Homemade lightly salted capelin - a simple and tasty salting recipe

Tags: Lightly salted capelin, Salted fish

There are several reasons why lightly salted capelin is not so often seen in stores. It is often sold frozen or smoked. In Kulinariya stores they also have fried capelin, but not lightly salted capelin. Of course, this is a little surprising, because lightly salted capelin is very tender, tasty and healthy, so what’s the secret why you just can’t buy it in the store?

Ingredients: lemon, capelin, sugar, salt, spices
Time to bookmark: Whole year

The answer is simple. It is its tenderness and fat content that do not allow it to lie in brine for a long time. After 3 weeks, soft meat spreads, and fat, when oxidized, gives an unpleasant metallic taste. This should be taken into account when salting and storing at home.

But, we will not salt capelin on an industrial scale, and to begin with, we will take only 1 kilogram of freshly frozen capelin. It needs to be defrosted, but only under its own power. You cannot use a microwave or hot water for this.

Place the frozen capelin briquette in a bowl and fill with cold water. As it thaws, pick it out and put it in a container in which it will be salted.

While the capelin is defrosting, put in a mortar:

3 tbsp. l. salt;
1 tbsp. l. Sahara;
3 bay leaves;
Peppercorns, cloves, cumin, or other spices that you like best.

Crush the pepper and cloves with a pestle and chop the bay leaves and mix it all well.

Place all the capelin in a bowl, cover with spices and sprinkle the capelin with freshly squeezed juice of half a lemon. Stir to distribute juice and spices evenly.

Place a wooden plank on top of the fish and put pressure on top.

Now, you need to put the vessel in the refrigerator, on the lowest shelf. The time for salting capelin with dry salting, without brine, is about 72 hours.