A 200-Year-Old Recipe for Sweet and Sour Fish - Eat China (E10)

Deep-fried sweet and sour fish—no, this isn’t something from Panda Express. It’s been a staple of Chinese cuisine for over 200 years.

In eastern China, “squirrel fish” is a delicacy—and it’s called that because the fish is trimmed into the shape of a squirrel.

It’s a deep-fried perch, dressed in a tomato-based sauce and garnished with pine nuts and sweet river shrimp. We learned how to make it at Songhelou, a restaurant in Suzhou that makes over 300,000 plates of the fish every year.

This is the 10th episode of our 13-part series on Chinese food called Eat China. In the next episode, we’re going to explore the food of northern China.

If you liked this video, we have more cooking demos, including:

This Pickle Expert’s Secret Ingredient? Her 3-Year-Old Brine


We Made Cantonese Rice Noodle Rolls From Scratch


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Host and Producer: Clarissa Wei
Videographer: Nathaniel Brown
Editor: Nicholas Ko
Mastering: Victor Peña

Music: Audio Network

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