There are many different kinds of fish in Animal Crossing: New Horizons, including the dab. The Animal Crossing series is known for having all sorts of insects and fish that the player can find. They can catch them in a net or reel them in with a fishing rod, and donate them to the local museum to try to fill in all the exhibits.
These creatures are based on their real-world counterparts and as such are designed to look as accurate as possible but in Animal Crossing's distinctive art style. They also appear based on the proper season and time of day as they would in reality. This makes each creature fun to find and learn about in New Horizons, and the dab is no exception.
The dab is a flatfish with its eyes on the right side of its body. Like in real life, dab can be cooked in Animal Crossing: New Horizons using recipes. It’s similar to the olive flounder, a closely related flatfish, although the olive flounder has its eyes on the left side of its body. Another difference between the two is that the olive flounder is rarer than the dab, and can also grow to be much bigger. Dabs can reach up to 16 inches in length, although it most commonly grows just under eight inches, while the olive flounder can reach 41 inches. As such, the shadows of the two fish are slightly different, with bigger shadows having a chance to be an olive flounder.
The dab also can’t be found year-round across Animal Crossing: New Horizons' seasons like its left-facing counterpart; players in the Northern Hemisphere can expect to find dabs between October and April, while players in the Southern Hemisphere can catch it between April and October. What the two fish do have in common, though, is that they can both be caught out in the sea, at the edges of the player’s island.
Cooking With Dab In Animal Crossing: New Horizons
After catching a dab in Animal Crossing: New Horizons, players can come up with a karei no nitsuke recipe to cook it with. The only ingredient needed to complete this recipe is one dab, so players can cook it right away using a kitchenware item. The easiest Animal Crossing: New Horizons DIY kitchenware recipe to get is the stonework kitchen from the “Be a Chef! DIY Recipes+” that costs 3,000 Nook Miles. Karei is the Japanese word for any righteye flounder, while nitsuke is the word for the technique of boiling fish in soy sauce. The dish is usually translated as “simmered flounder.”
The second recipe using dab in Animal Crossing: New Horizons is fish and chips. This recipe needs two potatoes in addition to a dab, which can be obtained either from Leif or from a Mystery Island. When Leif visits players’ islands, he always brings one produce start that players can buy and plant, but the one he brings is random. When Kapp’n takes players on an ACNH island tour, the island they land on is also random, but may have produce growing that the player can dig up and take back with them. To get the recipe for fish and chips, players need to visit the homes of their Animal Crossing: New Horizons villagers. If they are crafting or cooking, they’ll give the player the recipe of whatever it is they’re making.