Wet salting of fish, how to prepare brine.
First you need to prepare brine - a strong brine. Its density can be determined by dropping a raw egg into it. If it floats, the brine is strong enough. Then you need to pour a layer of salt on the bottom of the salting dish (you can use a regular bucket), place the prepared fish, sprinkling it with salt, then pour in the prepared brine. It is better to place the fish in dense rows. Head to tail, back to belly, or even better - back to belly. In this situation, oppression will work better.
to protect from sunlight.
The height of the tubercle will depend on the size of the fish: the larger it is, the heavier the load should be, but its average weight should be at least 1 kg. After 2–3 days, depending on the size of the fish, its back should become hard, the meat should become dark gray in color, and the caviar should be yellowish-red. This indicates that the fish is ready. At the same time, if you pull it by the head and tail, a sound resembling a squeak should occur.
The second method of wet salting fish.
Place the prepared fish in layers in a salting dish with the belly up and sprinkle with salt at the rate of 1 kg of salt per 10 kg of fish. To give a delicate taste, you can add 25 g of sugar to the salt. Place a circle on top of the fish, knocked down from boards or cut from a whole piece of linden or aspen, which do not emit resinous or tannin substances and do not deform in brine. Place in a cool place.
After 1–2 days, the resulting brine (brine) should cover the fish entirely. After 3–8 days, depending on the size, the fish will be completely salted. After this, it must be removed from the brine, washed in running water, dried in air and placed in a wooden box or basket for storage. Brine can be poured out, although in the old days, when salt was worth its weight in gold, merchants left it for later use. Salt was added to the brine and a new batch of fish was prepared with this mixture.
Red fish according to the classic recipe
Let's start with the classic recipe for salting red fish at home. If you prefer fattier varieties, choose trout or salmon. Pink salmon and chum salmon contain less fat.
- red fish fillet - 1 kg
- salt - 3 tbsp. l. with a slide
- sugar - 1 tbsp. l.
- peppercorns - 5-6 pcs.
- bay leaf - 2–3 pcs.
- fresh dill - for serving
Salted fish is:
Salting is one of the common ways to process fish. Table salt extracts some of the moisture from fish tissues and, saturating the remaining moisture with salt, makes the product almost inaccessible to bacteria. Partial dehydration of fish also delays the development of enzymatic processes. The shelf life of salted fish during storage depends on the degree of saturation of the moisture contained in the fish with salt. Properly salted and stored in proper conditions, fish can last for several months.
Salted fish is:
• ripening when salted and subsequently suitable for consumption without heat treatment (fatty fish - herring, salmon, etc.).
• not ripened by salting, which requires heat treatment before consumption (low-fat fish - cod, perch, carp, etc.).
Fish weighing up to 0.5 kg (ram, sabrefish) can be salted without gutting; In larger fish, the entrails are removed. Before salting, the fish is washed, cut from the head to the caudal peduncle, and the intestines and entrails connected to them are immediately removed (milt or caviar can be left).
HOME SALTED SMALL FISH “UNDER HERRING”
When salting fish, you can add various spices: bay leaf, black and allspice, currant leaf, horseradish, cumin, cloves.
This fish is eaten raw without any additional processing, like herring. After lightly washing with water, it is gutted (if it was not gutted), cleaned, cut into slices and served, garnished with onion rings and sprinkled with sunflower oil. If the fish turns out to be too salty, you can soak it in water or milk and then pour in the marinade. The marinade is prepared from vinegar diluted with water to taste, with the addition of onion, mustard, black pepper and sugar to taste. Soak the pieces of cleaned fish in the marinade for 3-4 hours.
PRE-SALTED FISH FOR DRYING AND SMOKING
It is better to salt and dry winter and spring fish: before spawning, its meat contains more fat, so after processing it has better taste. In addition, drying occurs at a time when there are still few flies and it is easier to protect the fish from their larvae.
The most delicious salted bream, whitefish, sabrefish, ide, ram, vimba, bleak, pike perch, asp, catfish, taimen, salmon, etc.
WET OR BRINE SALTED
For drying, you can pickle perch, roach, silver bream, white bream, rudd, sabrefish, asp, and small pike. For wet salting, they take fish that is not very large, no more than 1/2 kg. The fish is cleaned of scales and gutted - in the warm season it is necessary to remove the entrails, since the fish feeds mainly on greens, which decompose in the intestines. In the cool season, the fish does not need to be gutted. The fish is not washed, but only wiped with a dry towel.
During salting, the fish should be kept in as cold a place as possible. Salt penetrates very slowly into fish meat, and where the fish has not yet had time to salt, the cold protects it from spoilage. At home, you can salt fish in the refrigerator or in the cellar on ice. In camping conditions, it must be placed in a hole dug in a cool, shaded place, and covered with branches or a tarpaulin on top to protect it from sunlight.
Sometimes fish is salted in brine solution prepared in advance. To do this, dissolve enough salt in a bucket of water so that it allows a raw egg or raw potato to float on the surface. Fresh fish is immediately strung on strings or twine, 5-10 pieces each, and dipped into the prepared brine so that the brine covers it completely. Small fish are salted in 2-3 days. After this period, the fish is removed from the bucket, washed in water for 20-30 minutes and hung out to dry.
SAG AMBASSADOR
For fatty fish, saggy salting is used. The fish are hung on transverse rods in a saline solution so that the carcasses do not press on each other. The density of the solution is determined using a raw potato: it should not sink. After 5-7 days, the fish can be eaten.
If the fish is large and there is a desire to dry it whole, that is, not gutted, then before immersing it in brine, a saturated salt solution or the same prepared brine is pumped into the belly of the fish. This procedure is carried out through the mouth with a rubber syringe until the belly of the fish swells from the injected solution. Douching the belly speeds up the salting of the fish from the inside, and it does not have time to spoil.
DRY AMBASSADOR
The fish prepared in this way is placed in rows, belly up, in a barrel or tightly packed box, sprinkling the rows with salt and spices - black and allspice peas, bay leaves, and more salt is poured closer to the upper rows. The container with fish is left in a cool room, or even better - in a hole dug in a cool place, covered with plastic wrap on top.
During the salting process, the fish releases its juice, but it immediately flows out of the box through the cracks. This is the meaning of dry salting fish.
You can also salt small, uneviscerated fish using the dry method. To do this, spread any clean rag on a wide board or plywood, place the fish in rows head to tail, and always so that the back of one fish rests on the belly of another. The fish are placed in rows on top of each other, sprinkled with salt and wrapped in the same rag. The top is covered with another board or plywood, and oppression is placed on it. The brine released from the fish will seep through the fabric and flow onto the ground.
The duration of salting depends on the size of the fish and lasts in an uncooled room from 3 to 7 days. In a refrigerated room (such as a cold underground), salting of fish such as bream, pike takes up to 10 days, carp, carp, pike perch - up to 12 days.
After the end of the salting period, the fish is washed in water, soaked as needed and, strung on a string, hung out to dry.
"WALKING" AMBASSADOR
It is not always possible to take with you on a fishing trip dishes for salting fish, washing and steaming, and a stone for pressing. You can use the wet method of salting fish “in the field”: rub it with salt on some kind of board, put salt in your mouth, under the gills, wrap it in horseradish, nettle or maple leaves, put it in a plastic bag. Then bury the plastic bag with the fish in the ground in a cool place on the bank of a river or near a spring. Compact the tubercle on top: it will act as a natural oppression.
FAST AMBASSADOR
The fish is washed, the insides are removed, then each one is immersed separately for 1 minute in boiling salted water (40 g of salt per 1 liter of water).
Having taken it out of the water, the fish is immersed for 2 minutes in clean table 3% vinegar, and then for half an hour in a saturated chilled salt solution. To prepare a saturated solution, add enough salt to water so that part of it remains undissolved; the solution is brought to a boil and cooled.
The fish removed from the salt solution is hung in a cold, well-ventilated room. When dry, a thin layer of salt should form on its surface.
Kazan, grill, smokehouse, spit. – St. Petersburg: “Leningrad Publishing House”, 2010.- 320 p.
Dry salting of fish is a type of wet salting. It is best suited for fatty sea fish such as mackerel, mullet, sardines, as well as for salting fish with tender meat - the salmon and grayling families.
It is better to salt and dry winter and spring fish; before spawning, its meat contains more fat, so after processing it has better taste. In addition, drying occurs at a time when there are still few flies and it is easier to protect the fish from their larvae.
Dried, salted smelt, bleak, sopa are a real delicacy. The spawning period of these fish follows one after another, in May-June. The most delicious when salted are: bream, ide, pike perch, asp, herring, mackerel, salmon, trout.
To ensure that the fish turns out to be of truly exceptional quality, it is better to salt and dry it in an oak tub. And all because nature contains the preservative substances and spices necessary for this in oak wood.
Salting fish
Let's consider three main methods - dry, wet and brine. Also good is salted and salted balyk fish. Often you have to use the quick salting method.
For salting, use coarse salt. Its main purpose is to quickly remove moisture from fish and have a preservative effect. Coarse salt dissolves slowly at low temperatures and requires moisture, which it draws from the fish. With fine salt this effect does not work; it seems to “burn” the fish meat, quickly salts it, but does not dehydrate it.
Large fish should be gutted before salting, you can even cut it into pieces, but you should not touch the abdominal cavity so as not to damage the thin film covering the layer of fat on the abdomen. An incision is made through the back, along the ridge, cutting off the ribs from the spine on one side. Fish and fillet pieces are not washed in water, but only wiped dry with a clean cloth.
Medium fish weighing from 1 to 3 kilograms can be salted whole, and to speed up the process, a saturated salt solution is injected into the abdominal cavity through the anus using a medical syringe without a needle or a small enema with a tip made from a ballpoint pen. The density of the solution is determined by the maximum ability of the salt to dissolve in water.
The top of the fish is rubbed with salt, this removes the mucus and, in addition, salt gets clogged under the scales. Salt is also poured into the mouth and under the gill covers. After this, the fish is placed in the prepared container.
With small fish there is less hassle - they are simply sprinkled with salt and laid in layers.
Dry salting of fish
After some time, juice is released from the fish and flows out through the holes. Small dry-salted fish weighing up to 300 g are usually salted in 3 days, up to 1 kg in 5 days, and large fish in 10 or longer. All this time it should be in a cool place (refrigerator, cellar).
Wet salting of fish
Cover the bottom of the dish with salt. The fish is also laid in layers very tightly, belly up and sprinkled with salt at the rate of 1 kilogram per 10 kilograms of fish. To give the fish a special, delicate taste, add a tablespoon of granulated sugar to the salt at the rate of one spoon per kilogram. A wooden circle is placed on the fish, and heavy oppression is placed on top.
You can also prepare fresh brine by dissolving a kilogram of salt and a tablespoon of sugar in three liters of water. The resulting solution is poured into the fish placed in the container. During salting, juice, as you know, is released from fish, increasing the volume of brine and changing its concentration. Maintain the salt concentration in the brine at all times; to do this, drain the cloudy brine and replace it with a new one. Small fish are salted in 2-3 days. This method is also called wet and is used when salting small fish.
Spring salting of fish
Dry salting of fish is a type of wet salting. It is best suited for fatty sea fish such as mackerel, mullet, sardines, as well as for salting fish with tender meat - the salmon and grayling families.
The fish are suspended on transverse rods above the container, immersing the carcasses in a salt solution so that they do not press on each other. Check the density of the brine using a raw potato or a raw egg: they should not sink. After a week, the fish salted in this way is ready for consumption.
Wet salting of fish - balykovy
For large fish weighing over 1 kg.
In cold water, wash off the mucus from the fish, carefully rip open the belly and gut it. Then cut off the head just behind the gills and the tail. Using scissors, cut off the tesha (the lower part of the peritoneum to the ribs) - it is salted separately, otherwise it will be over-salted.
Wipe the carcass dry. If the fish weighs more than 2 kg, cut along the spine without cutting through the skin on the back.
To prepare the pickling mixture you need: mix 10 parts salt, 4 parts sugar, a pinch of ground cinnamon, coriander and pepper.
Rub the mixture into the scales, sprinkle it generously on the inside of the belly, and if the fish is layered, then between the layers.
Wrap each carcass separately in gauze and canvas, tie it tightly along its entire length with twine, and place it in a tray to refrigerate. Drain the brine as it appears.
After salting, remove the fish from the cloth, rinse with cold water, and wipe dry.
Arranged with nettles in an oak tub in the cold, such fish can be stored for a very long time.
Tara and oppression
For dry salting of large fish, tightly knit wooden boxes and wicker baskets are suitable. For wet salting, food-grade plastic boxes and rectangular stainless steel containers are useful. It is better to make the cover under the pressure from wood. After salting, the fish is placed in a wooden tub for storage. Small fish, up to 1 kg, can be salted directly into a tub, and then stored in it after washing.
The same tub can be used for dry and wet salting. To do this, 3-4 holes of 18-25 mm are drilled in the wall of the oak tub above the bottom level, and the plugs are ground in. When dry salting, the tub is used without stoppers.
For suspended salting, large-volume tubs of 100 liters or more are used. The depth of such a tub, 650 mm, allows you to salt fairly large fish or hang smaller ones in two rows.
Before salting, the oak tub must be soaked in clean cold water for one to two weeks.
When salting gutted fish weighing up to 500 g, the pressure can be chosen according to the principle “so that it is heavy”, the fish will be salted in any case, and if the weight of the carcasses exceeds 0.8-1 kg, then the weight of the pressure should exceed the weight of the fish by 1.2- 1.5 times.
Storage
Salted fish, after rinsing in water and drying in air, is ready for the table or for storage.
What I recommend doing: take the fish out of the curing container and remove the wet salt from the peritoneum, to do this, rinse the fish in clean brine, and then put it in the barrel in which you will store it.
The barrel, of course, must be clean. Place salted fish in a barrel - in rows crosswise, and in each row one carcass should slightly cover the other. When laying the salted fish, press it with your hands or a heavy object, placing a wooden circle under it so as not to damage the carcasses. Salted fish will not emit a specific smell if you add nettles to it when placing it in a barrel.
Seal the salted fish tightly packed in a barrel with a lid or bottom and place in a cool or very cold place. So salted fish can be stored in the cold for several months.
Drying fish
If the gills are not removed, then the dried fish will still begin to disappear due to the high concentration of various bacteria in them. In this case, even a high concentration of salt does not help.
Wet salting of small fish using spices.
You can salt fish with spices. Place the prepared small fish tightly in layers in an enamel bucket or barrel, sprinkling with salt. For 1 kg of fish with moderate salting you will need 150 g of salt. For strong salting, you need to use 250–300 g of salt per 1 kg of fish. To protect fish from spoilage, salt can be mixed with saltpeter in a ratio of 10: 1. To improve the taste of fish, various spices can be added: bay leaf, black and allspice, cumin, cloves, currant and blackberry leaves. These spices need to be poured over layers of fish along with salt and saltpeter when placing it in a container.
Very small fish (sprat, sprat, anchovy, bleak and others) are salted without cutting. You just need to rinse it thoroughly in cold water. After this, the water must be allowed to drain, being careful not to dry out the fish. Then it must be generously rubbed with salt and placed in a salting bowl. Place a weight on top - a wooden plank or circle pressed down with a stone. This will ensure that the fish is constantly immersed in the brine and, in addition, will prevent the formation of gas bubbles and cavities in the fish, in which putrefactive bacteria can develop. The duration of salting small fish is 1–3 days.
Types of brine and dosage of salt
Natural brine is a mixture of salt and juice that is extracted from fish. Artificial - a solution of table salt and water. Unlike natural solution, the salt concentration in this solution can be adjusted.
Salt dosages:
- Natural brine - 120−130 g of salt for 1 kg of fish.
- Cooked - from 150 to 400 g of salt per 1 liter of water.
You can add sugar to the brine; it is a natural flavor enhancer; the dosage is 10 g per liter of brine. If desired, you can saturate the brine with your favorite spices, but the classic spicy bouquet remains peppercorns, allspice, unground coriander and bay leaves.
A method for salting small fish with brine.
There is another way to salt fish with brine. It is more suitable for small fish. It needs to be prepared and placed in a curing container with its belly up. Then prepare the brine by dissolving salt in water. For 3 liters of water you will need 1 kg of salt, 15 black peppercorns, 3 chopped bay leaves and 3-4 currant leaves. All ingredients need to be boiled, then cool the brine and pour it over the fish. This salting method is used for salting small fish that weigh less than 250 g, as well as for salting fish weighing up to 500 g, roach, silver bream, white bream, rudd, fish, sabrefish, asp, perch and small pike.
Wet salting of fish in its own juice
Wet salting in its own juice is more suitable for cooking at home in a salted whole form of medium-sized river fish of the carp family: rudd, white-eye (sop), blue bream, roach (roach), white bream, silver bream, dace. This is what I have been doing for many years after almost every fishing trip.
A smaller predatory fish—river perch caught during winter fishing—participates separately in the process of home salting in its own juice. For large perch with a good taste of meat, you can find other, more rational uses in home cooking, in addition to salting.
Suitable for wet salting in its own juice or marinating in a spicy brine are common small sea fish: mackerel, horse mackerel, capelin, sprat, anchovy. Although small sea fish are more suitable for salting in their own juice.
And fatty herring, properly salted and then dried at home, generally has an excellent taste.
True, I haven’t seen this small sea fish in stores for a long time. Although during the times of decaying socialism, herring was considered a waste, cheap fish product, especially hated by workers on Fish Thursdays.
Dry salting of large fish.
Dry salting is suitable for large fish weighing more than 1 kg. First you need to prepare the fish, make a cut on the back, remove the giblets, do not wash, but only wipe with a dry towel. Sprinkle the inside of the fish generously with salt. Place the carcasses in rows in a wooden box or basket, the bottom of which is lined with a clean cloth. The fish should be placed belly up, sprinkled with salt. Place the box in a hole dug in a cool place and cover the top with plastic wrap.
Salting lasts 3–7 days depending on the size of the fish. During the salting process, brine is released, which immediately flows out of the box through the cracks. This is precisely the point of dry salting fish, as opposed to wet salting, when the fish must be completely immersed in brine. Some fishermen salt fish in this way and on clean matting, covering the fish on top with the same matting and putting it in a dug hole. In this case, the brine flows freely through the fabric into the ground.
Brine pickling in its own juice
Salting sea fish with wet brine spicy salting, both on an industrial scale and at home, is widely used for pickling small sea fish in the salted form of the herring line. I have already mentioned herring.
As a rule, home-salted pickled herring is used to prepare all kinds of salty snacks. During the process of spicy brine marinating, sea fish is salted at home either in brine or in its own juice.
And, by the way, if snacks are mentioned here, then not only sea fish, but also river fish can be salted at home using the wet method in regular and marinade brine.
You can also simply marinate sea fish (for example, herring) bought in a store, simply salted at home, with spicy additives.
The advantage of brine pickling and wet home-salting of sea or river fish is the ability to change the taste of the cooked object at your discretion.
Dry salting of small fish.
You can also salt small, uneviscerated fish using the dry method. For this you will need any clean cloth. It needs to be spread out on a wide board or plywood, fish should be placed on top in rows - head to tail and so that the back of one rests on the belly of the other. The fish should be generously sprinkled with salt and wrapped in the same cloth. The bundle needs to be covered with another board or sheet of plywood and pressure placed on it. During the salting process, brine will be released from the fish, which will seep through the fabric and flow onto the ground. When dry salting, 175–200 g of salt is required per 1 kg of fish. It should be noted that with this method, the salt will be unevenly distributed, and in some parts of the fish there will be more of it and in others less. The salt consumption in this case is almost 1.5 times more than with the wet method of salting fish.
When salting fish in a box or basket, you can use oppression. First you need to cover the fish with a lid made of wood, and place a heavy stone on it. It will make the fish meat more dense. During the entire salting period, it is necessary to put the fish in the cold, in a cool place or bury it. Before further consumption, salted fish, like fish after wet salting, should be thoroughly rinsed in fresh water. The washing time will depend on the type of fish and its salting. So, when dry salting small fish that has been salted for 2 days, it needs to be soaked for 2 hours. If you then plan to dry and dry the fish, it is better to soak it in the evening, so that you can then hang it to dry at night, when there are fewer flies.
Based on materials from the book “Fishing and Hunting Cuisine. A pot, a fire and the night sky." Nesterova A.
What kind of salt is there?
Salt and salt are different. It can differ in the size and shape of the crystals, as well as in color, composition and even the degree of salinity. To list and describe all its varieties, you need not an article, but a mini-encyclopedia. But let’s ignore the “elite” options (Himalayan pink, black Thursday, Celtic, Fleur de Sel, kala namak, etc.). It is unlikely that you will have the idea to use them for homemade preparations, because... All this pleasure is not cheap. Instead, we will focus on the common types that are on sale in every store and which absolutely all housewives have heard about.
Salt
Table salt (otherwise called table salt) is the cheapest and most popular. It can be found in every kitchen. It is obtained by repeated recrystallization of brine or by purifying rock salt. During these processes, almost all impurities and trace elements are removed from it, and as a result, it consists of 97% or more pure sodium chloride. This explains its extremely pure (gourmets would say “flat” or “one-dimensional”) taste.
It is table salt without any additives that is ideal for canning and pickling. This is the most reliable and time-tested way to obtain excellent quality workpieces.
To prevent the salt from caking and forming lumps (especially for finely ground products), potassium ferrocyanide (E536) is added to it. This substance is banned in several countries. In addition, table salt with such an additive is no longer suitable for canning and pickling.
Rock salt
Rock salt is not a type, but a large class of salt. Often this name refers to coarse white table salt, which is most often sold in dense rectangular packages of 1 kg. It is usually white, but occasionally has a grayish or yellowish tint. Typically contains impurities. Moreover, if they are pronounced, this may become the basis for identifying a separate species (for example, black Himalayan salt).
Rock table salt is great for pickling. But color options are usually expensive, which means it’s not entirely reasonable to use them for blanks. Not to mention the complex composition of the substance, which can affect the quality of the seams.
Iodized salt
This is regular table salt enriched with iodine. The use of this spice is one of the measures to prevent thyroid diseases.
Experts say that iodine, being a disinfectant, only improves the preservation process and slows down fermentation. But where then do the opinions come from that iodized salt increases the “explosive hazard” of cans? And when storing preparations for a long time, does it give the products a bitter taste and make them softer?
The fact is that iodized salt does not contain pure iodine. Even 20-30 years ago it was enriched with potassium iodide. The compound really had a negative effect on the taste and color of vegetables when pickled. An additional danger was posed by the active substance sodium thiosulfate.
It is impossible to find iodized salt with these additives on modern shelves. Potassium iodide was replaced with iodate, and sodium thiosulfate was completely abandoned. As a result, iodine-fortified salt no longer poses a threat to seams. It does not affect the color, taste or consistency of products in any way.
In some countries (for example, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Armenia, etc.), in order to prevent iodine deficiency, only iodized salt is sold in stores. And this did not at all deteriorate the quality of homemade preparations.
If you still doubt the reliability of iodized salt, use regular table salt. Well, or make a test batch of preparations (for example, prepare not a barrel of cabbage, but just a small bucket).
Sea salt
Sea salt is most often called salt obtained by evaporating sea water. It is produced in coarse, fine and very fine grinds and due to its rich mineral composition (iron, magnesium, potassium, calcium, zinc, iodine) it has a more interesting taste.
You can use sea salt for preservation, but there is no guarantee that your experiment will be successful. Indeed, in addition to iodine (which, as we have already discussed above, does not harm, but on the contrary, benefits pickles), it also contains other minerals, as well as algae particles. And how they will affect the quality of the workpiece is impossible to predict.
Water in different seas differs in chemical composition. This means that the resulting salt cannot have a single set of macro- and microelements. In other words, it is impossible to say with certainty that pickles for which one brand of sea salt was used will turn out just as successful the next time you decide to buy a spice from a different brand.
Another problem with sea salt is that it differs in salinity from table salt. And since there is no exact data on the ratio of table and sea salt during preservation, you can easily over-salt or under-salt the preparations.
