Homemade dried roach is a healthy and very tasty snack for foamy drinks and boiled potatoes. This fish can be consumed without fear for your own health and figure: the calorie content of 100 g of roach is only 88 kcal, and its meat is rich in vitamins and minerals valuable for the body. It is rarely used for preparing fish soup and main courses and is never smoked. The size of the roach is ideal for drying. Anyone can prepare such a snack at home; it is only important to strictly follow the rules for salting and drying roach.
Preparing the fish
You can catch this fish in almost any body of water in Russia. It is best to dry roach in the spring, when the fish is most tasty, fatty and does not yet have the smell of mud. It is during this period that many individuals with eggs are caught.
If it is not possible to catch fish on your own, when purchasing, you need to pay attention to the appearance of the roaches. Fresh specimens have shiny scales without mucus and mud, transparent eyes, and red moist gills. High-quality roach smells like river water and freshness.
Before salting the roach, it is sorted by size. Small carcasses (up to 0.5 kg) are dried whole: unpeeled fish has a more pronounced taste. Larger specimens must be gutted so that they do not spoil during the cooking process. You can leave milt or caviar in the roach's abdomen.
Prepared carcasses are washed in cold water and left without wiping to dry naturally.
Cooking features
- For drying and drying, they usually choose fresh fish, caught very recently. However, if you want to use frozen fish for this, that is also possible. To do this, it must be given the opportunity to thaw in natural conditions, without exposing it to sudden temperature changes. Trying to speed up the process of defrosting roach using a microwave will not lead to anything good.
- Roach can be dried with its entrails or gutted. Only fish up to 30 cm in size are allowed not to remove entrails. Roaches weighing 500 g or more are recommended to be dried gutted. If the fish needs to be gutted, this should be done before salting.
- The time for salting roach before drying depends on its size and salting method. Typically this process lasts from 2 to 7 days. You can determine if the fish is ready by trying to bend it. Its back should become firm, and the meat on the cut should be gray. The caviar of salted roach has a yellowish-red color.
- The composition of the curing mixture for subsequent drying or drying of fish may be the same, but for dried roach it often includes sugar.
After salting, before drying, the roach must be soaked in cold water (for the same number of hours as it was salted for days), then wrapped in a napkin or newspaper to remove excess liquid. After this, the fish is hung in a well-ventilated place, dipped in a 3% vinegar solution or covered with gauze to protect it from insects. The drying or drying process lasts from 10 to 30 days, depending on the size of the carcasses and the desired result.
You can salt not only roach, but also its caviar, which is left after salting gutted fish or after preparing it in another way.
Salting methods
To prepare dried roach at home you will need:
- 2 kg of fresh fish;
- 300 g coarse salt.
Step by step recipe:
How to distinguish a roach from a rudd
- Carcasses are rubbed with salt from the outside, especially carefully near the gills; when gutted, they are also rubbed from the inside.
- The remaining salt is poured onto the bottom of a large plastic or enamel bowl.
- The roach is placed tightly on the salt. If there are too many carcasses, sprinkle salt on each layer.
- A press is placed on top: a board, a lid with a stone or dumbbells so that the fish is constantly in the brine.
- To dry the roach, you need to salt it in the refrigerator for 2–4 days. The period depends on the size of the individuals. The readiness of roach is determined by its shade and density: they become dark and difficult to bend.
To salt roach using the wet method, prepare a strong salt solution called brine. To determine whether there is enough salt, a raw chicken egg is dipped into the solution: if it floats, you can salt the fish. The cleaned and gutted roach is lowered into the brine, a wire mesh is placed on top and pressure is applied. In this way, the fish is salted in a cool place for 3 days.
It is better to salt especially large roach using the dry method. To do this, the fish is gutted, washed, several transverse cuts are made at the ridge, then rubbed with salt, and the belly is stuffed with salt crystals. The carcasses are placed in an enamel basin with their backs down and covered with salt. The container is covered with several layers of gauze. How much to salt a large roach? Large carcasses are completely salted in the refrigerator in 4 days.
How to cook “Dried roach”
Fill the bath with water and place the roach in it.
Mix equal amounts of salt and sugar.
Prepare a bucket. Line it with a pickle bag or regular cellophane. Add a mixture of salt and sugar.
Dry the fish with paper towels and place on the bottom of the bucket. Add the remaining salt.
Place a flat plate or lid on top of the fish. Stone on top. Leave a gap for the fish, that is, the lid should not completely coincide with the bucket. Wrap it in a bag and take it to the cellar or other cool place. Minimum for 5 days. If you are not sure about the body of water in which the roach was caught, 14 is better.
Take out the bucket, stir the roach and put it back in the cellar for another day.
Dump the salted roach into a bath of water. Soak for 4 hours in water. Then drain the water. Rinse each fish thoroughly.
Then wrap each fish in a paper napkin or newspaper for two hours. Excess moisture will go away. Then string the roach onto the rope. Cover with gauze to prevent flies from sticking.
The fish is dried on ropes for a week. During this time, make a box on which the roach will ripen. Pass the rope through the box so that it looks like a lattice.
Place the fish in two layers. That is, on top of one layer we again make a lattice of rope. The roach is dried in a box for 4 weeks. Turn the fish periodically so that the fat is evenly distributed. 4 weeks and your dried roach is ready!
Soaking
Salted fish must be soaked in cold water before drying. The average time for this procedure is 2 hours. You need to focus on the period of salting the fish: if a large fish has been salted for 4 days, it needs to be soaked for 4 hours.
It is believed that a roach, filled with plain water for soaking, is ready when it begins to float. However, if you don’t like fish that are too salty, you don’t have to wait for this effect. The soaked fish is laid out on sheets of paper or towels and dried. You can hang the roach over the sink for a couple of hours.
Recipe for dried roach without gutting
Dried roach, whose calorie content is significantly higher than ram and roach, can be dried whole. To do this, well-washed, uncleaned and ungutted roach must be placed in “stacks” in a container with a generous layer of salt, and also sprinkled on each of the “orderly rows” of fish, covered with a flat lid, pressed down with a weight and left to salt for 2-3 days.
After several days, the fish should be thoroughly washed or left in cold (preferably ice) water for 1-2 hours, then dipped in a 2% vinegar solution mixed with sunflower oil - this will protect the drying fish from flies and other insects.
Particularly large specimens, according to the advice of most experts, still need to be cleaned of their entrails, since it is in them that, instead of the drying process, the decomposition process can begin, which is why the fish begins to rot and emit a nasty smell.
Drying process
The prepared roach is hung upside down on a strong cord. If the fish is cooked with its entrails, it is hung by the tail so that liquid or stomach contents do not leak out onto the meat. There should be enough space between individuals for ventilation.
If drying occurs in the summer, flies can damage the fish. To prevent this from happening, the carcasses are first dipped in a solution of 3% vinegar. For the same purpose, the roach is lubricated with vegetable oil. You can cover the hanging carcasses with gauze, and apply a vinegar solution on top using a spray bottle. You should also dry the fish at night so that by noon it will dry out and become unattractive to flies.
It is convenient to hook the ram behind the eyes with straightened paper clips
In hot weather, it is not recommended to hang roaches in the sun. To make it soft and juicy, it is placed on a drying rack, which is placed indoors in a draft. It is convenient to use special wooden boxes on which a special mesh is stretched. You can prepare such a device yourself by using a piece of gauze instead of a mesh. In winter, fish can be hung in the kitchen or in the hallway.
The ideal temperature for drying roach is 18–20 degrees. Depending on the size of the carcasses, the fish needs to be dried for 7 to 28 days. After this, the roach is placed in fabric bags and left to mature for another 3 weeks.
Drying roach, preparatory stage
Before drying roach, you need to prepare the necessary tools. We will definitely need:
- Nylon, jute or any other rope,
- bucket,
- plastic bag (you can take regular cellophane film or large bags),
- plastic or wooden box,
- piece of gauze.
The process of drying and drying fish is not a quick process, so be patient. For the same reason, starting it for the sake of one or two roach is just a waste of time, so we dry a lot of roach at once, at least several kilograms or a couple of dozen fish at a time.
In order to wither a roach, you need space. A ventilated balcony is suitable if there is no direct sunlight, a dry basement or storage room. A drying box should be placed in it. In it we stretch a kind of net from a rope on which we will lay out the fish. If there are a lot of roach, the net can be stretched at two different levels to accommodate all the fish at once. After that, we collect our catch and dry the roach. How to do this, read on!
Fish storage conditions
Dried roach should not be kept in rooms with high humidity, as it can quickly deteriorate. It is best to store the product in gauze or fabric bags in a suspended state. First you need to make sure that the roach has been completely dried, otherwise it will soon go rotten.
At low humidity and temperatures close to zero, dried roach can be stored for about a year. The condition of the product should be checked periodically. If you get rid of fish that have started to spoil in time, you can save the entire batch.
The recipe for dried roach can be changed by adding new ingredients. The taste of the fish will be more delicate if you add 30 g of sugar to the salt. Fans of savory dishes can not only salt the roach, but also season it with black or red pepper. The same spice can be sprinkled on cooked fish. To ensure that the roach acquires a pleasant sourness and becomes softer, the carcasses are sprinkled with fresh lemon juice before drying.
Salting roach for drying
Compound:
- roach – 5 kg;
- salt – 1.5 kg;
- sugar – 100 g.
Cooking method:
- Prepare the curing mixture by mixing salt and sugar.
- Rinse the roach well and pat dry with paper napkins.
- Place cling film on the bottom of the bucket and pour out some of the curing mixture. Fill the bucket with fish, sprinkling it generously with the curing mixture. Cover the roach with cling film, cover with a plate, and place a weight.
- Place the bucket in the refrigerator, cellar or other cool place for 5-6 days. After the specified time, stir the fish and leave it in the brine for another day.
The exact time to salt the fish depends on its size. A roach weighing more than 500 g is considered large.
How to dry roach at home recipe
How to salt roach for drying or how to dry it is essentially the same process, only the names are different. The above drying method is suitable not only for roach, it can also be used for other fish - silver bream, white bream, rudd, sabrefish, asp, perch, small pike, bleak, ruff and some other fish.
Let’s immediately agree that we are talking about drying fish weighing up to about 500g. Although, I dried roach weighing 900g using this method. It was salted normally and did not spoil, but roach is always well salted, and for example, 900g perch can be poorly salted using this method and then spoil. In general, the optimal weight of fish for this drying method is no more than 500g. Of course, this means the weight of one fish).
Although the topic is about roach, I’ll still write a few words about the ruff. Large dried ruff caught in winter is very tasty. I don’t know what it tastes like in the summer; I didn’t catch them in the summer and naturally didn’t dry them. There is a lot of fat in a large ruff; when you take the caviar out of the dried ruff, fat drips from it.
Now a description of the drying process. It consists of three main stages:
Salting. Small fish (250g-500g) can be salted without gutting. To gut it or not depends on the time of year when the fish was caught. In the summer, it is better to gut the roach, since in the summer it feeds on greens, which decompose during the drying process and impart a bitter taste.
It is recommended not to wash the fish, but only wipe it with a dry towel. But, despite the recommendation, I personally still wash the fish thoroughly in running water; I like it when everything is clean. By the way, if you salt the ruff, then it’s definitely better not to wash it; it produces a lot of mucus from the water. Use only coarse salt, this is important!
Pour a little salt into the bottom of an enamel bowl. Remember, only enamel or stainless steel containers should be used for pickling. Next, the fish are placed in dense rows: head to tail, back to belly. They laid out a row of fish, salted them generously, i.e. Add enough salt to cover the entire fish. Then we put the second one on the first row, salt it generously again, and so on. First, large roaches are laid, then small ones, i.e. the large one will be in the bottom row, and the small one on top.
Then, you need to put a plate on the fish and put a load on it, for example, a jar of water or a piece of brick. The fish needs to be salted under the pressure of the load. Next put it in the refrigerator. Salt slowly penetrates the fish meat, and where the fish has not yet had time to salt, the cold protects it from spoilage.
It takes 2 days to salt the roach. For perch I recommend 3 days. Normally salted fish have a hard back, dark gray meat, and yellowish-red caviar.
Soaking. After salting, the roach is washed in cold running water, and then soaked for 1-2 hours, also in cold water. In general, they believe that fish should be soaked for as many hours as it has been salted for days. It turns out that if a roach weighing no more than 500g is salted for two days, then it needs to be soaked for two hours.
The golden mean of soaking is considered to be when the salted fish begins to float. But everyone’s preferences for salinity are different, some like more salt, so there’s no need to wait for it to float to the surface. In general, to taste.
Drying. As soon as the process of soaking the fish is over, the water is drained and the roach is dried on newspaper for about half an hour. Next, usually through the eyes, the roach is strung on a strong cord. I always hang the roach head up. I haven’t tried drying it head down, I can’t say which option would be the most delicious for her).
If the fish is dried in winter, it is best to hang it in the kitchen over the gas stove. In summer, fish can be spoiled by fly larvae, so before hanging it, it is recommended to dip it in a solution of three percent vinegar. You can also grease the fish with sunflower oil. And it’s better to hang the roaches out at night; there are no flies at night. During the night the fish will have time to dry and the flies will not be dangerous.
The optimal temperature for drying fish is 18-20 °C. Drying lasts from 1 to 4 weeks, depending on the size of the fish. After air-drying, dried fish should take 3-4 weeks to mature. Store it in a cool, ventilated place in a fabric bag.
But, since we are talking about roach no more than 500g, you can skip the ripening process and, after air drying, immediately start eating it. I myself ate roach weighing 200g - 300g (of course, after drying it began to weigh less) after 8 days of air drying. normal and quite edible.
In my opinion, the most delicious dried roach comes from roach that is caught in the spring, when it is still with caviar.
What are the different drying and drying methods?
To add fish, you need to salt it, soak it and dry it. Salting roach is an important, albeit simple process. Those who do not know all the intricacies of cooking should learn from the experience of avid fishermen and experienced chefs on how to properly salt fish at home. Most often, wet and dry technologies are used.
Tip: When using the brine wet salting method, the roach is not washed, only wiped with paper towels or napkins.
