The tale of how to eat a fish and not peel the ass

2024 Author: Seth Attwood | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 15:55

The tale of how to eat a fish and not peel the ass.

Or how our ancestors harvested fish without using recipes and in any amount.

Let's start with history.

Fish is a genetic Russian food. What are only the descriptions of fish tables recommended for fasting in the old book "Domostroy":

So what's the point in this matter is the Russian people hall. Now no oligarchs boast such an abundance of fish on their table, which 500 years ago an ordinary prosperous peasant or artisan could afford.

You will say - everything has changed! Poison in stores! The fish is raised on antibiotics! … That's right. But then the peasants did not go to the shops. What prevents you from doing the same? Ask - where to buy it? Yes, in the same place as 500 years ago - at the fishermen's.

As then, and now, you cannot buy a little fish from fishermen and wholesalers. Previously, the price was set by carts. I bought a cart of fresh fish and eat it. Now everything is the same. You pass all the shops. Do not pay attention to online stores that offer small wholesale. Do not go to the markets, either retail or small wholesalers. Everywhere you will definitely get either pond poison or fish, which at least once have already been taken out of the shock freeze.

Many people believe shock freezein a modern way, preserving food. But this is not at all the case. This method was invented, relatively recently, by the naturalist Clarence Bersday. He was doing research on the role of extreme cold by observing fishermen. They prepared fish in a special way, freezing it almost instantly at -40 ° C. After thawing, the product had the characteristics of a fresh catch. By the way, the Internet is full of "grandfather's" recipes, where the author says that freshly caught fish, before smoking or salting, should be firmly frozen and thawed once at room temperature. This is a trace of the very traditions when all the catch went to the glacier at night, and in the morning to harvest. The glacier is a dug-out cellar with an insulated attic. In winter, it is filled to the brim with ice bricks, sawn on a river or lake. With proper use, some of the ice does not melt until next winter.

Real wholesalers, who have their own ships or buy their catch directly at sea, sell packs from 20 to 50 kg. This is much less than the wagons that were traded 500 years ago. Finding such a wholesaler is a little more difficult; you have to shake up dealers, stalls, store directors or restaurants. There are always acquaintances of acquaintances who will help with this.

The best there is now is Pacific salmon - Coho … There are relatively many of him and he is always wild. But this is not a reason to give up other varieties. It's all about trusting the wholesaler. The main sign is simple, if the supplier agrees to sell a pack of less than 20kg, then most likely it is a reseller.

Where to get and what to get is now clear. It remains to buy and eat … But … you can't eat 20-50 kg and you can't stuff it into any refrigeration room. So, we cut one frozen fish in half (more precisely, we saw it) and shove it into the freezer, in case, according to the mood, saw off a piece, defrost it and grill it. We defrost the rest and … Read on!

We clean

We rip up all her bellies and gut. We collect only caviar from the giblets, everything else, together with the fins, is a tax for the cat (it may not begin to covet a whole fish).

With caviar 2 options. Or we mix with an excess amount of salt, and after a few days we soak in several waters until the desired salinity. Or just fry with onions (if there is not much of it). We cut off the heads and in the freezer - we prepare for the fish soup (the gills can smell like mud, then it is better to cut them out and give them to the cat). You can also prepare cut-off belly for fish soup. There is little meat, only fat and bones - perfect on the ear. But leaving them on the carcass is also not a sin, and the carcass looks more beautiful with them.

It is convenient to peel the scales (if any) with an ordinary iron grater for vegetable puree, with small toothed breakdowns. After all, rinse the carcasses with cold water outside and inside.

Now it would be nice to cut them. You can, of course, limit yourself to skewers - spacers in the belly, but there is a chance that a hundred fish will have time to spoil until it is salted to the full depth (although this has never happened to me). Notched, many options for different tastes. You can cut the skin on the sides across the fish every 2-3 cm, to a depth of 2-3mm (good for baking). Can be cut in half along the ridge. You can also cut the floors almost to the end and unfold them like a book, securing them with a skewer. You can also cut the fish halves across the ridge from the meat side to the skin after 3-4 cm., Dividing into portions. All in your hands.

First of all, you need to enjoy the fresh fish, so as not to harvest it with the eyes of a hungry bear. Here are a couple of express methods from the old days. Cut the raw fish into thin slices on a sandwich, salt on 2 sides to taste and soak for 2 hours in the chill under the film. We eat right away, as it is very tasty, but cannot be stored. While the slices are salting, coat one carcass with mustard, honey and salt, wrap it in foil and for half an hour in the oven at 180g. C. You can stuff anything you like into the belly, onions, green leaves, garlic … Previously, they baked them with clay and coals. By the way, whatever you bake in foil, fish, poultry, lamb, pork, the combination of honey mustard and salt is the ideal traditional coating for everything. But you can add your favorite herbs to it to taste. Well, if you bake fish in foil in smoldering coals, everyone will begin to consider you the king of cooking.

Have a snack - let's continue

Rule 1 - do not freeze thawed! And if frozen, then now it is an ordinary store fish with the usual modern taste. Cool ears or cutlets from it. And that's all, do not spoil your impression of this wonderful food.

Put all the remaining, washed and cleaned fish tightly in a trough, basin or barrel, sprinkling with salt. Now a question for connoisseurs - how much salt to pour? How many grams per kilogram? Taste? Find advice on the internet? All wrong.

Salt in Russian

Under the fish, on the fish, between the layers of fish, there should be at least enough salt. You literally wrap it in centimeter-long salty fur coats, and then add a little more. No spices, no vinegar, no garlic or lemon. Only fish and salt. Lots of salt. That the salt could not be absorbed all, but only part of it. There is only one assumption. Before salting, you can lightly coat the fish with liquid honey. This will help her future fermentation follow the lactic acid scenario. If your honey is thick, melt a little in a water bath and cool. But you can skip the honey.

By the way, until the fish is salted, you can bake it right in the oven or oven. Also a very tasty old recipe.

We leave salted fish under slight pressure for a day. That is, the lid enters the inside of the container and rests on a small cobblestone. Exactly one day later, the fish is ready to eat. It is, of course, terribly salty and tasteless, but now at any stage it can be tasted and cooked to taste without recipes. Further there are several preparation scenarios, we will outline them in more detail.

If you plan to store the fish for a long time or marinate it with spices, then mix the fish with the salt remaining in the barrel, the water that has gone away and again, under light oppression for a day. We do not add or subtract anything. It is better to keep the fish in the cold, but not in the cold. The cover for the oppression should not contain glue (that is, plywood, chipboard and fiberboard are not suitable). You can put cheesecloth between the oppression and the fish. The oppression should be very light, so as not to crush the fish. The weight of the lid itself is often sufficient. If, while stirring (very neat), there is no salt left in the fish at all, you can add a little of it. Iodized salt is under a terrible ban. Only coarse, stone, without additives such as anti-caking and anti-sticking. If the fish has remained well wrapped in salt, then you can not stir it and do not touch it at all. So it is salted for a total of 4 days. You can also leave it in salt for a long time. Salt preserves and preserves it. It is advisable in the cold and so that the liquid does not evaporate (the fish leaves the salt with water), that is, close it more tightly and sometimes add clean water, but make sure that the salt does not completely dissolve. Now natural homemade salt has begun to appear, which enthusiasts harvest using old-fashioned methods and offer surpluses in Internet ads.

Further, after one, four or more days of salting, there are 2 options for development. The first is to immediately hang the fish out to dry. I tie it with linen twine and hang it from the eaves of the kitchen curtains. The fish is dried for 2 weeks until it is full of breadcrumbs (in summer you can put gauze bags on it against flies). Then he pounds or prays into powder (with the skin). This is the most useful forgotten Russian recipe. Now, if you want to turn vegetable soup into fish soup, just use this powder instead of salt. The taste cannot be compared with anything, but the smell … In general, cook some of the fish like this - you will not regret it.

They also hang fish on hooks, but I always use twine for any preparation.

The rest of the fish needs brine. Tell me honestly, you never bothered that now everything ZA-salted in RAS-salt, and not in ZA-sol? If you were surprised, then you are absolutely right. Now it is impossible to find the correct definition of the Russian word RASOL. So I will formulate it myself.

Brine - FRESH !!! Water or unleavened decoction of spices, which is poured into a salted product for salting it. It can be cold and hot. It happens flowing and non-flowing. There are single, double, triple, etc. All depending on the product.

This is how everything was salted in Russia. And Ogurtsi and fish and meat and caviar. Salted and then salted. And it was on this brine that those legendary Russian pickles were cooked (which is what I wish for you).

Salt to taste

First, one hour in slowly running water. We put our trough in the bath, lightly press the fish with a lid so that it does not float away and turn on the stream of water (preferably through a hose to the bottom of the trough). If salted for one day, then usually this is quite enough. But we must remember - we cook in principle without a prescription and just try and solve.

If salted for several days, you may also need a stagnant brine, or even double or triple one hour each change of water. If you want to marinate in your signature spices, then pour in a chilled broth instead of the last brine. Lavrushka, greens and black pepper are enough, but you can put any spices, mustard and coriander seeds, and even grated horseradish or its leaves. Instead of double water brine, you can pour brine with spices, but not for an hour, but for 4-6 hours. We try and solve everything to taste, not prescription.

Now we have no options - all the salted fish we hang to dry for one day … Let's call it rather dryingdescribed above when cooking soup dressing. For God's sake, do not forget to cook the pickle in brine - you will not regret it (if you do not oversalt it).

And so, congratulations! You are ready to fish with low salt. Bon Appetit

Here there are more cooking options. The first is "BALYK" … It is made only from thick-sided fish with a fleshy back. You can take for him ONLY fish that has been salted for at least four to six days and is just as well salted. The method is simple - let's leave it to dry for another 3-4 days (to taste). Perhaps this is the most delicious way of cooking. But the balyk is eaten up so quickly and it is so difficult to break away from the started piece that it ends very quickly.

The next option is dried

The same balyk is left to hang until it dries completely (two weeks in total). Excellent preparation for the trip - minimum weight and maximum calories.

Now let's go back to the dried fish for one day and smoke it. Of course, you can put it in the ear and in cutlets and fry and twirl sushi or eat it with bread. Very tasty with cheese and pancakes, especially if you make a pancake-fish-cheese cake. But there will be enough imagination for this without my advice.

And so, smoking

Hot smoking the simplest and fastest. There are a bunch of homemade smokehouses and they are all arranged according to the same principle. A thick-bottomed pan is placed on a gas stove, chips or sawdust for smoking are poured on the bottom, a screen is placed over them - a steel sheet that does not allow heat from the bottom to directly bake the product under the lid. Above the grill or a hanger for products, above is a tight lid with a water seal along the rim and a branch pipe for a hose to the hood. On the street, you can simply light the coals or spread a compact brazier, cover it with wood chips or green branches (alder, for example). Cover everything with a vertical barrel without both dons. Hang the fish upstairs and cover the barrel with a large, loose lid. With experience, you can learn how to make a smokehouse from any container, monitoring the temperature and smoke. Smoke the fish with a hot method for 40 minutes. During this time, it is baked and cannot be smoked longer.

The second option is more classic for Russia - cold smoking

This is a more reliable preservation and preservation of the properties of the product. The smokehouse looks the same, only a small internal smoke source (snake) is placed in it and no external heating comes in.

Or chips or branches smolder separately, and smoke enters the smoking cabinet through a cooling chimney. This is the most traditional method. The temperature in the cabinet must remain at room temperature and the fish must be smoked for at least 24 hours without interruption. Then she should lie down in the chill for a day and be evenly saturated with smoked products. You can smoke a fish salted for only one day and salted for an hour with running brine in a bathtub or stream, but always dried for one day.