Barranquilla cooks the fish apart from the rice: 8 minutes in a pot of its own, and back in only at the very end. What makes the dish is not the fish in the rice but its stock: those two strained cups are the liquid the grain drinks, and replacing them with water turns the recipe into ordinary coconut rice with fish on it. Six servings at 535 calories.
How do you make arroz de lisa? Soak salted mullet overnight with three changes of water, poach it for eight minutes and flake it, and strain the stock. Build a coastal sofrito, toast the rice and cook it in 2 cups of that stock with 1 cup of coconut milk, 10 minutes uncovered and 12 covered. The fish returns on top at the end. 6 servings, 100 minutes.
Soaking is about the changes, not the hours
Lisa is a Caribbean estuary mullet, traditionally sold salted and dried — fish preserved the way it was before refrigeration. Unsoaked it is inedible. At four hours it is still salty at the centre; overnight with three changes of water it turns seasoned rather than salty; past a full day it loses its own flavour and the flesh starts falling apart.
What desalts it is changing the water. Salt water stops pulling salt out once it saturates, so a whole night in one bowl does less than a few hours with changes. Change it every 4 hours, in the fridge if the kitchen is warm.
Taste a small raw piece before cooking. Still salty, give it another hour in fresh water; bland, it has gone too far and you will need to salt the rice at the end.
Which fish to use
Latin and Caribbean groceries sell salted mullet, and that is the real thing. Fresh mullet, from a coastal fish counter, works too and needs no soaking, though the result is milder.
The easiest substitute in a regular supermarket is salt cod — the same idea of preserved fish, soaked twice as long, 24 hours with 4 changes. Tilapia works but brings nothing of its own, so add an extra tomato to the sofrito. Smoked fish does not work: the smoke takes over everything.
Whichever you use, the method does not change: poach the fish apart for 8 minutes, strain the stock, cook the rice in it.
Why the fish is cooked separately
Eight minutes of poaching 1.8 lb of fish leaves a stock with gelatin, minerals and flavour compounds that no cube reproduces. That strained stock is exactly what separates this from coconut rice with fish on top.
Strain it always, since it carries scales and small bones, and measure it: 2 cups for 2 cups of rice, plus 1 cup of coconut milk. That works out to 1¾ parts liquid per part of rice, slightly less than the 1:2 of Colombian white rice, because coconut milk brings fat rather than water.
Cooking the fish in the rice for the full 18 minutes, as a paella would, leaves shreds instead of flakes. The four minutes at the end are only there to warm it.
Where the 100 minutes go
An hour of soaking counted in, then eight minutes of poaching, ten of flaking and straining, a dozen of sofrito, twenty-two of rice and four at the end with the fish on top. The full 12-hour soak happens the day before.
Make it ahead
The soaking and the poaching can both be done a day early: keep the flaked fish and the strained stock separately in the fridge, and the dish becomes a 40-minute job. What does not work is reheating the finished rice — the fish dries and the grains clump. Leftovers are better cold the next day with lime, as a salad.
What goes wrong
Throwing away the poaching stock. It is the rice’s liquid and half the recipe.
Soaking without changing the water. It saturates and stops drawing salt out.
Salting before tasting. With salted fish you rarely need any added salt.
Leaving the fish in for 15 minutes. It dries and turns to threads.
Stirring the rice as it cooks. It releases starch and the grains clump.
Variations
In bijao leaf. The finished rice is wrapped and rested 10 minutes, the festival version.
With more coconut. 1½ cups of coconut milk and 1½ of stock, sweeter and more coastal.
With fresh fish. No soaking, milder result, the same 8 minutes of poaching.
With titoté. Reduce the coconut milk until the oil separates, as in Colombian coconut rice.
What to serve with it
Colombian patacones with hogao, lime wedges and homemade ají, on a flat plate. A serving is about 9 oz and it is a one-plate meal.
For a coastal table, Colombian seafood stew is the other big Caribbean dish and Colombian coconut rice shares the coconut milk and the grain. From the river side, viudo de pescado steams a whole fish over the vegetables instead of flaking it into rice.
Frequently asked questions
What is lisa? An estuary mullet from Colombia’s Caribbean coast, sold salted or fresh.
How long do I soak it? Twelve hours with 3 changes of water. The changes do the work, not the clock.
Can I use another fish? Yes: salt cod is the closest easy substitute, and fresh tilapia the most available.
Why keep the poaching stock? Because it is the liquid the rice cooks in, and where half the flavour lives.
Can I reheat it? Not well. The fish dries out; leftovers are better cold with lime the next day.
Nutrition
Per serving, one sixth of the pot, calculated from each ingredient according to the USDA SR Legacy database:
- Calories: 535 kcal
- Protein: 32 g
- Carbohydrates: 58 g
- Fat: 19 g, 10 g of it saturated
- Fibre: 2 g
- Sodium: 635 mg
Almost all the saturated fat comes from the coconut milk, which the USDA puts at 21.3 g of fat per 100 g. Halve the coconut milk and double the stock and a serving lands near 455 calories with a third of the saturated fat. The sodium depends entirely on the soaking: properly desalted fish and no added salt keeps it where it is.
In Barranquilla they told me that real arroz de lisa is made with fish from the Ciénaga and wrapped in bijao leaf, and that everything else is just rice with fish. What I took away for good was the habit of straining the poaching stock and using it, which works for any rice cooked with fish. Josnaisis.