Appetizing stockfish with cold beer is a great idea for dinner in the summer heat. It will be tastiest if you cook a snack with your own hands. Not everyone knows how to dry fish at home, for many this task may seem too complicated. However, to cope with this is quite real, just try.
How to Dry River Fish: Preparation
Salty fish is considered to be dried, dried in the open air at a temperature of about twenty degrees of heat. Best of all, roach, bream, mackerel or ram are suitable for this method of preparation. Specialists who describe how to properly dry river fish note that the taste depends on fat content - a more fatty variety will turn out better. Nevertheless, if desired, you can cook other varieties, such as mullet or barbel.
Before cooking, you need to properly process and pickle the carcasses. A freshly caught catch is worth shifting nettles and cool for a couple of hours, and only after that start work. How to dry fish at home? Small varieties can not be cut, and large ones must be gutted, making longitudinal cuts. At the same time, caviar and milk can be left inside so that they are cooked together with the fish. After that, you can string carcasses on the twine - with salted it will make it harder. Use the large needle to pierce the fish through the eyes, directing the backs to one side.
One twine should account for a pair of large or ten small carcasses. Tie its ends in a knot, rinse the bunch in water and rub with salt. Fill it in the gills and in the cuts on the abdomen. For
large fish weighing about two kilograms, an incision should also be made on the back to fill the salt with it. Take a large barrel or tub, pour salt solution into it and lay the carcasses, trying to do it not too tightly. Cover everything with a wooden circle and put oppression on top of it. The waiting time before drying the fish at home depends on the variety and size of the fish, how warm the weather is and on your personal preferences. It usually takes two to seven days. After that, you can proceed to the final stage.
How to dry fish at home: the final stage
So, the fish has salted and you can begin to dry it. Remove the salted carcasses, leave them for a couple of hours and rinse with cold water. Hang the bundles in a place where there will be access to open air, on the sunny side, but in the shade. It should be well ventilated. The best weather for cooking is in spring or early summer, when the days are not too hot and not humid. In the heat, the fat in the fish can deteriorate before cooking is complete and this will degrade the taste of the dish. The carcasses should be hung out with their belly out so that they do not touch the rest.
An important condition is protection from flies that can lay eggs in fish. For this, carcasses are greased with vegetable oil or vinegar, and also covered with gauze. You can hang the fish in a well-ventilated box of wood, which is tightly covered with gauze. As soon as the carcasses are dry, the tissue can be removed - the product will no longer attract insects. The cooking time will take from two to five weeks, depending on the size of the fish, after which you can enjoy the taste of your own catch.