When it comes to the most accessible and at the same time "efficient" and delicious snack to beer, dried capelin immediately comes to mind.
It is so affordable that it is not difficult to buy it in any store. Of course, you should be careful: you never know under what conditions it was withered and stored.
As an option, capelin can be dried on your own, and this does not require extra effort. But there will be maximum confidence in the quality of the resulting fish delicacy.
A couple of words about capelin
In general, this valuable marine commercial fish belongs to the smelt family. The area of distribution of capelin is the northern seas: the Arctic, the Atlantic, the Pacific Ocean.
This is a small fish: the average size in length does not exceed 20 - 25 cm. The body is elongated with a silvery color. The name comes from the Finnish language - maiva - "bait, fry, small fish."
It is rich in vitamins A and B, surpassing meat in their content. Capelin also contains omega-3 fatty acids, amino acids, selenium, calcium, iodine and other substances necessary for the human body. According to the content of easily digestible protein (about 25% of the total mass), capelin is an exceptionally valuable food product.
Capelin is also useful in the presence of cardiovascular problems, hypertension. The fatty acids that this fish is rich in have a positive effect on reducing blood cholesterol. With a calorie content of about 150 kcal per 100 g, capelin is an exceptional dietary product.
Popular recipe for dried capelin
In order to competently wither capelin at home, you can use the recipe below. Just a couple of days and delicious dried fish will already be on your table. Simple, delicious and affordable.
Required Ingredients:
- 1 kg of fish;
- a glass of non-iodized rock salt;
- half a glass of sugar;
- half a teaspoon of hot red pepper;
- a tablespoon of vegetable oil.
Capelin must be salted before drying
Cooking technique:
- First you need to wash the fish. Then put in a bowl where the ambassador will take place.
- For the curing mixture, take a glass of salt, mix with half a glass of sugar. Roll the fish in it. Leave for two hours. If the fish available is less than a kilogram, the curing mixture can be “halved”. In any case, two parts of salt need one part of sugar.
- Then it is important to check the quality of the salting on the example of one fish. Rinse it, try it "for salt". It is clear that this is an individual question. If the salinity of capelin suits, you can further wash all the available fish. At the same time, it must be remembered that during drying, the fish will lose excess moisture and acquire a salty taste. In practice, 1.5–2 hours of salting is normal for such delicate marine fish as capelin. By the way, you need to wash small fish carefully, do not expose them to water pressure so that they do not fray.
- Dry the washed capelin with paper towels. Lay on cutting board, smear with a brush vegetable oil. Sprinkle the fish with hot red pepper on both sides. Instead, you can use other spices to taste: coriander, juniper, star anise, cumin, allspice and pink pepper and others. The recipe specifies the minimum amount of spice. You can take more, guided by your preferences.
- The prepared fish should then be hung in a cool place, for example, on a balcony. To fix the fish, you can use all kinds of clips, clothespins, even paper clips (pre-unbent). You can pass the wire through the eye holes. Gauze is ideal as protection against existing insects. The drying time of the fish is a day.
- In a day, it will reach “condition”: it will slightly wither, but will not be dry, there will be enough fat left.
- Then the fish can be eaten or left to dry longer. Option for more patient people.
The result is an excellent dried capelin, which must be immediately served at the table as an appetizer for a foamy intoxicating drink.
Alternative option
If available in household household dryers (dehydrators) can also wither capelin without any problems.
Required Ingredients:
- 1 kg of fresh fish;
- one and a half glasses of water;
- a tablespoon of salt;
- 5 cloves;
- five peas of allspice and black pepper;
- a couple of bay leaves.
Cooking technique:
- Of all these ingredients, except for fish, you need to make a brine. Heat it in a saucepan, bring to a boil, then cool.
- Pour the washed fish with the prepared brine. Put oppression. Set aside in the refrigerator overnight.
- In the morning, spread the salted capelin on the trays of the dryer. Drying will take about 8 hours at the maximum temperature of the dryer (about 60 degrees Celsius).
Ready capelin naturally combine with beer
Unlike many other dried foods, capelin is no longer used as a component of complex dishes. It is eaten, as a rule, immediately and quickly. For other purposes, it simply does not remain.
Dried capelin at home is very tasty! I used to think that drying fish is extremely difficult and you need to have some professional ideas about it, but in fact it turned out that the main thing in the process of creating a dish is patience! Especially when the fish is already hanging and beckons with its appetizing appearance, but you need to wait about 2-3 days.
Of course, many capelin is dried in the summer season, but I decided on such an experiment in late autumn and did not regret it - the capelin dried up at room temperature above the radiator at +22 in two days without annoying flies and various other insects. Remember that the fish must be hung where there are air vibrations, and even better - dried in an electric dryer, if such equipment is available in your home.
Two hours of salting warm water it is quite enough for the fish to absorb salt into itself - you don’t need to keep it any longer, add salt! You can add some granulated sugar, but I had sweet paprika.
So, prepare the necessary ingredients and start cooking!
Pour salt and ground black pepper into a deep baking sheet, container or gastronomy container. Other seasonings - optional!
Fill with warm water, about 30-35 ° C, dissolve the salt. Rinse the capelin. Put it in brine and leave at room temperature for 2 hours.
Remove the fish from the brine, blot it with wet wipes or towels - a mandatory condition, since it will still need to be oiled.
Mix ground paprika with odorless vegetable oil in a separate container.
Cover a baking sheet or board with parchment paper, lay the capelin almost overlapping and grease with the prepared dressing on all sides.
Hang on a thread above the radiator or in the air so that the fish is well ventilated. Now the most important thing is that fat will drip from it, since capelin is oily, so be sure to place a baking sheet or bowl under the fish, otherwise everything around will be splashed. So that the fish do not touch each other, I glued pieces of adhesive tape between them on a thread, you can use paper clips. In this form, dry the capelin for about 2-3 days until the desired condition. In an electric dryer, this will take about a day, depending on the power of the equipment (I did not dry there, so I can’t say for sure).
Remove the finished fish from the thread, put it on a dish or parchment paper, serve with beer: alcoholic or non-alcoholic - your choice. Dried capelin is best stored in the refrigerator - about 2-3 days, or in the freezer, but wrapped in parchment paper, and then in a plastic bag!
Happy you!
Frozen capelin Mallotus villosus Fam. Osmeridae, Smelt is not so expensive in food markets.
You need to try to buy it with a frozen piece, beaten off from a briquette, and not in bulk: this way there is a higher hope that the fish has not yet been defrosted after being caught.
We freeze it ourselves - at home in a pallet, and it is quite acceptable to do this at room temperature. Some fish will look crumpled - it's not scary: just when frozen, they are randomly piled on top of each other, and those that lie across are inevitably imprinted on their neighbors.
We do not gut the fish and in no case wash it. But we sort through, discarding the crushed and flabby: the fish should be elastic.
Thinly pour Extra salt on the bottom of an enameled or even plastic container and lay the capelin in layers, sprinkling with fine salt: even grinding salt No. 1 for small tender fish is already rough.
You can insert a plastic bag without holes into the salting container: then it will be easier to wash.
When salting capelin, I don’t even put oppression on top. We remove the container in the refrigerator and cover with a lid so that the fish and other products do not exchange odors.
After 24 hours, the fish is salted. We wash the fish from salt residues, drain the brine from the container, put the fish back, pour cold water and soak for 40 min. from oversalting.
The technology is exactly this: the fish must take more salt than necessary - so that the taste becomes balanced - and then give the excess.
We also salt other small sea fish: herring and Black Sea horse mackerel (if you are a happy resident of the Black Sea coast: Ukraine, it seems, does not supply horse mackerel to the Russian Federation).
After soaking, we drain the water and hang the fish for drying - although you can eat it already after this wet salting: remove the flesh with the edge of a fork from the spine, remove the intestines and the black lining of the abdominal cavity and eat on white bread with butter.
Well, I hung it on a string (it will drip from the fish: do not forget to put a tray or a cuvette under the fish! And to drip less, hang it upside down) for 3 days: I needed not wood-cured, but hanging.
But it is already quite dense: if you lift it with two fingers, the fish will remain straight.
If we are already talking about herring and horse mackerel above, they are not spoiled by drying, but simply eaten lightly salted.
In my batch, the fish was with caviar, and even the 4th stage of maturity. This means that the eggs in the egg are mature, formed, each can be seen separately and can be separated from each other - but they themselves do not spread yet (this would be the 5th stage).
One of the reasons why capelin is popular as a snack is its low cost. At the same time, this small-sized fish has a unique taste, especially if it is cooked at home on its own. In fact, making high-quality dried capelin is simple - you just need to be patient and follow the recipe.
Description
Such a simple appetizer is popular all over the world among fans of salted fish. Of course, it is much easier to buy it in a store, but you have to overpay. You can cook fish yourself using the simplest ingredients that are easy to find in the kitchen.
cooked with my own hands capelin turns out not only tasty, but also useful. In this case, you do not have to worry about the quality, since the chef is in full control of the entire process.
To create dried capelin, you need to create certain conditions, only then it will be possible to wither it well. If there is no time and you want to speed up the process, then you can use an electric dryer, if you have experience, an oven is also suitable as an assistant.
It is worth saying that despite the size, capelin boasts a large amount of fatty acids, and they have a positive effect on the immune system, internal organs, thyroid gland. Such food contains many vitamins, microelements, including iodine, which is essential for children and adults with unstable hormonal levels to stabilize the thyroid gland. There are 336 kilocalories per hundred grams of the product, so such a product cannot be called a dietary one.
It should also be noted that capelin can be poisoned if you buy it spoiled in a store - this is another reason that speaks of the advantage of making dried capelin on your own.
Ingredients
As a rule, in order to make dried capelin, only the following ingredients are needed:
- kilogram of fish;
- 50 grams of salt, you can reduce or increase this amount depending on the taste of the cook.
Such salting is called dry, because no water is used. The fish is simply covered with salt, mixed well and left in this form for 5 hours.
Some people add sugar, but then it's better to use brown. For a kilogram of fish, it will take 30 grams. Can be used:
- Dill seeds;
- red pepper flakes;
- coriander;
- ground black pepper.
All these spices make the fish more flavorful.
Cooking process
If the fish was bought frozen, then it should be put in the refrigerator for the night so that it thaws there. This is the perfect way to defrost a product. Do not use microwave, hot water to quickly get rid of ice, because in this case the product will no longer be usable.
After the fish is salted dry. After five hours, all salt and spices are washed off, dried on paper towels and strung on a rope. Each individual fish is placed on a nylon thread through the eyes. In this form, the fish is suspended in a well-ventilated area.
The process takes from one to three days, the duration depends on the weather: when it is hot, the fish is dried faster, when it is humid and cool, it takes longer.
You can make a snack at home with a slightly different recipe. It will require:
- kilogram of fish;
- 20 grams of dry red pepper flakes;
- 20 grams of dill seeds;
- 30 grams of salt;
- 10 grams of sugar;
- 50 grams of vegetable oil.
First, the capelin is washed well under running water, then it is dried and sprinkled with a mixture of salt, sugar and seasoning. After five hours, it will need to be washed again, dried, smeared with vegetable oil and strung on a rope to hang on the street or balcony.
Final stage
It is not enough just to hang capelin in a suitable place, it is important to protect it from insects that would gladly lay their larvae inside. This is especially true for flies.
You will need to take gauze and moisten it well with vinegar, then cover the fish. It is this measure of protection that will allow you to get a product that is safe for health. The vinegar will wear off over time, so the gauze is soaked several times during the time the fish is cooking.
The finished snack can be stored in a bag in the refrigerator, as it has a particularly bright aroma, or you can simply freeze it to increase its shelf life. Hanging fish is cooked much faster in a dryer or electric dryer, since ideal conditions are created inside. You can leave the marinade any of the listed ones, only the capelin is not hung out on the street, but placed inside the equipment.
How to wither capelin at home, see the video below.
To the question How to properly salt and wither capelin? given by the author Yovetik the best answer is How to salt capelin.
Home » Food » Culinary recipes
How to salt capelin
Elena Kulagina by KakProsto Tip added on May 6, 2011 Add to favorites
Fatty varieties of fish are very useful, capelin is just one of them. It contains a lot of fish oil, which has a beneficial effect on the human body. Salted capelin has a pleasant taste and incomparable aroma. It drains fairly quickly.
Cooking time
27 minutes
You will need
1 kg capelin
700 gr. water
salt 4-5 tbsp. spoons
sugar 10 gr.
spices to taste.
Instruction
1
Rinse the fish in cold water. If you do not like to clean salted capelin before eating, then gut it before salting.
2
Boil 700 gr. water and add 4-5 tbsp. spoons of salt, 10 gr. sugar and spices to taste. From spices, you can put bay leaves, cloves or peppercorns.
3
Cool the brine until room temperature, and fill them with fish. Capelin can be salted in glass jars or enamelware.
4
Place the fish bowl in cool place. Capelin should be ready in 24-36 hours. The longer it stays in the brine, the more salty it will be. In order not to oversalt the fish, the brine must be drained. But do not forget that fish without brine will not be stored for a long time.
Answer from Vladimir Flakov[guru]
Salting and drying fish
Salting fish
You can salt both sea and river fish. Small fish (weighing up to 1.5 kg) are not gutted before salting, but large ones are cut along the abdomen and along the dorsal fin, the intestines are removed (caviar and milk can be left), salt is poured into the cuts, the fish itself is also rubbed with salt, poured into gills, head. Previously, fish was salted in barrels. Now a saucepan will do. Salt is poured at the bottom, fish are laid in rows with the belly up, each row is sprinkled with salt. (For 10 kg of fish: 1.5-2 kg of salt). If one fish carcass is salted, you can rub it with salt, and then wrap it in several layers of a clean canvas rag soaked in saline and slightly wrung out. Wrapping the fish in a rag, you can lightly sprinkle the latter with spices to taste. Fish in a barrel, placed in a cool place (cellar) will be ready in 1.5-2 weeks. A lone carcass can be put in the bottom of the refrigerator or in another cool place.
Drying fish
The fish is dried in bundles, pulling a twine through the eyes with a large needle or wire. Fresh, just caught fish should be put aside for a while in a pile and so stand for several hours. Salt in the same way as described above, only in bundles. Pour in brine (4 parts of water - 1 part of salt), salt for about 2-5 days. They take out the fish from the brine and let it lie down in a pile. Then they hang it so that the fish hang without touching each other, and with their belly out. Dried terms: a month or a little more - for large fish, for small fish - a couple of weeks.
How to dry fish?
Suitable for this are roach, sabrefish, rudd, bream, silver bream, roach, capelin, etc. The most common are two drying methods: dry and brine.
Dry.
Well-washed fish, unpeeled and not gutted, are placed in rows in a container with a layer of salt. Salt is sprinkled on each laid row. They cover the fish with a flat lid (wooden, metal, flat stone), a weight (weight) is placed on it so that the fish is pressed down. After four hours, a brine will appear, in which the fish is salted for one and a half to three days (depending on its size). It is better to keep it at this time in a cool, dark place. You can find out if the fish is salted or not by touch. If she has already 'reached' - the back becomes hard and rough.
Next, the fish should be washed well. And even leave for several hours in cold water so that it gives off excess salt. To protect against flies, you need to dip it before hanging it in a two percent solution of vinegar, or even better - in a mixture of vinegar and sunflower oil.
Now the fish can be strung through the eye sockets on a string and hang it in a draft. But not in the sun, as some amateurs do, but in the shade, so that the fish © protect all their juices. It remains to wait for her to 'be in time'.
Tuzluchny.
The fish is immersed in a saturated salt solution (brine). Also pressed down with oppression. And the rest is the same. It is claimed that with this method the fish somewhat loses its taste. But this is for gourmets. For an ordinary eater, the loss is not noticeable.
Tuzluk is a solution of such a concentration when a raw egg does not sink in it.
Fish do not have to be hung individually. You can hang a stretched net in the form of an oblong bag and put the fish in it. There is a more simple way: lay the fish on a double layer of paper on the floor. When the top dries, turn it over. And so several times - until ready.
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