Recipe & Video Jamaican Steamed Fish

[FowlersFreeTime]

First entry for the CookingBites Recipe challenge is a classic Jamaican fare: Steamed Fish.

Ingredients:

• 2lb (or 1kg) of your choice of Fish, cut into individually portioned pieces.
  • Use a thick enough fillet that it won't disintegrate with 20 minutes of cooking. Spanish Mackerel, King Mackerel, Mahi Mahi, Mutton Snapper, or any large snapper are all good choices.
• 2 cups of Okra (roughly chopped or diced)
• 1 large yellow Onion (sliced)
• 1 Scotch Bonnet Pepper or Habanero if that's all you can find (finely diced)
• 3-4 cloves of Garlic (finely diced or pressed)
• 2 small plum Tomatoes (large dice)
• 3-4 stalks of scallion aka green onion (sliced)
• 2-3Tbs Butter
• 2-4Tbs vegetable oil
• Thyme (can be left whole if you'd like)
• Salt & Pepper to taste.

Method:

1. Season the fish with salt and pepper, set aside.
2. In a frying pan, heat up 2 tbs of oil over medium-high heat, then add Okra and Onion. Season with salt & pepper.
3. Sauté this mixture until the onion has softened a bit, maybe 5 mins.
4. Add the scallions, garlic, pepper, and butter at this time. Remove from heat.
5. In a heavy pot (or large enough deep pan) which has a tight-fitting lid, heat up 2 tbs of oil over medium heat.
6. To the heavy pot, add your fish.
7. To this same pot, now pour your vegetable mixture over the fish.
8. Add Thyme and Tomatoes to this pot and close the lid.
9. Turn heat down to med-low and simmer for 20 minutes.
10. The moisture from your fish and vegetables will pool in the pan and create the titular steam which is helping to aide the cooking process, so it is important not to lift the lid until time's up. Your fish is ready to eat once the flesh is opaque the whole way through.

Serving tips and variations:

• Jamaicans sometimes like to add pumpkin to the steamed vegetable mixture. For my American friends, what Jamaicans call pumpkin is what you call a calabaza squash.
• Rice is a nice easy side for this meal, but Jamaicans also enjoy it with a cassava cake called "bammy" in either its fried or steamed form.

Video:
Apologies, this is my old youtube channel and the video and audio quality are not that great. Also, don't subscribe, there won't be any more content on that channel.

View: https://youtu.be/eUoSTfaYfuE?t=56

I've linked the video to start after the catching part, in case anyone is offended by seeing freshly caught fish brought on board.