Homemade Fish Paste

Fried Fish Cakes

There's really nothing fancy to making a good fish paste. It usually turns out fine if your fish is very fresh. The type of fish you use will also give different texture and flavour so it's good to experiment. I'm using Spanish Mackerel which is readily available in Malaysia. 

Fish Paste in Salted Vegetable Soup

My mum always had fish paste in the fridge for the "can't think of what to cook" nights. It can easily be made into a fish cake pattie and pan fried, similar the what I've done here. I've also dropped balls of fish paste into my vegetable soup to make fish balls. Just last night i fried what's left of my fish paste with egg....a yummy fish cake omelette!

Steps to Make Fish Paste:

The key to a good fish paste is the freshness of the fish. I'm using a 600gm spanish mackerel (the spotted kind)

You should have no trouble filleting this fish. There's very little bones.

Scrap the meat of the fish skin. Do run your finger through to ensure there's no bones.

  

For 600gm mackerel, I used 1 tablespoon of cornflour, 1 teaspoon of pepper, 1/2 teaspoon of salt. I added these in between chopping.

   

Prepare a bowl of iced salted water. The fish paste is initially very sticky so it's important that you sprinkle the water in between choppings. When the fish paste starts to feel springy, use the back of your chopping knife to hit the paste.

This is how it looks like after I took the ball of fish paste up and slap it down on my chopping board a couple of times.