Korean-style silver carp hoe

Name: Korean-style silver carp hoe
Prep time: 30 min
Cook time: 9 h
Total time: 10 h
Yield: 6 servings
Ingredients: Silver carp fillet — 1 kg Small onions — 3–4 pcs. Garlic — 7–8 cloves 70 % vinegar essence — 2 tbsp Soy sauce — 2 tbsp Oil — 100 ml Salt — 1 tbsp Sweet paprika — 1 tsp Hot red pepper — 0.5 tsp Ground coriander — 1 tsp Fish seasoning — 1 tsp

Published: 04.09.2026

Updated: 04.09.2026

🤤 Здорові рецепти щодня

Cooking time 10 hours Portions 6 servings

Hoe is a dish in which the fish is neither boiled nor fried: the protein sets from the vinegar, and from the outside it looks exactly as it does under heat — the meat goes white and firms up. The Korean version differs from the classic hoe with vinegar in two things: there is a lot of garlic here, and the onion goes in twice — raw into the fish and sautéed with spices as a hot dressing.

The dressing is the point of the recipe. Hot oil with paprika, coriander and hot pepper draws out of the spices what cold oil will not: the fat-soluble substances do not pass into the dish without heating, and without that step the hoe comes out simply sour.

Take a large silver carp: a small one has too many intermuscular bones, and pulling them out of meat that will not be cooked afterwards is wasted labour. Out of a big fish the bones come out with tweezers, and for a kilo of fillet that is five minutes' work.

Classic silver carp hoe with vinegar keeps to vinegar and skips the hot dressing, and spice-salted herring in pieces is the safer route when raw fish is not an option.

Caloric content: 175kcal

Ingredients

Silver carp fillet — 1 kg
Small onions — 3–4 pcs.
Garlic — 7–8 cloves
70 % vinegar essence — 2 tbsp
Soy sauce — 2 tbsp
Oil — 100 ml
Salt — 1 tbsp
Sweet paprika — 1 tsp
Hot red pepper — 0.5 tsp
Ground coriander — 1 tsp
Fish seasoning — 1 tsp

Clean the fish

Take a large specimen — it has fewer small bones. Scale it, gut it, cut off the head, the tail and the fins and rinse it well. Peel the onions and the garlic.

Take the fillet off and pull out the bones

Separate the flesh from the skin and the large bones and cut it into slices. Pull the small bones out with tweezers — it is quicker and neater that way.

Marinate it in vinegar

Put the fish into a dish, sprinkle it with salt and pour the vinegar essence over it. Mix it, cover it and leave it for half an hour. The fish will turn white — that is what the protein setting looks like.

Cut the onion and divide it in two

Cut the onions into half rings and divide them in half: one half will go raw into the fish, the other into the dressing.

Crush the garlic

Put the garlic through a press. Grated or chopped garlic gives a weaker taste: pressed garlic releases more juice.

Combine the fish with the garlic and the raw onion

After half an hour add the garlic and half of the onion to the fish. Mix it by hand in disposable gloves — that way the pieces do not break.

Sauté the other half of the onion

Put the rest of the onion into a pan heated with the oil and sauté it until golden.

Add the spices and let it cool

Add the paprika, the hot pepper, the coriander and the fish seasoning, turn the heat off, stir it thoroughly and let the dressing cool down.

Dress it and put it in the cold

Pour the soy sauce over the fish and add the cooled dressing. Mix it, cover it and put it in the fridge for at least 6 hours, shaking it every hour. For a more pronounced taste — 8 to 12 hours.

Serve

In that time the appetiser marinates all the way through. Serve it cold, out of the same container it stood in.

Notes

Only commercially deep-frozen fish, not freshly caught. Vinegar, salt and soy sauce do not kill parasites — only low temperatures do that. Freshwater fish out of a river or a pond is not eaten raw; for hoe you take fish that has been through blast freezing.
70 % vinegar essence is not table vinegar. Two tablespoons of the essence correspond to roughly fourteen tablespoons of the nine per cent kind; confusing them means ruining a kilo of fish. The essence is added to the fish and not the other way round, and you do not lean over the dish and breathe in the fumes.
The fish turning white is normal. That is what protein setting from acid looks like, not spoilage. If after half an hour the meat is still translucent, there was too little vinegar.
Let the dressing cool before you combine it with the fish. Hot oil will finish cooking the edges of the pieces and the texture will come out uneven.
Shake it every hour. The dressing is thick and does not spread on its own: without shaking the top will be spicy and the bottom bland.
Six hours is the minimum, eight to twelve give a more pronounced taste. There is little point keeping it longer than a day: the onion will start to ferment.

Recipe and step-by-step photos — kolizhanka.net.ua.