Forshmak is a herring dish, which is traditionally prepared by baking with potatoes, as well as adding sour cream, onion and pepper. Sometimes in our traditional Russian cuisine this dish is found with the name "corpuscle". In the Russian interpretation, you can both cook and fry foods. The dish is served cold or hot on the table.
Historical highlights about the dish
It is generally believed that herring mincemeat is a dish from Jewish cuisine. It is considered national, although it came from East Prussian cuisine, where this name hid an appetizer prepared from fried herring.
According to the same ancient Prussian and Swedish tradition, forshmak is served on the table strictly hot. And in modern Jewish cuisine, Forshmak Jewish classic is necessarily a cold appetizer of chopped herring.
In the preparation of mincemeat in the old days, exclusively herring of the lowest quality was used. If the mincemeat was served on the table during a milk meal, then the herring for cooking was allowed to be soaked in milk.
Types of cooking forshmak
Sometimes mincemeat is cooked with beef, lamb, and also with small pieces of roast. Add milk, sour cream, cheese to the dish. There are mincemeat recipes with chicken, mushrooms, cabbage, cottage cheese. From exclusive recipes, you need to recall cooking methods with the addition of pasta, beets, turnips, kohlrabi, artichokes, mustard, tomato paste and mayonnaise. All of the above is prepared anyway on the basis of herring, but there are also variations with the absence of fish in the recipe, for example, mincemeat from calf brains.
Today we will not consider all recipes, we will dwell in detail on the classic version of the dish.
Classic Forshmak Recipe
The classic recipe includes the use of not only herring, but also apples, potatoes, white onions, boiled eggs, soaked in milk of bread and the addition of butter.
Ultimately, all of these ingredients will be part of the herring paste, which is then served on the table. This paste is spread on rye bread. It may be a tea snack option or during any other meal.
Cooking Products
To prepare the classic forshmak, take one fat carcass of herring (weight about 450-550 g), also boil 2 chicken eggs (the eggs should be boiled hard-boiled), buy about 100 g of sweet and sour apples (the “Antonovka” variety is suitable), 120 g of boiled in jacket of potato. In addition, you will need about 20 g of onions and about 60 g of stale bread (white bread or loaf). Plus, take 100 ml of milk (fat content 2.5%) and 150 g of real butter. Salt and spices are added to taste.
Step by step cooking
The most basic process is the preparation of herring, which is also the most laborious and difficult moment in cooking. We clean the fish from the skin, as well as gutting from all the insides. Next, you need to separate the fish meat from all the bones. We need to cut the resulting fish fillet into small pieces (usually cut into cubes, although this is not a fundamental point).
Peel the apple, cut the core with seeds. Peel the onion from the husk, boiled eggs - from the shell, potatoes - from the peel. All four components are finely chopped (ideally, you need to get the same shape and size as in the case of herring).
Bread in tiny slices, and then soak them in milk for about 10 minutes. Butter should be removed from the refrigerator in advance in order to make it soft.
We place all the ingredients in an appropriate container, mix everything well (including soaked and squeezed bread). Next, grind everything in a meat grinder or grind with a blender. The result should be a homogeneous mixture of a thick consistency.
Next, add softened butter to an almost ready paste and mix until a homogeneous mass is obtained. Then salt to taste. It is important not to get carried away with salt, it is worth considering that the herring is already salty, sometimes this is enough, and adding salt is not required.
After that, it remains to cool the classic mincemeat and let it brew for about an hour in the refrigerator.
Serving snacks on the table
The finished snack can be served on the table directly in the container. But there are options for a more beautiful and exclusive presentation. You can form the paste into some regular shape (using the appropriate shape) and serve on a flat wide plate, decorating the dish with finely chopped greens.
There are also more exclusive options that require your imagination and a little sleight of hand. An appetizer can be formed, for example, in the silhouette of a herring and served also on a wide flat plate. You can choose the ingredients for decorating the finished dish yourself, based on your own taste.
Another way of serving is to spread the spread of bread on slices of bread, as we said at the very beginning, traditionally rye bread is taken for this, although nowadays they often use crispy baguette or toast, or even homemade bread. In general, you yourself can choose your favorite bread for such a serving.
Forshmak classic is a very piquant dish that will appeal to you and your loved ones. You will remember this recipe and use it more than once!
Another point that relates to the recipe for classic mincemeat is onions. In our described recipe, it is taken raw for cooking, but there is often a variation when fried chopped onions are taken to prepare a dish.
Features
It is very important to use only high-quality and fresh products when preparing mincemeat from herring in the classical way, because all the ingredients strongly affect the taste of the final dish.
Pay attention to the herring, the eyes of the fish should not be cloudy, there should not even be a hint of the smell of spoiled fish. If you buy fish not in a carcass, then take a closer look at herring meat, it should not be loose and should not leave the bones. If such moments are observed, then it is better to immediately refuse to buy such a fish. The classic herring minced meat is made only from the best products, fish is perhaps the most important ingredient in the dish. How to choose potatoes, onions and other components we will not consider.
Forcemeat Tips
If you are preparing a dish for the first time, then it makes sense to watch a video of cooking instructions or refer to the recipe for a classic herring mincemeat with a photo, this is very important so as not to make any mistakes.
In general, many chefs say that the first preparation of a dish is the most important moment, because your hands will “remember” it, and next time you will cook “on the machine”. If mistakes are made during the first preparation, then with a high probability they can migrate for all the following times. A recipe for a classic forshmak with photo excludes such options.
Calorie Forshmak
A very significant moment if you follow your figure. Forshmak is not a very dietary dish, but sometimes you can treat yourself and your loved ones to it. So, 100 g of classic mincemeat contains 245 kcal (proteins - 7 g, fats - 22 g, carbohydrates - 6 g), if you cook dishes from time to time and in reasonable amounts, then you can not even consider the calorie content of this dish, because this is a snack rather than the main course.
Traditions
It will be more honest to call forshmak a dish of international cuisine. Of course, the Jews claim that they invented the dish, but the Swedes flatly disagree with this and consider the foreshak to be their own.
Our Russian cuisine also has its own traditional ways of preparing this fish dish (forshmak in Soviet style, forshmak in Odessa). Other countries of the world also have views on the origin of this delicious herring snack.
But be that as it may, the classic mincemeat recipe prepared by a chef from any country is delicious. This is an appetizer, which can be a “crown” dish at any reception, regardless of the recipe for its preparation. Also, do not be afraid to experiment with a foreshack. You can add some of your products that will add a “twist”. Perhaps your recipe is the most interesting and popular.