How to salt whole herring - a simple and tasty recipe

Salting herring is not difficult, and raw, frozen herring is significantly cheaper than ready-made herring. And with salting yourself, you can adjust its sharpness and taste, and know for sure that the fish is fresh.

Take freshly frozen herring and leave it to thaw on its own. Do not use a microwave oven or other accelerated defrosting for this.

It is better to salt the herring whole, without gutting the fish. Herring is often sold with caviar or milk, and they are also very tasty and healthy.

Store-bought herring often tastes bitter. All this happens because the fish's gills are not removed. They give an unpleasant taste to salted herring. Remove the gills or cut off the head of the herring, but be careful not to damage the eggs.

Wash the fish and place the prepared herring in a plastic or glass container. Do not use metal utensils. Upon contact with metal, fish oil oxidizes, the herring “loses weight” and acquires the taste of old iron. If the fish is not completely thawed, it doesn’t matter. It will melt during the salting process, and it only needs to be thawed to make it easier to remove the gills.

Prepare the brine.In the classic version, the brine consists of water, sugar, salt and spices. Spices are a special topic; depending on your preferences, you can vary the combination of spices, making the brine spicy or regular.

Regular brine:

• 1 liter of water;
• 3 tbsp. l. salt;
• 1 tbsp. l. Sahara;
• 1 laurel leaf;
• peppercorns, cloves.

Boil water in a saucepan and dissolve sugar and salt in it. Add spices to the boiling brine and remove the pan from the stove. Now the brine should brew and, of course, cool.

Pour brine over the herring until it completely covers the fish. If necessary, prepare a little more brine, this is very important.

Cover the container with the herring with a lid and simply leave it on the kitchen counter for 4 hours. During this time, the herring will melt and become saturated with brine. Place the container with the herring in the refrigerator and place it on the middle shelf.

If the herring is large and fatty, it will be ready on the third day; small herring will be enough for pickling for a day. The herring is stored in the same brine, but do not brine it too much at once. Long-term storage is possible, but there is no point. After all, fresh frozen herring can be bought in a store at any time of the year, and salting it is not so long or difficult.

How to salt a whole herring, watch the video: