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The amazing thing about this dish is it is super easy and it’s also delicious! Easy Chinese Chili Bean Fish (Douban Yu 豆瓣魚) is a great way to get some seafood in your diet, and it’s a tasty meal too!

Types of fish you can use

You can use almost any type of fish for this dish! Here are some we make this dish with:

Grouper is a lean, moist, mild flavor fish. It’s got large flakes and a firm texture. The Red Grouper has has a slightly sweet flavor than Black Grouper. This is the fish I am using in this recipe today.

Cod is a mild and somewhat buttery white fish. It’s got pretty delicate and flaky flesh – which is awesome when the sauce of this dish gets all in between it! It goes with this dish pretty well because the mild taste of cod will highlight the ginger scallion and soy mix.

Sea bass is another good white fish to go with this dish. Similar to cod – sea bass also is a mild, slightly sweet, white fish. It’s flesh is described as moist moist, buttery, and tender.

Flounder is also a mild white fish – it is more delicate so if you want to cook with this fish, you may want to be more gentle or else it could easily fall apart. But outside of that it it is also similar to cod and sea bass – slightly sweet and mild.

Salmon might seem like a strange fish I’m listing for this dish, as the other fishes I’ve listed are all mild white fish. However, from personal experience, salmon’s rich, fatty, and buttery flavor profile also goes well with this dish! But is that a surprise? Salmon goes almost with anything!

If you can’t find any of fishes locally, you could try online meat and seafood ordering places! For example, Crowd Cow – they ship to anywhere in the US other than Alaska and Hawaii sustainable and healthy meats/seafood!

Microwave vs. Pan Seared

To make this dish, we will first cook the fish, and then we will make the sauce mixture on top. So you have options on how to cook the fish – you can microwave, or cook it on the stove top / pan sear it.

Note – If you have frozen fish filets, you will first want to make sure the filet is thawed. To do so, you can either remove from the freezer and thaw in the refrigerator, or place the packaged frozen filet in cold water for about 30 minutes. If it is not frozen, you can skip this step.

Microwaved fish

The reason I say this is super easy is because we usually just microwave the fish!

First, remove the thawed fish from packaging, and place in a microwave safe plate or dish.

Place sliced ginger on top of fish and pour rice wine on over the fish. Cover the fish with either a microwave safe plastic wrap or microwave cover (this is what we use).

Cook on high for about 3-4 minutes! You can cut open a small piece in the middle to see if it’s cooked thoroughly, if not, pop it in for another 30 seconds until cooked thoroughly.

Pan Seared

This is another easy way to cook the pan sear the fish. It’s probably my second most used method.

To pan sear the fish, add vegetable oil and let it heat up on medium high heat in a cooking pan. Once heated, add fish to pan.

Let it cook for about 2 minutes, and then using a spatulate, gently flip to the other side. Then add ginger and rice wine and let it cook another 2 minutes.

Chili Bean Paste

Chilli Bean Paste aka Doubanjiang 豆瓣酱, is a chunky sauce you can buy at the store that is spicy and savory. It’s traditionally made from fermented broad beans, chili peppers, soybeans, salt and flour. There are also different ones you can find, for example some will add spicy chili oil in it already.

Chili Bean Paste is often used in Sichuan food (ex: mapo tofu), which might explain why I love it because I love Sichuan food (and my grandma was from there!). I use it in my Szechuan Chicken, Twice Cooked Pork and Jalapeno Chicken.

On Amazon:

Sichuan Pixian Boad Bean Paste with Red Chili Oil

Lee Kum Kee LKK Chili Bean Sauce

How to make Chinese Chili Bean Fish (Douban Yu)

First gather your ingredients:

• 1 lb Fish Filet (for example, two 8-oz filet)
• 3 tbsp rice wine
• 1 inch of ginger, sliced
• 4 tbsp vegetable oil
• 2 green onions, chopped
• 3 cloves of garlic, chopped
• 1 tbsp chili bean paste (doubanjiang)
• 2 tbsp light soy sauce

Then, cook your fish – you can microwave, pan sear, or steam it. I’m going to pan sear it but please look at the Microwave vs. Pan Seared notes on how to do the other methods.

In a cooking pan, add vegetable oil and let it heat up on medium high heat. Once heated, add fish to pan.

Let it cook for about 2 minutes, and then using a spatulate, gently flip to the other side. Allow to cook another 2 minutes.

Remove fish from pan, and spread chili bean paste on fish. Then sprinkle the green onions, and garlic on top of the fish.

When the oil is hot, slowly pour it on top of all the green onions, ginger, garlic, and chili bean paste on top of the fish (sizzle!)

Then, follow that up with pouring the soy sauce all over the green onions, ginger, chili bean paste on top of the fish.

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