Cook your Catch – Vietnamese Ladyfish Cakes – Chả Cá
Eugene L. 11.30.23
While fishing off the County Pier in Panama City Beach I caught a good amount of Ladyfish (Elops saurus) as bycatch while targeting Spanish Mackerel and bluefish. Ladyfish honestly are great fighters, especially on lighter tackle. They are generally a very aggressive species that is very willing to bite. They fight well with fast runs across the surface and plenty of acrobatic jumps. For that reason, they have the nickname of “poor man’s tarpon”. While their fighting capability is great they are considered inedible by most people. They are incredibly bony and the meat between all the bones is very soft. Most anglers will only keep them for bait to catch something tastier. While the texture of the ladyfish isn’t great for traditional recipes, I’ll show yall a way to get boneless meat from them as well as how to cook up this “inedible” species into delicious Chả Cá Vietnamese Ladyfish Cakes.
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For the cleaning process, I am starting with a gutted ladyfish. I would honestly recommend scaling them as well before doing this. I didn’t scale mine and had to pick a lot of scales out as I went. The first step here is to take the head off the ladyfish by running the knife behind the fins up towards the head.
Fillet off one side of the ladyfish starting at the head side of the fish and working towards the tail, leaving the fillet attached to the frame by its skin as shown. Also, you don’t have to be meticulous with taking the fillet off, we will recover the meat from the frame in just a bit.
Take a metal spoon and start scraping the fillet. Working from the tail side and working your way up to the head side. Push down with firm pressure and slide the spoon over the many bones. The bones will stick to the skin as you do this, while the flesh of the ladyfish will push out. Have a bowl to put the ladyfish meat into as you work.
Just don’t scrape too hard or you might pull a bone off the skin. Once the fillet has all the meat removed as shown, scrape the frame side to get some more meat. After all the meat has been scooped. Fillet the other side and repeat the previous steps. This should leave you with a bowl of boneless ladyfish meat, kinda like the fish version of ground beef.
Cook your Catch – Vietnamese Ladyfish Cakes – Chả Cá
Vietnamese Ladyfish Cakes – Chả Cá Ingredients
- 2lbs Ladyfish Meat
- 1/2 Potato or Corn Starch
- 2 Green Onions
- 1 Shallot
- 3 Cloves Garlic
- 2 Tbsp Minced Lemon Grass
- 2 Tbso Fish Sauce
- 1 Tbsp Sesame Oil
- 1 tsp salt
- 2 tsp sugar
- 1/2 tsp baking powder
- White Pepper
- Oil for Frying
Prep all the vegetables by dicing everything fine, you don’t want big chunks in your final product. Put them all into a big mixing bowl as you go.
Add the sugar, salt, white pepper, fish sauce, starch, sesame oil, and baking soda into the mixing bowl and stir it together with the vegetables. Then add the ladyfish meat into the bowl.
Then mix all the vegetables and seasoning into the ladyfish thoroughly. Make sure everything is incorporated evenly.
After mixing up the ladyfish mixture, throw it into the fridge for 20 minutes. While that is chilling heat up your frying oil to 300F. With the chilled ladyfish mix make the fishcake patties, and working with oiled gloves makes this a much cleaner process. Once you make all your fishcakes, gently drop them into the frying oil. You don’t want them sinking to the bottom and sticking.
Depending on the thickness of the ladyfish cakes it will change the cook time. Expect at least 8 minutes of frying time, flipping halfway through. Pull the ladyfish cakes out of the frying oil once golden brown. Drop them onto a cooling rack or tray lined with paper towels to drain any excess oil.
You can serve the fish balls as is with a side of dipping sauce like below served with some broken rice. Or you could add them to a soup. The Chả Cá Ladyfish Cakes have great umami and taste very fresh due to all the herbs and vegetables mixed into the meat. I do want to say if you don’t like the smell and taste of fish sauce, you could remove it and up the salt added in the recipe but it won’t have as rich of a flavor. I highly recommend y’all try making these, they were delicious with a great springy texture. I will definitely be keeping more ladyfish next time I’m on the pier.
