How to soak salted fish: recipes, tips and rules for soaking

Why is this necessary?

Methods for removing excess salt are suitable for fish that were salted at home, but something went wrong and the salt won, making the taste of the fish unnoticeable. When eating unsuccessfully salted fish, in addition to the taste, which few people may like, the salt content in it can have dangerous consequences for the body of someone who dares to eat a piece of over-salted product.

The question of how to soak fish often arises for fishing enthusiasts who want to taste their own caught and dried fish with beer. For these people, the question of how to soak salted fish before drying is especially relevant. Many salads and cold appetizers include lightly salted fish, because the strong taste of salt would necessarily make the salad simply an inedible set of foods.

Reviews

I put 1 kg of over-salted salmon fish in 2.5 liters of boiled water overnight and added 10 peppercorns, 1 small bay leaf, zest of the tip of a lemon (2 tsp) and 20 ml of vodka as a preservative. In the morning I took out the fish, dried it with a paper towel and coated it with odorless sunflower oil. The result was an amazing lightly salted fish with a light lemon aroma.

Before soaking the fish, you need to rinse it thoroughly under the tap in cold water. If the meat of the fish is dense (sockeye salmon, perch, cod, flounder, burbot), then the salted fish should be soaked for 5 to 10 hours . During this time, you should change the water two or three times. As far as I know, salted fish is usually soaked for as many hours as the number of days it has been salted.

Delicious recipe! Italian woman 50 years old

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Friday, February 17, 2021 06:47 + to quote book

Salted fish is one of the most popular delicacies among Russians. Fish is generally a very valuable and healthy product, and if you salt it, it acquires a richer and spicy taste. Many housewives use salted fish both as a main dish and as an additional ingredient that can be added to salads. You can easily salt fish at home, while saving money. However, a procedure such as salting takes a lot of time; in this case, lovers of salted fish go to the store.

Of course, any supermarket always has a large selection of salted fish for every taste. The most popular types of fish that are available for sale are salmon, mackerel, pink salmon, herring and sprat. Each of these fish is affordable and does not require additional processing. The only disadvantage of purchased salted fish may be that it is not always possible to guess the degree of salting of the product.

There are times when a buyer purchased salted fish, but it turned out to be so salty that it is simply impossible to eat. In such cases, it is not necessary to throw away the product, because there are quite popular and simple ways to make fish less salty.

Is it possible to soak it?

It turns out that there are actually many situations in which it would be useful to know about recipes and some of the nuances of properly ridding a product of excess salt by soaking it. So today we will figure out whether it is possible to soak salted fish and how to do it in a more correct way.

Let's start with the fact that a good appetizer of lightly salted herring, mackerel or red fish begins with strong salting. To destroy the microscopic parasites that are necessarily present in raw fish fillets, the fish is salted very hard. Residents of fishing places know everything about how to properly salt and how to soak highly salted fish.

Stewed, fried or boiled fish

One option is to serve the fish with an unsalted side dish. Non-salted mashed potatoes, vegetables, and rice are perfect;
If you have ready-made, but already over-salted fish, you can make another dish, for example, a delicious fish pie. You can also add rice to it. At the same time, there is no need to salt the dough and rice;
Fish stewed in flour, sour cream, sour sauce will also help get rid of over-salting;
You can also stew the fish with unsalted ready-made mashed potatoes or plain potatoes;
Rice has an excellent ability to absorb salt. Therefore, a small amount of rice can be cooked together with over-salted fish for 30 minutes. This method is also suitable for over-salted soup; rice (tied in cheesecloth) needs to be cooked in the finished soup or even added as an ingredient.

If you have over-salted the finished fish, you should not throw it away. There are ways to help fix this.

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What's the salt?

It is possible and even necessary to rid fish of excess salt. This way you will save your health. This seasoning is quite harmful and even dangerous if you do not use it in moderation for human nutrition. Here's how salt negatively affects the organs and condition of those who neglect caution:

it irritates the mucous membranes of the entire digestive tract;
is a catalyst for increased excretion of calcium from the body, resulting in bone fragility;
increased salt consumption contributes to swelling of the hands, feet, and face;
salt can be deposited in joints and act from the inside, destroying them and causing pain to a person;
Problems with blood vessels and the heart are most likely to occur among lovers of excessively salty foods, which greatly contributes to increased blood pressure.

And this is not the entire list of possible problems. Therefore, returning to the question of how to soak salted fish, let’s proceed straight to the recipes.

How long does it take to dry fish?

First, before you find out the answer to this question, let's take a closer look at the entire process of “cooking” dried fish. From the selection of necessary materials to the right choice of location.

What do we need. First of all, a thin cord or twine. You can even use wire. To pass the selected type of cord through the heads of fish without any problems, you will need either a nail or an awl. By the way, don’t forget about matches or toothpicks, which you can use to open the fish from the inside for better ventilation.

Where will we dry it? This is one of the main points, since this cannot be done everywhere. In general, there are three main requirements for a fish spawning site:

During the day there should be shade there;
Most of the time there is a draft;
The place should be protected from rain and free of flies.

The ideal place is a summer veranda at the dacha. However, if there is no dacha, then as an option you can use a balcony or a non-residential room in the apartment. You can dry it on stretchers, as described above, or you can dry it on a clothes dryer or in a vegetable dryer. You can dry fish in the summer, but drying fish in the winter is also not a problem. The main thing is to correctly follow the step-by-step instructions.

Step-by-step instruction. Now let's get down to the process itself.

Take the carcass and shake off the salt. To make it less salty (this is not for everybody), you can put it in boiling water for a couple of seconds.
Using a cord or wire, depending on what you choose, we connect the fish through the eye sockets or through the gill slits. The main thing is that the fish is not placed tightly. This is necessary for free air circulation and water evaporation.
We hang the “garlands” in the place that we have chosen in advance and cover them with gauze to prevent flies. Let me remind you that this is the simplest and most popular method. Some aesthetes sprinkle just a little vinegar so that it repels flies and wasps, which are drawn to salted fish like honey. But this is optional, you can limit yourself to just gauze.

How long to dry? And now to the main question - how long should the fish dry?

If you turn to the Internet, you can come across completely different terms, from 2-3 days to 2-3 weeks... The terms vary due to several parameters, such as size, salting period, fat content, etc. However, the most important parameter, as experts say in this matter, is heat. Drying on it is strictly not recommended. Since the meat will be dry, hard and unpleasantly bitter. That's why they try to find a middle ground.

Preparation for the process

To carry out the soaking procedure comfortably, let’s first make sure that these tools and their complementary elements are available:

Tools and utensils for more comfortable processing and cleaning of fish. This list necessarily includes a cutting board, knives, and scissors.
A container with a lid. Use any suitable and clean container: basin, bucket, pan, tank - all of this will do. Select the volume of dishes for soaking in accordance with the amount of fish you are going to process.
Soaking solution (prepare yourself).
A variety of spices for fish.
The culprit of the whole process is over-salted fish.

It is better to cut a large fish carcass into pieces: this way more salt will come out of it.

Cold water (the cheapest method)

But we will start with the simplest and most accessible method for those who are puzzled by the question of how to quickly soak salted fish. Water is what will help make the very salty fish more enjoyable and healthy. There is an opinion that you need to soak fish for exactly the same amount of time as it was salted. But, probably, rarely does anyone know the exact number of hours or days during which the fish remained in salt before coming to us for processing. Therefore, we use classical technology.

First of all, let's rinse our fish in cold water. Then put it in a suitable container and fill it with cold water. During the process, it is better if the dishes with the fish are in the refrigerator. It is necessary to change the water to fresh water every two hours. Do not neglect this small rule, then the fish will have a more pleasant taste. Salted fish is very heavy, which is why it will initially sit at the bottom of the bowl with cold liquid. After some time, when salt begins to come out of it, the fish will feel better and will rush to the surface. When the soaked fish floats to the surface, it means the process was successful.

However, there are times when you need to soak a lot of fish. In this case, a large tank and cold water from a well or pump will do (if the process takes place in conditions close to natural). The container must be installed in a cool place so that the sun's rays never find your fish stock. For five kilograms of salted fish, use ten liters of water. Change the water every two hours. And to lower its temperature, pour ice into the bowl with the fish.

How to soak salted fish

So, there is a container, say, with a sorrel or bream salted for drying. The fish remained under pressure for 3 - 4 days, during which time the container was filled with brine

Or maybe it was originally salted in brine, it doesn’t matter

Next comes the washing process. If the fish is small in size, then you can get by with the kitchen sink and wash each tail separately. For large quantities, a bathroom will do. Dump all the fish into it, fill it with cold water and rinse. The task is to get rid of the remaining salt on the scales, the resulting mucus and other dirt that accidentally comes across. We do not spare water, we wash the fish 2 - 3 times.

Having done the washing, we proceed directly to the soaking stage. The container should be taken as large as possible. The fish should not be in it like in a sprat jar. I do this in the bathroom.

Now the next question arises - how long to soak the fish?

The soaking process takes several hours. The time depends on how long the fish has been exposed to salt. The following formula is used on average: the number of days the fish has been salted, the number of hours it needs to be soaked.

For example, if salting lasted 4 days, then the fish should be soaked for 4 hours.

The calculation is simple, but in reality it is not immediately possible to achieve the required salinity. We all have different taste preferences, so the right time is determined experimentally.

So, simply placing salted fish in a container of water is not enough. It is often advised to do business at night. Filled it up and went to bed. Believe me, this is the wrong approach. Water changes should be done at regular intervals. Therefore, the best time of day will be the period of wakefulness, when it will not be difficult for you to change the water after half an hour or an hour.

By the way, there is one more nuance here. The water is changed more often if there are a lot of fish or they are large, or the container is too small. Accordingly, I fill the bath completely with a bucket of soroga or dace and change it after 30 - 40 minutes.

As you can see, the plot is creative and you won’t be able to soak the fish quickly. But it's worth it. After drying or smoking, you will have an excellent dish on your table. At least for a foamy drink, at least to please the soul.

Bon appetit.

Salt is one of the most indispensable seasonings in the kitchen. Its moderate amount improves and emphasizes the taste of the dish. But sometimes it happens that the amount of an ingredient is exceeded, and it seems that the dish is hopelessly spoiled. There is a solution to the problem. Experienced chefs know how to correct the situation by soaking

Lightly salted fish is used to create some traditional Russian dishes. But before using such a specimen, it is necessary to carefully gut it, remove unnecessary gills and head, and rinse thoroughly with fresh water.

Excess salt is removed by soaking. The fish is placed in cold water to swell, cleaned of scales, the head and fins are cut off and stripped. When fish is soaked, some of the mineral salts, soluble proteins, and flavoring substances pass into the water, which reduces the nutritional value of salted fish dishes. You can soak the fish in replaceable and running water.

The soaking process is dictated by two factors: firstly, to preserve a pleasant and delicate taste, and secondly, for reasons of maintaining health. The soaking time for salted fish is from 8 to 12 hours. Soaked fish is used for boiling, frying, preparing cutlet mass and stewing.

The technology for soaking salted fish may vary depending on the type and degree of salting. If desired, the taste can be changed using spices. It all depends on preference. The degree of salting for cooking is 5%, for frying - only 2%. Large and heavily salted ones will have to be soaked for a day or more.

Spicy salted fish

You can fix fish that has been over-salted in a spicy brine using water and vinegar. Please do not confuse vinegar and vinegar essence. Before preparing the solution, make sure that you have table vinegar.

For 10 parts water you need one part vinegar. Add some fish spices and place the salted, spicy-salted fish into the prepared marinade. Do not cut the carcasses, leave them whole. Place the dish with fish in the refrigerator for several hours. Usually five to six hours is enough. After this time, the fish becomes less salty.

Smoked fish

Sometimes it may be necessary to remove excess salt from finished smoked fish. How to quickly soak smoked salted fish in such a situation?

Step one. Place the fish in a small container (with a lid). Prepare a solution to rid it of excess salt. You need to take equal quantities of cold water and cold fresh milk.

Step two. Pour this mixture over the fish and put it in the refrigerator for half an hour. In thirty minutes you will have a wonderful, not too salty smoked fish. Be sure to rinse it with cold water and pat dry with paper kitchen towels.

How to properly salt river fish at home?

A simple and interesting recipe for spicy salted fish, which will be an excellent appetizer for any dish.

First, let's prepare everything you need:

Dishes for pickling. If the weight of the fish does not exceed 1 kg, then a saucepan, deep bowl or plastic container of suitable capacity will suit you.
Spices and herbs: coriander, bay leaf, hot peppercorns and salt.
Fish. It must be washed thoroughly. Fish weighing less than 1 kg does not need gutting.

Procedure:

Place the fish in the selected container in layers so that the heads lie close to the tails. On the bottom layer - the largest one.
Sprinkle each layer with a mixture of salt and coriander, put a few peppercorns and a couple of laurel leaves on top.
The container is closed with a slightly smaller lid, and a pressure is placed on top, the role of which can be played by a large stone or a jar filled with water.
Then we move the vessel to a cool place. Be prepared for the juice to release from the fish after 10 hours; do not drain it until the very end of the salting process.
After 4 days, remove the pressure, drain the brine, and wash the fish. Then put it back into the container, fill it with cold water and soak for about an hour.
We cover the floor, table or any flat surface with towels, and lay river fish on top so that individual fish do not touch each other. Let it dry and turn it over after a couple of hours. If necessary, change newspapers and towels to dry ones.

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Salted river fish prepared in this way is stored in a cool room or refrigerator.

Dry fish

The question of whether it is possible to soak dry salted fish will have a positive answer. Of course, dry fish in most cases is used as a pleasant snack with beer, but a huge amount of salt can ruin the entire impression of such a snack. How to rid such a fish of a large amount of salt if necessary? Most often, such fish are soaked in water to loosen its meat. Then, when the fish is saturated with water, it is placed in cold milk for several hours. The degree of salinity is easy to check. Just remove the fish from the milk, rinse and taste. If the amount of salt has reached the standards that suit you, feel free to remove all the remaining fish from the container and, after rinsing with water, you can use it for its intended purpose.

What to do with over-salted herring?

Leave in the refrigerator for an hour or two (depending on the saltiness).

Through the incision made, you should remove the caviar from the belly of the fish if it is of interest to you. You will have to separate the herring meat from the spine with your hands and a knife. Usually the meat is separated from the bones quite easily; to remove the smallest and thinnest bones stuck in the meat, you can use ordinary tweezers.

Read How to catch carp with boilies and prepare fishing equipment

Sometimes you don’t have enough patience, sometimes there is no one nearby who can support and advise. The portal was created to help you change your life in the direction that is more attractive to you. Thick-backed herring will be much tastier than its slimmer counterparts. Fish with a thick “belly” often contain caviar or milt. First of all, the fish must be gutted, removing all the insides.

Fish, regardless of the method of its preparation, is a storehouse of useful substances for the human body.

First, you need to determine what it will taste like. It's simple. When serving, sprinkle with chopped egg and dill. Cut the herring into cubes. Decorate the top with a mesh of mayonnaise, beet roses and carrot leaves. 2 herring fillets.

At home and on the go, you can get some fresh water with the help of improvised means. However, it is difficult to obtain large amounts of fresh water using this method, because when you remove the lid, a huge part of the drops will flow back into the pan. It is possible to improve this desalination plant. When cooled, fresh water freezes faster than salt water.

A noble way for noble fish

Red fish must be pre-prepared. Remove the head, fins and other inedible parts. Cut it into pieces. You can only use the removed fillet.

Add suitable spices to the container for soaking the fish. Their number is a purely individual matter. It is also recommended to add cherry syrup to taste and vinegar (not essence) to the marinade. The marinade without salt should be boiled and cooled slightly. Pour the hot liquid into the bowl with the fish.

The cooled marinade is drained from the fish and filtered. The fish is washed in cold water and placed again in a clean container. Pour in the resulting and strained marinade. In a few hours, a wonderful lightly salted red fish is ready for your table.

Red fish: how to salt

The brine for pickling red fish is prepared quickly.

Ingredients:

kilogram of fish,
Bay leaf,
salt (three tbsp.),
peppercorns (7 pcs.),
Art. l. table vinegar,
bulb,
vegetable oil (60 ml).

If you have fresh fish, then it must be cut immediately. But ice cream must first be defrosted, but not completely. This makes it easier to cut it apart. It is necessary to cut off the head and remove the fins. We divide the carcass into two parts, removing the bones and backbone. As a result, we get fillet. You need to cut off the skin with a knife; we don’t need it. Next, cut the prepared fillet into pieces and place in a container.

Now that all the preparatory work has been completed, you can begin preparing the brine for red fish.

Pour half a liter of cold water into a separate vessel. Add salt to it and mix well with a spoon until completely dissolved. The brine for red fish is ready. Pour it into the container with the fillet. We press down the fish from above with pressure so that it does not float up.

Leave the fillet in the brine for an hour and a half at room temperature. Then we drain the old solution and prepare a new one. To do this, pour water into a glass and add a tablespoon of vinegar. Pour the mixture over the fish for literally three to five minutes. After this, drain the liquid.

Next, cut the onion into half rings and add it to the fish. Pour in vegetable oil, add bay leaf and pepper. Mix all the ingredients and leave for another fifteen minutes. Lightly salted fish is ready.

It can be used for sandwiches, appetizers, salads and simply served with potatoes. There are plenty of options.

Method two (ignoble)

If you have over-salted red fish in your house, use this recipe to rid it of excess harmful salt.

So, how to soak very salty fish?

Place the fish fillets or pieces in a container. Pour cold kefir over the fish. Please note that kefir should be taken as fresh as possible. Place the fish in kefir in the refrigerator overnight (8 hours). In the morning, it will be enough to rinse it and you can use it for its intended purpose.

Sometimes, instead of kefir, it is recommended to fill red fish with whey. Housewives believe that kefir and whey remove salt from this fish more effectively. And there’s less fuss - you put it in, pour it in, take it out, rinse it and enjoy!

Methods for soaking salted fish

There are a couple of techniques for soaking fish. The technology depends on the quantity of fish, on the type of fish and on the taste, and on the taste preferences of the housewife.

You can soak fish as follows:

The simplest and most accessible method is soaking in plain water.
In milk.
In tea.
In marinades prepared according to special recipes.
Using the industrial method, when the fish is soaked under running water.

When soaking fish, always remember that additional operations worsen the taste of the product. Based on this, the process should be deliberate and moderate.

red fish

Salmon are the types of fish that are desired on a festive table. Due to their unsurpassed taste and nutritional content, they are extremely popular among housewives. And since this fish is not inexpensive, the soaking methods are not simple. The main task is not to break the dish.

Option for similar production:

Red fish is cut, from time to time, into fillets and cut into pieces.
A marinade is prepared with the addition of spices, cherry syrup, vinegar, etc. The marinade must be boiled.
The fish is placed in the warm marinade.
After everything has cooled down, the fish is washed and again poured with marinade, strained through a sieve.
Fish can remain in the marinade for up to several days. Along with this, it must be in a cool place (in the refrigerator).

There are recipes in which fish is soaked in tea, sometimes with sugar, with the addition of vodka and cherry syrup.

No less common is the method of soaking fish in milk. As a result, the fish meat becomes tender and pleasant to the taste. To do this you need:

Buy fresh milk at the store.
Put it in the refrigerator for a while.
Place the fish in a container.
Pour cold milk completely over the fish.
Place the fish in the refrigerator for a certain time.

The fish is soaked for a certain time, depending on the degree of salinity. Eg:

A large carcass, which was prepared in a huge concentration of salt, can be soaked from one to five days.
It is enough to keep medium-salted fish in the solution for a couple of hours.
If you need to quickly rid the fish of excess salt, it is better to place it in warm water or marinade.

Spicy salted fish

Spicy-salted fish is fish when spices are also used during salting. Using this technology, simple herring, mackerel, and pink salmon are salted. Such fish is soaked either in water or in milk.

Soaking technique:

You need to take a container in which the fish fits absolutely.
Water is poured into the container with vinegar added in a ratio of 10:1. The solution should not be very sharp and not bland.
The fish is placed in a container.
Then, it is placed in the refrigerator for a couple of hours.

It is possible to soak the fish in strong tea:

The fish is cut into pieces of the required size.
Prepare a container of the required size.
Strong tea is poured into it, with the addition of sugar or syrup.
The fish is placed in tea and placed in the refrigerator for a couple of hours.

The tea steeping method has its advantages. Due to the presence of tannins in it, the fish does not lose its desired qualities.

Dry fish

Dry salted fish is considered a beautiful cold appetizer, despite the fact that from time to time, due to its saltiness, it simply cannot be eaten. Such fish should be placed in water, and then soaked in milk.

Read Fermented Corn for Fishing

When soaking fish, you should always remember that in this form it is no longer possible to store it as much as the original product. The soaking time is determined, in most cases, by an experimental method; based on this, it is unlikely that it will be possible to prepare fish that would satisfy all taste parameters the first time. Therefore, it should be noted that it is better to spend some time on experiments than to give preference to low-quality store-bought products of highly questionable taste and smell.