How to dry fish at home

Dried or dried fish is a special delicacy to any table. Not a single friendly gathering with beer and favorite snacks is complete without such a fish. Properly salted and dried fish has a rich taste and delicate mouth-watering aroma. But what is the difference between dried fish and dried fish? Stockfish are pre-salted carcasses that are subsequently dried. They are ready to eat and can be eaten without additional processing. But dried-fresh fish is just dried meat that is harvested for the winter. Before use, it needs to be fried or boiled. Such meat is often dried in the northern regions to preserve a healthy product for the winter.

Often people mean drying fish drying. Dried fish, as a rule, is prepared on an industrial scale. Dried fish is called the same process, but at home. Today you will learn how to make dried fish properly so that it turns out to be tasty, safe and healthy.

Which fish to choose

It is best to dry the fish in autumn and spring. At this time, the fish is the fattest and tastiest. At home, you can salt any fish, but perch, roach, rudd, bream, perch, roach are best suited for this. As a rule, after good fishing, the largest fish go to the ear and frying, and those smaller ones go to salting.

It is best to dry a fresh fish caught no more than 10 hours ago. In this case, the salting will be of high quality and safe. If you salt the fish yesterday, then it can turn out with a "sweetheart." Large and small fish should be salted in different dishes, since the time of their salting is not the same.

How to dry fish

The technique of drying and drying fish differs only in the degree of drying of the meat. That is, in fact, stockfish is not a completely dried carcass. To make the fish meat tasty, salted and aromatic, you need to go through all the stages of its processing.

Preparation
Fresh fish should be dipped in a bath with a little water. Gently flush river mud and sludge from the scales. It is very important to rinse the fish with your hands to remove mucus from its surface. The less mucus remains on the fish, the tastier and more appetizing it will be.

Then the fish should be gutted. Some anglers and hostesses salted the fish completely, but if the carcass is medium-sized, it is better to remove all unnecessary. Dried and gibleted fish acquires a light bitterness, which gives it bile. With giblets, only small fish are dried.

In advance you need to choose dishes for salting. It can be a plastic bucket, enameled dishes, a tin basin. Be prepared for the fact that after salting, the container will smell like fish for a long time.

Pickling

The container with the fish is covered with gauze and left in a cool place. You can put a bucket of salted fish on the balcony (in the cold season), in the cellar or basement. Putting fish in the refrigerator even with a tightly closed lid is not recommended - all products will smell like fish. In this form, the fish should stand for several days. When the fish gives juice, which is called brine, it will need to be pressed with oppression so that all the fish are completely covered with brine. Oppression also prevents air from collecting in the abdomen of the fish. As oppression, you can use a large stone, a weight, or a container of water. Under oppression, the fish should be another 2-3 days.

After the specified time, the fish must be checked.A well-salted carcass has a hollow back and fairly hard sides. Take the head of the fish and pull its tail. If the spine made a characteristic sound - the fish is ready. If not, leave the carcasses to salted for another day.

Soaking
The next step is soaking the fish. This is done in order to wash off excess salt from the fish. Pour the contents of the bucket into a bathtub filled with water. Immediately need to sort the fish. Those that settled at the bottom - salted well, they are suitable for long-term storage. And those that come up are best used first - they won’t last long.

Fish should be kept in water for 4-5 hours. After that, it is carefully washed manually - both from the outside and from the inside. If the salt and mucus are not washed off, you can rub them with a soft sponge, but be careful not to damage the fish scales. Without her, she could not be stored for long.

Drying
When all the fish has been washed, it needs to be dried. For drying, you need to prepare large rings of wire, on which the fish is worn sideways, that is, through the eye holes. In this form, the fish will dry out much better.

It is very important to protect the fish from bees, flies, mosquitoes and other insects. Harmful insects can leave an infection on the carcass, which will lead to decay of the product; In addition, it is much more pleasant to eat clean fish and to be sure that a swarm of flies did not land on it. You can cover the fish hung for drying with gauze or make a gauze frame. Better yet, hang fish to dry in the evening when there are no more flies. By morning, the fish will dry out, and the flies will not be afraid of it.

It takes about 5-7 days to dry the fish. It is very important not to dry the carcasses, otherwise they will turn out not dried, but dried. Dry the fish in a well-ventilated place, away from sunlight. To check the fish for readiness, you just need to try it. If you smell raw fish, it requires additional drying. A good dried fish is not completely dry, but a little soft at the back.

When the fish is ready, it should be removed from the wire, transferred to canvas or paper bags and stored in a cool place. Fish dried in this way will be suitable for consumption within six months.

Useful Tips

Here are some more useful tips to help you with drying and salting fish:

1. When you soak the fish after salting, you need to change the water several times for fresh.
2. Some fishermen dry the fish by hanging it not by the head, but by the tail. This should not be done, otherwise the fat will leak out and the fish will turn out dry and tasteless.
3. If you do not have time for a long drying of fish, you can use an electric dryer. Conditions with a certain temperature and a special degree of ventilation allow you to bring the fish to readiness in 6-8 hours!
4. In cold regions, fish is kept as follows. After salting, it is not dried, but frozen. After lying in the cold for about a month, the fish becomes very tasty and can be stored for quite some time.
5. If you are afraid that flies will land on fish, carcasses can be greased with vinegar.
6. In order for the fish to dry well from the inside, you need to insert toothpicks into the walls of its abdomen.
7. In summer, the fish is not dried - high temperatures can cause the fish to rot out and not dry out. In addition, dried fish in hot weather turns out to be bitter.
8. In ancient times, fish was salted in wooden barrels. From this she received a special woody aroma, which to this day is considered a special delicacy. Some manufacturers of stockfish have still maintained a similar production procedure.
9. Fish should not dry in the sun. Otherwise, all the fat will melt, the fish will turn out dry and lean.
10. Oven-dried fish is popular in some areas. After washing it is left to dry not in air, but in the oven. In this case, the preheated oven must be turned off, the fish will languish.The fish is previously placed in clay pots. Fish prepared in this way is soft and well salted.
11. If stored improperly in bags of dried fish, a sour or musty smell, mold, mucus may appear. Such fish cannot be eaten.
12. Small fish, such as smelt or small perch, are sluggish to sluggish. It is necessary to soak the washed fish in salt water for 20 minutes, and then hang to dry.

These subtleties and nuances will help you dry the fish so that it can be stored for a long time, as well as preserve its taste and benefits.

It is difficult to find a more suitable beer snack than dried or dried fish. If you often go fishing - do not give extra catch to neighbors. Fish can be easily stored if dried properly. And then you can enjoy the aromatic taste of salted fish all year round.

Video: how to dry and salt fish