How to fry fish? This question is asked by any novice hostess. At first glance it seems that this is one of the simplest dishes. But it turns out that in its preparation there are secrets and peculiarities. After all, if you simply pour oil on a frying pan, throw pieces of fish there and fry, then it is unlikely that you will have delicious golden slices with a perfect aroma and taste on a plate. But fried fish is often cooked as one of the main dishes on the festive table, so you have to work hard.
Preparation for cooking
Perhaps the best people know how to fry fish, Ukrainians. After all, this is a dish of their national cuisine, it is in this country that it is included in most holiday menus. So, let's understand in detail how to deliciously fry fish.
First you need to pay attention to its defrosting. The first rule that you always need to remember: this is not a quick matter, you need to approach it in detail and in all seriousness. You need to start cutting it long before you start frying. Before she goes to the pan, it is necessary to prepare it for this. And proper defrosting is an important part of the overall process. The main thing in this is not to rush. It is right to defrost fish in cold water at the rate of two liters of water per kilogram of fish. Or you can leave it for several hours at room temperature.
Of course, you can speed up this process, for example, start defrosting it immediately in warm water, but in this case you risk losing taste. In hot water, the fish will start to boil ahead of time, because of this in the pan it will no longer be so fragrant. We immediately recognize that the situation is simpler with fillet. It is allowed to fry without defrosting at all.
By the way, there is one way to speed up the defrosting process without losing the quality of the dish. To do this, apply one trick. Unfinished frozen fish is poured with cold water into which salt is thrown at the rate of one teaspoon per liter of water. But in this way only unfinished fish can be thawed, with the exception of saffron cod.
Clean fish
Before frying the fish in a pan, it must be cleaned. This is the next step after defrosting it. First, the mucus is removed, this is relatively easy to do, and then it is recommended to rub it with sodium chloride and wash.
You also need to clean the scales, it will be easier to do if you dip the fish in boiling water for a few seconds. If it is slippery and the cleaning process does not go well, it is advised to dip your fingers in a small amount of salt, in which case it will go much faster. By the way, it is convenient to clean the fish with a metal grater under a gentle stream of water. Only in this case, pre-cut the fins to make it more convenient to work.
Before you fry the fish, be sure to remove all of its entrails, otherwise the dish may simply go bad. Most importantly, do not touch the gall bladder, if it bursts, the fish will turn out to be bitter. If this still happened, you can correct the situation by treating the areas where the bile got into with salt, and then rinse it off with water.
Bad smell
One of the main problems that almost all cooks encounter when they ask how to fry fish deliciously is an unpleasant smell, which is not always possible to cope with. A specific, usually unpleasant aroma is possessed by many species of fish. There are also a few secrets here.
You can eliminate the unpleasant aroma of flounder at the cutting stage, if you remove the skin from the dark side. You can get rid of the unpleasant odor of cod by keeping the fish in a solution of vinegar for about an hour, you need to prepare it at the rate of two tablespoons of vinegar per liter of water. And you can just rub the fish with lemon, this can also help.
Milk often helps. They are recommended to fill in the cod and leave for half an hour. After that, not only the unpleasant smell will go away, but the finished fish will become tastier and softer. The same method can be used in the preparation of many other types of fish.
River fish suffer from the fact that they clearly smell of mud. You can get rid of this dubious aroma if you cut the fish into pieces and cover it with finely chopped bay leaf in a non-oxidizing bowl. Pour in water and leave for one hour. Before frying, the water is drained, while the fish does not need to be rinsed additionally.
Frying rules
There are several basic rules on how to fry fish in a pan, which you must adhere to, whatever variety you cook.
When all the preparatory stages have been successfully completed, the fish is cut into small portions if it is large and the whole is fried. On the entire surface, it is necessary to make small cuts so that it does not twist during frying.
Salted fish is salted and left to soak for about a quarter of an hour. In this case, it will become stronger and you will never fall apart in the process of frying. The taste of sea fish can be improved by sprinkling it with lemon juice or wine vinegar and leaving it at room temperature for 20 minutes.
If you are interested in how to fry fish from the sturgeon squad, then before lowering it in a frying pan, put it in hot water for several minutes, and then wash thoroughly with cold water.
Pre-breading will help you maintain the shape of the fish, in which case you will forget that it can burn and “stick” to the pan. Before you deliciously fry the fish in a pan, you can simply roll it in flour, or you can prepare a special multi-component breading of breadcrumbs and flour, adding another egg to better fix this mixture. This delicious shell will make your fish even juicier.
Breaded fish
To cook fish in breading, first you need to pour flour into a deep container, and in another breadcrumbs, in the third you need to break the chicken egg.
Beat the egg with a fork a little, so that the protein and yolk turn into a single mass. After that, we take each piece of fish, dip it with a paper towel to free it from excess moisture and lower it into an egg. The egg should completely cover the fish. After that, dip the fish in flour, then again in the egg and only finally in the breadcrumbs. The halibut prepared in this way is tastiest.
Step by step recipe
How to fry fish in a pan? The classic recipe is that first, vegetable oil is poured into the pan, you can add a little butter to make the fish even tastier. The amount of fat should be such that the bubbles of hot oil on the sides of the fish are slightly browned.
If you pour too much oil, then it will turn out to have an unpleasant oil taste, and if not enough, it will be too dry. We spread the fish in a frying pan when the oil is sufficiently warmed up and begins to bubble heavily. Put the pieces of fish in the middle of the pan, where the most oil is, and then move it to the edge. The pan must be filled with fish so that it does not lie very crowded and not very spacious. In the latter case, the oil may start to burn. And if the pieces are crowded, then the fish will begin to steam and languish, and not fry.
We cook fish over medium heat. On a weak one, it will turn out to be too pale, an appetizing golden brown crust will not appear, and on too high a fire it can burn and cringe. In the process of frying, it is not recommended to cover it with a lid, but so that the oil does not splatter too much, you can cover the frying pan with a colander. Eliminate the strong and for many unpleasant odor that is released during cooking, you can, if you put together with the fish in a pan several slices of potatoes.
It is not recommended to fry fish for a long time. You can wait only for the formation of a characteristic golden crust. Then we transfer the fish to a colander and let the excess fat drain, and then we send it to the oven for five to eight minutes. There, the fish will finally be fried, but it is guaranteed not to burn.
Note that if you intend to use a large amount of vegetable oil in the recipe, for example, deep-fried, then remember that only strong and hard fish species are suitable for this. These include sea bass, pikeperch, hake, catfish.
Ready-made fish is traditionally served on the table with a side dish of new potatoes, spinach, vegetables and herbs. It is possible to emphasize the taste of fish well if you serve pickled vegetables, olives or capers with it. Now you know how to fry fish. To get this information even better, consider a few specific recipes.
Alaska Pollock Recipe
Pollock is a tasty and extremely healthy fish, one of the main advantages of which is that it has practically no bones. Moreover, it has universal gastronomic properties. How to fry fish pollock, we will describe in detail in this article.
Many especially love her because her taste is almost perfectly combined with completely different dishes - salty, sour and spicy, while only making their taste brighter, shading them. The classic way to cook it is to fry it in a pan. Pollock, as a rule, is served with mashed potatoes or fried potatoes, as well as sauce or gravy.
It will turn out especially tasty if you cook this fish with mayonnaise. For this we need the following ingredients:
- 500 grams of pollock fillet;
- half a glass of wheat flour;
- 1 chicken egg;
- large onions;
- 1 medium carrot;
- vegetable oil;
- salt and spices to taste;
- 200-250 ml of mayonnaise.
A photo of the fried fish that you should get as a result can be found in this article. To make it work successfully, first break the egg in a bowl and beat it a little. Mix flour with spices and salt at the same time.
Pour vegetable oil into a preheated skillet and heat it. After that, each piece of fish individually must be rolled in an egg and flour, and then lowered into a pan. Pollock is thoroughly fried on both sides until a characteristic appetizing bright golden crust is formed.
At the same time, it is necessary to peel the onion from the husk and cut it into small cubes. Then peel the carrots and rub on a medium grater. In another skillet, we heat the vegetable oil, fry the finely chopped onion on it. When it begins to acquire a light golden hue, add carrots to the pan and continue to fry the vegetable mixture.
In the pan where the fish is fried, add mayonnaise and pre-cooked frying. Cover it and turn down the heat as much as possible, continuing to simmer for about a quarter of an hour. After that, pollock with mayonnaise is ready. According to the same recipe, you can cook this fish with sour cream, so the dish will turn out even more useful.
Fish is recommended to be served with vegetables on lettuce leaves. Decorate it with lemon slices on top. You can also cook pollock in a double boiler, it will turn out stewed.
Recipe for red fish in a pan
Red fish is considered a gourmet product, so its preparation must be approached with particular responsibility. You need to learn in advance how to fry fish. The recipe for such a dish may well decorate any holiday table.
To do this, you will need to have at hand:
- 500 grams of red fish (you can take chum, salmon or salmon);
- 2 tablespoons of lemon juice;
- salt;
- sugar;
- ground black pepper;
- garlic;
- vegetable oil.
Before frying red fish, it is recommended to marinate it. It is believed that it turns out even tastier if you leave it in the marinade for 30 minutes or an hour.
Fish must be cleaned. To do this, we clean it of scales, wash it, dry it with paper towels and cut it into small pieces about two centimeters thick. Sprinkle the fish with pepper, salt, pour over lemon juice and add a pinch of sugar. Then everything needs to be gently mixed. Crush with a knife three cloves of garlic and also send to red fish. In such a marinade, it should be infused at room temperature. During this time, it is desirable to mix it several times.
Now we pour the vegetable oil into a preheated pan and fry the fish over medium heat until a golden crust is formed. This will take you about five minutes.
Then we turn the fish over and fry from the other side until a golden crust appears. If you come across a thick piece of fish, or you just want to be sure that it will be fried on all sides, then you can fry it for five minutes on each side, and then add fire and fry until a crust appears.
There is another common way to fry fish. The recipe, the photo of which is posted in this article, involves pre-roll it in flour. At the same time, it is recommended to salt the flour itself a little. During the preparation of fish in this way, it is fried until golden brown over medium heat. True, many believe that without flour it turns out to be much more tender.
Before serving the fish, it is recommended to sprinkle with orange or lemon juice, serve tartar sauce or orange sauce, so it will be even tastier.
Fried fish in batter
The recipe on how to fry fish in batter, we consider the example of the preparation of the sea language. This is a very tasty fish, and many say that cooking it is so simple that it is almost impossible to spoil it. In addition, this will take quite a bit.
You will need to take the following components:
- 1 kilogram of marine fillet ;
- 1 large chicken egg;
- 5 tablespoons of mayonnaise;
- 4 tablespoons of flour;
- salt and pepper - to taste;
- vegetable oil.
Detailed cooking process
In total, it takes about half an hour to fry the fish. At the same time, 10 minutes will be required directly for marinating fish. This amount of ingredients, by the way, is enough for four servings.
First, fish should be thawed, then washed, dried with paper towels, pepper, salt and cut into portioned portions. In such a marinade, she should spend about ten minutes.
During this time, prepare batter. In a bowl, combine the egg and mayonnaise, add the flour and beat the resulting dough with a fork. It should not be thicker than the one from which you usually prepare pancakes. After that, each already pickled piece of fish must be dipped in batter, then raised above the bowl and let the excess dough drain.
Put the fish in batter into a frying pan in a heated vegetable oil. We fry on medium heat, then reduce the fire, turn the fish over and fry it on the second side. It is recommended to put ready-made fish on paper napkins to get rid of excess fat, which can only harm the body, it is best to completely get rid of oil residues.
On the table, fish in batter, in our case the sea language, is served with a salad of fresh vegetables, seasoned with sour cream or sunflower oil, or mashed potatoes. This dish should be guaranteed to please your family and friends. Having tried it only once, they will demand that you cook it again and again.