Vietnamese Roasted Catfish | Ca Nuong
Roasted Catfish is the ultimate dish to make to impress any dinner guests. It has a mild, sweet flavor with a moist and firm texture. Perfect as a filling in a rice paper roll to dip with any dipping sauce, but I personally love dipping it with the Fermented Anchovy dipping sauce!
Ingredients
Ingredients:
- 1 large, whole catfish
- 1 onion, peeled, sliced
- 3 inch ginger, peeled, sliced
- 1 stick unsalted butter, melted
- 1 Tbsp kosher salt
- 1 tsp black pepper
- 1 Tbsp garlic powder
- 1 Tbsp mushroom powder
Honey glaze:
- ½ cup honey
- 1 Tbsp white vinegar
Fried shallots and green onion oil:
- 1 cups avocado oil, or any neutral oil
- 2 large shallots, thinly sliced
- 10 green onions, chopped
Garnish:
- fried shallots
- 1 cup roasted peanuts
- cilantro
- lime wedges
Ingredients to make rolls:
- rice paper
- lettuce
- vermicelli noodles
- cilantro, or other herbs like basil, etc.
Optional dipping sauce:
- hoisin peanut sauce
- fish dipping sauce
- fermented anchovy dipping sauce
Instructions
- Set oven to 450 degrees.
- Let catfish sit at room temperature for an hour.
- Then clean and scrub the catfish so it’s nice and white. I usually use a clean, unused dishwashing scrub or stainless steel scrubber to get the black off of the catfish.
- Flatten catfish by snapping the front fin section and pushing it down, then pat the fish dry with paper towels.
- Cut slits on both sides and stuff catfish with sliced onions and ginger.
- Place catfish on the rack of the roasting pan.
- Brush inside and outside of fish with the melted butter.
- Mix together salt, pepper, garlic powder and mushroom powder for your dry rub.
- Rub dry rub all over the catfish including its inside.
- Place catfish in the oven and cook for 45 minutes, less time if it’s a smaller catfish, at 450 degrees.
- Mix honey and white vinegar to make the honey glaze.
- After 45 minutes, pull pan out and pour out any juice that is left before adding the honey glaze.
- Brush both sides of catfish with the honey glaze and turn pan around. Put it back in the oven to cook for another 15 minutes (again, less time if it's a smaller fish).
- In a wok or small saucepan, add oil. Make sure that whatever cooking equipment you use, it needs to cover LESS than half, if not 1/3, of the pot/wok to avoid the hot oil from spilling over once you add the shallots.
- Once it’s hot, add your sliced shallots.
- Keep stirring them around until they’re nice and brown. They burn quickly so watch carefully.
- As soon as they start turning a nice brown color, remove from oil immediately. I usually like to put them on a plate lined with paper towel to soak the oil from the shallots. Set aside.
- While the oil is still hot but the heat turned off, add green onions to create green onion oil.
- Remove the catfish from the oven.
- Spoon green onion oil mix all over the catfish.
- Top with fried shallots, roasted peanuts, cilantro springs and lime wedges.
- Serve catfish as a filling in rice paper rolls stuffed with lettuce, vermicelli noodles and herbs etc. And if you like, you can dip the rolls with a hoisin dipping sauce, nuoc cham (fish dipping sauce), or mam nem (fermented anchovy dipping sauce).
Nutrition
Serving: 1portion | Calories: 842kcal | Carbohydrates: 83g | Protein: 41g | Fat: 42g | Saturated Fat: 14g | Polyunsaturated Fat: 8g | Monounsaturated Fat: 17g | Trans Fat: 1g | Cholesterol: 135mg | Sodium: 1794mg | Potassium: 933mg | Fiber: 5g | Sugar: 25g | Vitamin A: 679IU | Vitamin C: 6mg | Calcium: 109mg | Iron: 4mg