How to salt fresh pike - three salting recipes

Pike is not at all uncommon in our reservoirs, and even a novice angler can catch it. And if you are lucky and the catch is large enough, you will probably think about how to save it? One way to preserve pike is salting. No, not even one, but several ways to salt pike. The only question is what kind of fish you want to get. Let's look at the main types of salting fish.

Ingredients: salt, spices, pike
Time to bookmark: Whole year

Content

1 Simple pike ambassador
2 Salting pike for smoking
3 Dry salting of pike

Simple pike ambassador

This method for salting pike is called “herring”. Ready salted pike is used in the same way as regular herring.

First of all, the fish needs to be washed, scaled, and the head and fins trimmed.

Then, very carefully open the belly and remove the entrails. If the pike contains caviar, it can be salted separately.

If the pike is small, cut it crosswise into several portions. In large pike, it is advisable to remove the backbone and large bones.

Place the prepared pike in a deep vessel or jar of a suitable size and prepare the brine.

For 1 liter of water you need:

3 tbsp. l. heaped salt;
Bay leaf;
peppercorns;
other spices for salting fish.

Boil the brine until the salt dissolves, add spices and remove the pan from the stove. For this recipe, the pike needs to be filled with cooled brine so that it completely covers the fish by at least 3 cm.

Cover the jar with a lid and put it in the refrigerator for 5-7 days.After this time, the brine can be drained, sprinkle the pike pieces with lemon juice and sprinkle with pickled onions and herbs.

Salting pike for smoking

Large specimens of fish are chosen for smoking. In this case, it is not necessary to clean the scales, just as it is not necessary to remove the head; it is a matter of taste and the design of the smokehouse. Gut the pike, make a deep cut along the back and, without cutting the fish into pieces, place it in a suitable container.

Prepare the brine in the same way as in the previous recipe, but you need to pour hot, almost boiling brine over the pike. After this, cover the container with the fish with a lid and leave it to salt for 3-7 hours, depending on the size of the fish.

The salting of the fish is completed, and you can start smoking.

Dry salting of pike

Small pike are usually dried, and for this it is better to use dry salting. With this method, the fish does not need juiciness and softness, and the dry method speeds up drying, because salt draws moisture from the meat.

Wash the pike, rip open the belly and remove the entrails. Take a handful of coarse salt, pour it inside the belly with a generous hand, and rub the fish with salt on all sides. Place the fish tightly, simultaneously filling empty spaces with salt. There is no such thing as too much salt, and pike’s meat is quite dense, so it won’t be oversalted even if you bury it in salt.