux]

Please note: I do not know what the hell I am talking about when discussing jellyfish. Besides being the name of one of my favorite bands, I've neither eaten or prepared jellyfish. This was simply a play on the peanut (butter) and jelly(fish) idea.

But if it works, what the hell, right?

[Gary Soup]

Ingred:  jellyfish, salt

It definitely looks dried!

Now, does anyone know what to do with it ? 

- Weka

Pour boiling water over it and let it sit for at least 15 minutes. Or let it sit in cold water for a longer period. Then do your thing with it.

You'll probably find recipes if you Google on "jellyfish salad". It's often served at the beginning of a big Chinese meal as one of the cold appetizers. It's almost de rigueur in Shanghai, and is also pretty prevalent in Hong Kong (or HK "style") restaurants these days as well.

[danjou]

Hi Weka,

this is my first post on this wonderful site, hope I get it right.

It seems like you have dried jellyfish, and this usually varies in terms of quality and salt content.

Choose sheets that are nice and plump and of a uniform color, and do not have a stong chemical or fishy smell.

Some come in sheets which you have to shred to the appropriate size, and some are already shredded.

Here is how I do it:

Rinse the jellyfish with a lot of cold water, and as you run the water through it, you have to rub and squeeze well to remove the salt. Rinse it as thoroughly as you can. You can shred them now to the desired size if need be.

Place the jellyfish in a bowl, and cover it with cold water and soak it overnight.

Rinse it again.

Now, there are two ways to go next:

1.one way is to quickly immerse the shreds in a wok of boiling water ( to remove any strong smell) drain it immediarely and place them in ice water for about 15 min, and then drain in a strainer.

2.The second way is to skip the blanching and just drain in a strainer.

Now, there are many ways to season and serve this dish, and most of the time, it is best served cold.

There are many dressings for this dish, here are 2 of the basic variations I use.

1. vinegar based dressing:

Sesame oil, red vinegar ( you can use rice vinegar if you cannot find this ), a little sugar light soy sauce, and if you like it spicy, a little hot bean paste.

some chefs use fish sauce ( Chinese Yue lo, Filipino patis, or Vietnamese Nuoc mam) instead of soy which is also very nice.

2. Sesame oil, sugar, light soy, with or without your choice of chilli sauce, and you can sprinkle lightly with pan toasted sesame seeds.

Seasoned jelly fish can release a lot of water if not served right away, as the salt will draw out the water from the hydrated formerly dried jellyfish.

This will dilute the seasoning.

Many chefs in Hong Kong therefore like to use Chicken boullion powder to season the jellyfish shreds (in addition to the sesame oil, etc.) as the resulting flavor is more stable and saltier.

I myself do not use the stuff as it is high in salt and MSG, etc.

Stick with simple basic seasonings, soy, fish sauce, a light vinegar, chilli paste or sauce, chilli oil, and sesame oil, and experiment with different combinations.

You can serve the shreds with shredded and lightly salted (and drained ) cucumber.

hope this helps....

[weka]

Thanks, danjou. I will be giving this a whirl at an invertebrate dinner I am going to on Friday night.

- Weka

[weka]

Oh and welcome to eGullet, danjou! Your first post was great!

- Weka

[danjou]

Hi Weka,

greetings from Asia,

many thanks for the compliment, I just hope it helps.

An important reminder:

Do not buy jellyfish which is preshredded and already hydrated.

One usually finds this awful product in the refrigerator in many Chinese/ Asian grocery shops.

While it is convenient, the quality is usuallly poor and in most cases has an awful smell, which no amount of blanching will ever remove.

Buy only the dried product ( which comes in sheets and sometimes has a granular texture because of the salt) and hydrate from scratch.

Your best bet in finding the best quality is to try any large Chinese food products importer which has a track record supplying Chinese restaurants.

I remember there is one called Richwell on S.Canal Street in Chicago, which sells practically everything you will possibly need in a Chinese restaurant, including a lot of hard to find spices, seafood, condiments and fresh vegetables.

I had a wonderful jelly fish salad the other night, which had shredded Cantonese roast duck meat (which you can find hanging in many Chinese restaurants and each shred also had bits of the crunchy skin), shredded fresh mango and candied walnuts in a lightly creamy dressing with sesame seeds ( I suspect it was a touch of mayonnaise added to a lightly sweet soy sauce based dressing, but the Cantonese chef won't say...oh well).

The possibilities are infinite indeed.

Let me know if you need help, anytime..

cheers

[jo-mel]

Danjou -- That salad sounds wonderful!!

[danjou]

Hi,

in recent years, many Cantonese chefs in Asia have been adding Western condiments and ingredients to their cooking.

The salad was served like this:

the shredded roast duck was mixed with thick shreds of jellyfish, and then mixed with the dressing and a sprinke of sesame seeds. it was then placed in the center of a large dish surrounded by mounds of sliced fresh mango and caramelized walnuts. Before serving, everything gets tossed together.

Thus, each mouthful had so many flavors and textures; crunchy, nutty and sweet from the walnuts, a chewy crunch from the jellyfish, sweet and sour from the mango, and the wonderful coarsely shredded duck with the still slightly crispy and rich skin all united by the mysterious mayonnaise dressing.

I am reminded of another very popular Chinese salad, called "Yue Sang"

( literally, "raw fish") usually served during Chinese New year in Singapore and Malaysia, which uses finely sliced raw fish, and over 20 plus condiments and vegetables, as well as jellyfish....but I will probably need another thread to describe this dish.

I heard there are a few restaurants in the San Francisco Bay Area

which occasionally serve this massive main dish salad, but because it is so hard to make, it has to be specially ordered in advance. The fish used in San Francisco is steelhead ( "soong yue") usually found swimming in tanks in Chinatown fish markets. One almost has to have the skills of a surgeon to carefully remove the succulent meat from this very bony fish.

The hard part is shredding so many ingredients in addition to the fish, from jellyfish, candied and pickled vegetables, crushed peanuts, etc.

Ugh, I think I am digressing too much and making myself hungry.

cheers

[tissue]

There is a Shanghai dish of jellyfish heads that is stir fried with lots of scallions and a little bit of garlic and chiles. It's very delicious.

[jo-mel]

I am reminded of another very popular Chinese salad, called "Yue Sang"

( literally, "raw fish") usually served during Chinese New year in Singapore and Malaysia, which uses finely sliced raw fish, and over 20 plus condiments and vegetables, as well as jellyfish....but I will probably need another thread to describe this dish.

I heard there are a few restaurants in the San Francisco Bay Area

which occasionally serve this massive main dish salad, but because it is so hard to make, it has to be specially ordered in advance. The fish used in San Francisco is steelhead ( "soong yue") usually found swimming in tanks in Chinatown fish markets. One almost has to have the skills of a surgeon to carefully remove the succulent meat from this very bony fish.

The hard part is shredding so many ingredients in addition to the fish, from jellyfish, candied and pickled vegetables, crushed peanuts, etc.

Ugh, I think I am digressing too much and making myself hungry.

cheers 

One of my books has a recipe for Sheng Yu Pian - Raw Fish Slices, but the very fresh and cold slices of trout are simple dipped into a sauce of oyster sauce, ginger, garlic, scallions and sherry. A note to the recipe says that in Canton, the slices would be coated with sesame oil first.

Ive never made it, but it is not as interesting as the one you describe.

[danjou]

Hello

the " sheng yu pian" is really fascinating, as one rarely encounters raw fish dishes in Chinese food.

The mention of the Shanghainese dish of Jelly fish heads reminds me that when it comes to preparing jellyfish, Shanghainese are tops.

My Shanghainese friends are absolutely crazy for jellyfish and "Mao toh sher li hung" or green soybeans (edamame stirfried with salted radish greens with just a bit of lean pork). These are apparently like comfort food for Shanghainese.

The best cold jellyfish I have had was at what many people in Hong Kong consider to be the best Shanghainese food in the territory, the restaurant of the Shanghainese Association in Central, " So jeet" ( as pronounced in Cantonese ).

The shreds were plump and thick, almost like udon, and had no other condiment except for a simple sesame oil and salt based dressing.

Yue Sang is also called 'Prosperity Salad' in Singapore.

Fresh water fish was once used, but because of the higher risk of parasitic infection, farmed salmon was substituted ( Wild salmon was too risky to eat raw, as they pick up more parasites in their life cycle).

The ingredients included finely shredded candied wintermelon, pickled radish, pickled scallion, crispy fried won ton skin, hand shredded fresh carrot and radish, sesame seeds, crushed peanuts, seasoned jelly fish, Chinese parsley, and a ton of other sweet, salty and crunchy bits I have yet to identify.

A bit of Cinnamon powder and sesame oil are also added, and I recall the dressing as plum sauce based. There are so many variations of this salad, and the more ingredients added, the more expensive the dish.

It was always better to eat this in someone's home rather than in restaurants,

since the handling and slicing of raw fish requires great care and strict hygeine.

A "prosperity salad" meal usually ended with congee, either Chicken congee or Cantonese plain gongee with ginko nut.

[weka]

Hi everyone -

Here is my report on jellyfish salads and the invertebrate consumption event I went to last night. Thanks to all danjou's tips I had a lot of fun creating two different salads. Amazingly many brave Americans that initially thought the idea of my salads revolting happily consumed them after seeing them laid out.

I used the dried and salted jellyfish, so the basic starting point was good. Then I played with the varying sauce ingredients to come up with a spicy dressing with a chili base to it and a sweeter one with a red wine vinegar base. Unfortunately I didn't record proportions, but ingredients in the two sauces included red wine vinegar, chili sauce (hot), chili sauce (sweet), soy sauce, fish sauce and a little sugar water. I actually served the jellyfish shredded with the sauces on top of arugula, for lack of another tasty fresh greens bedding. I surrounded the jellyfish with shredded cucumber and edible flowers. Also each was sprinkled with toasted sesame seeds. Looked great and very tasty!

The other dish I brought was green-lipped NZ mussels in a wine and herb sauce.

Dishes brought by other folks, some cooked on site were fresh crayfish, scallops in wine sauce with rice, shrimp pasta, seafood spring rolls, blue crab claws, a baked oyster dish, rugula cookies shaped like roaches, bees, and crustacea, another shrimp caserole, conch in a can, and gummy worms. The jellyfish salads certainly took the originality award.

Thanks again for everyone's help and the lively discussion on this topic. I certainly had fun!

- Weka

[danjou]

Way to go Weka !

If you do get really nice dried jellyfish, I suggest you also try to make a sauce without vinegar and sugar first. At times I find the vinegar based sauces can be a bit overwhelming.

Use only salt, a bit of sugar, sesame oil, a non sweet chilli sauce, sesame seed...a splash of fish sauce perhaps and that's it.

Get Japanese cucumbers, shred them, and salt them lightly to draw out the water. rinse briefly and squeeze gently. Then arrange them as a bed for the jellyfish.

Try the jellyfish without any vegetable adornment, served in a plate ringed with circles of Century Egg. Which is the way Cantonese resyaurants serve them for appetizers.

Buy a nice Roast duck from Chinatown, cut it up, and serve a pile of lightly seasoned jellyfish ( as above, no Vinegar) next to it. Seasoned cold jellyfish is traditionally served with Cantonese roasted items.

cheers,