Sea fish is a valuable source of useful and so necessary vitamins and minerals. But those who live far from the coast cannot afford to eat constantly fresh seafood. For them, the solution is to purchase frozen or pickled fish.
Herring is very valuable and popular in our area. It is sold with us, not only ready-to-eat, but also simply frozen. Any housewife can cope with salting herring at home, so as not to overpay for the finished product and make a dish that will surely appeal to all family members. For this, you just need to choose the most optimal recipe. We will introduce you to several of them in the article below. So from now on, delicious salting of herring at home will cease to be a problem for you.
Product Selection Features
Before mastering herring salting recipes at home, you need to figure out which raw materials are best for these purposes.
Of course, the best option would be to use chilled fish. She is the freshest and highest quality. Her condition can be determined by the characteristic smell, natural luster and light color of the gills. In addition, the fish should be oily. This is determined by the thickness of the back: the "punchier" it is, the fatter the meat.
If you can’t find a fresh product, you can buy frozen herring. For salting at home, it is also suitable. It is worth paying attention to the fact that the carcasses are intact, not broken or broken. If the fish is sold in icy glaze, then it should be flat, not cracked. The carcass should be coated with it evenly.
Defrost the fish gradually. For this, the refrigerator is the best option. If you use a more intense method in water or in the microwave, the fillet structure will become loose, and the taste of herring will deteriorate a little.
Preparing for further processing
What to do next with the fish depends on which recipe for salting herring at home you have chosen. You can leave the whole carcass. Gutting them is optional, but it’s better to remove the gills.
There are options for salting in the form of fillets or steaks. In this case, you need to cut the fish, remove all the entrails and rinse thoroughly. It is advisable to remove all the bones from the fillet so that then they do not pose a danger to those who will eat the finished dish.
It is better not to remove the skin from the fillet. Just below it is a large number of nutrients for which we love this fish.
Before considering specific recipes, a few words need to be said about the dishes in which we will implement them. It should be plastic or enameled so that dangerous compounds do not form in the brine and on the fish, which causes oxidation of the metal by salt and other ingredients that are part of the marinade. Also make sure that tight lids are matched to this dish.
Easiest recipe
Quite simply, salting of herring in brine occurs at home. In this recipe we will not indicate a specific amount of ingredients, since the process of its implementation is not difficult and is suitable for any volume of herring.
First you need to prepare the fish. It is desirable that her skin was not damaged, otherwise the filet may turn out to be too salty. From the herring, you need to remove only the gills, rinse it, dry it and put it in the dishes for further cooking.
The brine is prepared as follows: you need to boil such an amount of water so that it completely covers all the fish. For example, for 2-3 carcasses you need about 1.5 liters. When the water began to boil actively, remove it from the fire and begin to dissolve ordinary table salt. It needs as much as it can dissolve in a hot liquid. When crystals remain at the bottom of the pan, then the brine is ready. Now it needs to be cooled.
They can immediately pour fish, or you can add your favorite spices: bay leaf, peppercorns mixture, garlic cloves. All this for cooking must be left in the refrigerator for three days. After that, you can safely eat fish. She will take in exactly as much salt as she needs to become a delicious dish.
Another pickle
Salting fish (herring) at home is possible in other ways. Here is a brine recipe that will also allow you to cook fish in three days. But there are no spices in it, which will appeal to lovers of pure fishy taste without extraneous seasonings.
For two carcasses of herring, prepare 2 tablespoons of salt, one each of sugar and vegetable oil, as well as 1 liter of water.
Prepare the fish, as in the previous recipe. Boil water, dissolve salt and sugar in it, let cool. After that, fill them with fish and add vegetable oil there. Everything, it remains only to wait for the herring to reach readiness.
To make this option also spicy, while boiling the brine, add two bay leaves, a few peas of black and allspice, two or three buds of cloves to it.
Atlantic herring salted filet
We examined several options for how salting of herring occurs at home entirely. But we remember that this can also be done with disassembled fish.
Here is the fastest way to cook a tasty and fragrant herring fillet in a couple of hours. To do this, you need to prepare the fish: clean from the insides and bones, rinse and lower it for an hour in cold water. After that, it is dried with paper towels.
In a separate bowl we prepare a mixture for pickling, which consists of an equal amount of salt and sugar, chopped black pepper and bay leaf. Spices need to take three times less than salt.
The fish fillet is rubbed tightly with the prepared composition, wrapped in a plastic wrap and left to marinate at room temperature for two to three hours. After that, it can be processed further for serving, sprinkled with onion rings, sprinkled with vegetable oil and table vinegar (lemon juice). It is in this way that the quick salting of herring occurs at home. This is a recipe for help if you have only a couple of hours left before the guests arrive.
Norwegian recipe
Standard salted herring options can also be bought at the store. So try this unusual recipe. It has its own characteristics that will give the fish an unusual taste.
Gut the fish, cut off the heads and rinse. In equal parts, mix water and milk and pour the carcass with this solution for 12 hours. After this, disassemble the fish on a fillet, remove the skin and divide into portions.
Cook the brine. For him you will need:
- 1 teaspoon of sugar;
- the same amount of chopped dill;
- a few peas of black pepper;
- one chopped carrot;
- half a teaspoon chopped horseradish.
Put all the ingredients in a container, add 2 cups of water and boil. When the brine cools down a bit, add a glass of table vinegar and bay leaf to it, mix.
While the mixture cools down, take one medium onion, cut it into half rings and lay it in layers together with the fish in a bowl for further salting. All this is filled with brine, tightly closed with a lid and sent to the refrigerator for three to four days. After that, the fish will be ready to eat. Such a recipe for delicious salting of herring at home will surely please your household and will pleasantly surprise guests, especially if you serve pieces of fish on a canapa decorated with fresh herbs.
Dutch option
This is a relatively quick recipe. Salting herring at home on it occurs without the use of a brine. Fish is pickled in its own juice and in juices that will produce vegetables.
To begin, we will analyze two carcasses into portioned pieces, removing all the bones from them. For this amount of fish you need to grate one medium carrot, cut two onions in half rings, cut in half a lemon.
For salting, it is better to use a glass container, for example, a jar. It will be easier to lay all the ingredients in layers, and you can close it tightly with a lid.
Layer order
So, we start cooking. The onion is the first layer, then add a leaf of laurel, put a little carrot and a slice of lemon on it, half a teaspoon of sugar and salt, a little black pepper. We put fish on all this. Repeat the vegetables with the next layer; we also put herring on them. We continue until we get to the very top of the can, not forgetting to press down all the ingredients a little so that they lie quite tightly.
The process of cooking herring will take only two to three days. But the fish from this will turn out simply incomparable, which will be proved by your guests at the nearest feast, which will eat this appetizer in the first place.
Iwashi as in Soviet times
Iwashi fish is not quite a herring. But in Soviet times, she was reckoned to this type of fish, because she was on the shelves always and everywhere. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, it disappeared somewhere completely. It turns out that due to active fishing, fishing for this fish was prohibited for 25 years, so as not to completely destroy it. Now she is back at the store shelves. Therefore, we had a chance to recall the very taste of childhood.
So that the salting of herring (ivasi) at home does not disappoint you, we recommend using the following brine recipe, which is most adapted to Soviet GOST. Fish for this cooking method must be whole.
Cooking pickle
For 1 kg of raw materials, take:
- one liter of boiled water;
- half a glass of unmodified sodium chloride;
- 2-3 tablespoons of sugar;
- spices: a teaspoon of black and allspice peas, a few buds of cloves, a little ground nutmeg, coriander to taste.
All ingredients except water should be mixed in a separate container. Then they are poured with boiling water and mix everything thoroughly. When the salt and sugar dissolve, the spices will infuse, and the brine itself will cool to room temperature, Iwashi is poured with this composition, covered tightly with a lid and sent to the refrigerator for several days.
In the same brine, fish can be stored for about a week in the refrigerator, so you can safely cook not one kilogram of fish, but several at once. You can be sure that it will not go bad. After all, households quickly eat her.
How to serve cooked herring
What to do when the salting of herring at home is over. The finished product must be served beautifully, because guests will not eat the whole piece of fish.
Now we will not consider recipes for popular salads in which this variety of fish is present. We only make a reservation that herring cooked according to the listed recipes and “dry” methods is not suitable for these purposes, since vegetables quickly draw salt out of it and it becomes fresh.
Our grandmothers and mothers are used to serving this fish to the table in portioned slices on a dish decorated with onion rings. At the same time, they sprayed herring with vegetable oil, vinegar or lemon juice. But you can do more interesting.
Make small croutons from a baguette on a dry frying pan, put portion slices on them and decorate them with greens or vegetables. Such small canapes as a snack will not stay on the table for long.
Or cut the beets into thin slices. Put the onion ring on the beets, and in the middle - a slice of fish, decorated with mayonnaise.
Also please your loved ones with a delicious, hearty and healthy breakfast by making a sandwich of herring, lettuce and pickled onions. Or for lunch, cook young potatoes with dill as a side dish for spicy salted fish.
Summary
As you already understood, salting herring at home is a fairly simple process. Do not be afraid of him. After all, if you follow the technological processes and storage conditions of this delicate product, spoiling such a fish is not so simple. Do not be afraid, experiment, add something of your own in recipes to get a delicious and unique food product at the output.