How to salt smelt in brine. Several ways to prepare dried smelt. Salting fish in stages

The sea ice catfish season can be said to be coming to an end. But it still enters lakes and will be caught in open water. So the proposed recipes will be useful in March-April, and for the future.

Recipe from our consultant Igor KOCHNEV (Shchukar stores):

I salt the smelt with dry salting. I lay it on its side - back to stomach - in layers in a suitable non-oxidizing dish (for example, enameled), sprinkle each layer with salt. You can use any salt, but the second grind is better. Add a little salt, about as much as when frying fish, a little more. This is a guarantee that the smelt will not be oversalted. I keep it for a day.

- Under pressure?

Not necessarily, the fish will already be saturated with brine and will take its toll. Then I wash it in running water and hang it on a frame to dry. Either in an apartment, or on a balcony, but you can also do it outside. Naturally, the drying time will be different. You can speed them up using a fan.

- Do you hang it by your tail or head? They say that in the first case the fat leaks out of the smelt.

Nevertheless, I hang it with the tail up so that everything can drain out of the carcass through the mouth, which then gives the fish a bitter taste. In this case, of course, she will lose a few drops of fat. Therefore, in the literature it is recommended to use a mixed method: first hang it by the tail for a short time to make the glass bitter, and then hang it by the head. But this is too troublesome, besides the taste dried fish practically do not change.

Recipes from our consultant Victor EMA (Rybolov-Elit store):

I advise you to salt the smelt in brine, which I prepare like this. I take a container of the size depending on the catch, pour warm water into it and put in the peeled potatoes. I stir coarse salt in the water until the potatoes float to the surface. The brine is ready. I put the fish in it, cover it with something without a load so that it does not float up. After a day, I wash it in clean water and hang it by the tail in a frame, which I place outside the window on the street. There the smelt freezes and the fat does not drip from it.

- Is the water used for brine boiled?

No, regular water room temperature.

I would like to offer one more recipe. If I don't have the opportunity to fish the next day, I salt it and hang it out to dry immediately after fishing using quick ambassador. I generously sprinkle the bottom of the dish with coarse salt, place the first layer of smelt, salt again, and so on. Sprinkle the top layer with salt and cover it with a lid. After two hours I look: if the fish’s eyes turn white, it means it’s salted. When I wash it, black specks appear on my white eyes; if it hangs a little, my eyes turn black. In this case, the smelt turns out lightly salted. If you want to salt it more abruptly, you need to keep it in the salt for 3-4 hours.

- I have never seen coarse salt in stores.

It can be bought at wholesale stores. If you don’t find it, use any one.

Has it ever happened in your life that when drinking cold beer or just because you wanted dried fish? You get dressed and go to the nearest store, but bad luck - the prices are steep. In such a situation, in order to save the family budget and enjoy a salty snack at any time, you can make it in your own kitchen. And the list of products is minimal - fresh fish and salt.

The most common way

Rinse the smelt well. Sprinkle coarse salt generously into the bottom of the dish, then place the fish in one row. Again, without sparing, sprinkle the spices and so on until the seafood is gone.

Having covered the last layer with seasoning, place the press and put the dishes in a dark place for a day. Refrigeration is not recommended as the temperature should be room temperature. And the salt will draw out excess moisture from the smelt.

Next, use a needle and silk thread or wire to string it, either piercing through the eyes or tails. Hang the fish on the balcony and leave it overnight. Don’t forget to place rags or a basin underneath, as excess liquid will come out of your smelt and end up on the floor. The next morning, hang it at the distance of an extended fin and put it in the shade. After a couple of days delicious snack ready for beer sampling.

Nuances

1. What is the difference between dried fish and dried fish? It's simple: in the first case, the smelt is kept in the shade for the entire salting process, which allows it to take a dry, solid form. And in order to treat yourself to a soft snack for beer, the entire drying process must be carried out in the sun.
2. How to determine the required proportions? On average, food is taken like this: if you have 500 g of fish, then we take 1/10 of the total mass of salt - a total of 50 g.
3. How to hang a fish correctly: by the head or by the tail? Here it is as convenient as possible, although some culinary specialists claim that when smelt is hung head down, the internal organs will flow out through the mouth (in case this happens).
4. How should dried product be stored? To prevent your snack from turning into “crackers,” you need to store it in a closed container or ziplock bag in the refrigerator.
5. How else can you dry smelt? Peppercorn ready-made dish can be enhanced with paprika and garlic. To do this, after the fish has been under pressure for a day, the water must be drained and the smelt covered row by row with hot spices. Another hour and the fish is ready to dry.
6. What to do if there is no balcony? Owners of private houses or summer cottages can take advantage of the dark space under a flight of stairs or a cellar. In addition, the garage is great for drying smelt.

Smelt is a very tasty fish, especially when dried and smoked. It will not only be an excellent snack for lovers of cool foamy drinks, but can also please gourmets who cannot imagine their diet without salted dried fish.

This product can be found on store shelves, but if made at home, it will be much tastier. You can also balance the amount of salt according to your preference and add seasonings as needed. Information on how to dry smelt will be useful to any housewife.

Preparation

Before you start drying the fish, you need to prepare it. If the fish comes into your hands fresh, you should simply wash it and dry it slightly. It should be noted that there is no need to clean the smelt from the insides; it is dried in its entirety. If you want to pamper yourself with fish in winter or during periods of lack of catch, you can buy it in the store. The product most often found on the shelves is frozen, so such smelt must first be thawed. It is best if this is done naturally.

Then you need to salt the product. The ambassador can be different. Some housewives advise using the dry method, as it allows you to extract additional moisture from the fish and speed up drying.

• In order to salt smelt using the dry method, you need to sprinkle the fish with salt. Usually, one glass of salt is taken per half a kilogram of fish. It is advisable to use a large one, which will gradually dissolve during the process. The fish are either rolled individually in salt, or laid in layers, generously sprinkling each one. Then the fish is pressed down with a press or the container is simply closed cling film. The product is left at room temperature, in a dark place without direct access sun rays. After 10-12 hours, the smelt is ready. Usually the fish is salted overnight.
• To pickle in brine, you need to prepare brine. To do this, you need to dissolve the required amount of salt in water. How can you tell if you have enough salt? Small potatoes will help with this; if they float in the brine, then more salt is not needed. You can add seasonings to the brine to taste, bring to a boil, and then cool. The fish is placed in the cooled brine and pressed down with a press to prevent floating. In this way, the smelt will be salted in 6 hours.

After the fish has been salted, you can try it. If it seems that the smelt is too salty, you can soak it in cold water for 1-2 hours. Then spread it on a towel and dry it a little, collecting excess moisture from the surface.

Drying

How to properly dry smelt at home? Opinions differ on this issue. Some prefer to hang dry the product, others recommend drying the fish on newspaper. Each of the options is suitable for obtaining dried smelt.

In order to dry the product in a suspended state, it is suspended on a wire or strong thread. There are two options for hanging by the tail and by the head. It is believed that fish suspended by the tail do not dry out evenly; the part of the carcass near the head remains damp, as liquid from the abdominal cavity drains there. Experienced harvesters advise first hanging the fish by the tail, and after a day turning it over. In total, small fish need two to three days to dry out. It is important that the carcasses hang without touching each other, in a place inaccessible to sunlight.

In order to dry the product on a newspaper, you need to lay out the carcasses on a baking sheet covered with newspaper sheets. It is important that the fish do not touch each other. The baking tray should be placed in a dark place with good air access. In this case, the carcasses need to be periodically turned over, and the paper under them changed if necessary. The readiness of the fish is regularly checked; usually it takes a few days for the smelt to dry.

How to store

It is important to properly preserve dried fish so that it can please gourmets for a long time. Many people advise storing smelt in small bunches, wrapped in newspaper. This way it will not lose excess moisture and retain its taste. Moreover, if one fish among them spoils, then the entire package will be unfit for food. Therefore, you should make small portions.

Fish is well preserved in the refrigerator. By placing it in ziplock bags, you can keep the fish dried and not turn it too dry during storage. It is not advisable to store the product in bags at room temperature; it quickly deteriorates.

Description

Dried smelt is a real fish delicacy that is very difficult to resist for a long time. You want to enjoy this delicious lightly salted fish endlessly, especially if you eat it with beer. This homemade jerky product seems to be directly created for a beer drink. Despite this, smelt prepared in this way is also eaten during lunch with potatoes and salads. This is also quite tasty and appetizing!
You can buy dried smelt in almost any fish department, and its price per kilogram will allow almost everyone to do this. However, even despite the fact that smelt is an inexpensive fish product, we recommend drying it at home. It’s not at all difficult, and each of you can dry fish at home. In addition, smelt does not require special preparation before drying, and its surface does not even need to be cleaned, since this fish has very small scales, which are easily and quickly washed off with a stream of water.
Typically, when drying, fish decreases in weight by half, but the fattier the product, the less weight will be lost. 10 kilograms of low-fat fresh smelt will yield approximately 5 kilograms of dried delicacy. By the way, you can prepare this appetizer from frozen smelt, after defrosting it.
Unfortunately, not everyone can enjoy this product. People who count calories every day will have to limit themselves in consuming dried smelt, since its calorie content is 186 kilocalories per 100 grams of product.
To start drying smelt at home, we suggest you pay attention to our step by step recipe with the photo you will see below. In it you will find a lot of tips that will undoubtedly help you in the cooking process!

Ingredients

Dried smelt - recipe

IN this recipe We'll be using frozen smelt, so we'll start thawing it first. Let's take the fish out of the freezer and place it directly in the bag into a container. Attention! The product must defrost naturally. Never use water or a microwave to speed up this process!

When the smelt is completely defrosted, take it out of the vacuum bag, gut it and place it in a suitable container. We will not cut off the fish’s head, since when dried it can also be chewed in some places.

If, when cutting, the fish ends up with caviar, then put the caviar in a separate bowl, and then fry it, but under no circumstances freeze it. After re-freezing, the caviar will no longer be so tasty and juicy..

Then carefully rub the smelt with coarse salt and put it in the refrigerator for twelve hours. It is not recommended to keep the fish salted for longer., since the product may become noticeably oversalted.

After the specified time has passed, take the future dried delicacy out of the refrigerator, rinse thoroughly under the tap and dry with a paper towel.

Many people ask me to tell me about the production technology of this or that type of product. The leader of requests is . I myself love this fish, but in the European part of Russia the fish that I come across in stores is just expensive salted shit, which people from the Far East look at with bewilderment: they don’t understand how smelt can be ruined like that. And, what’s most interesting, our unspoiled consumers buy it. Otherwise, where would there be such interest in equipment? By the way, flounder and vendace fit well into this technological process.

The purpose of this article is my desire to establish the process of correct production of this fish in the European part. Maybe buyers will finally taste the right taste, and manufacturers will think about the fact that when ordering equipment for making dried fish, the drying speed parameter is far from primary.

And the production process of this fish is not that complicated. It is important to understand that dried fish, in particular smelt, must go through several stages of its maturation during drying.

And in this table you can see the norms of waste, losses and GP yield in the production of dried smelt.

Defrosting.

For small production volumes, it is quite acceptable to defrost smelt in air. Without tearing the packaging, place the blocks on tables or shelves in a heated room. It would be good to organize air movement in the room so that heat from the heating system is transferred to the blocks. Be that as it may, in order to defrost 1 kg of fish to a positive temperature, 60 W of heat is required. For more technological processes, I would suggest defrosting the blocks in warm (up to 25C) water. In an integrated approach to the production of high-quality dried smelt, defrosting in water does not have a negative effect. By the way, we offer automated defrosting systems, but more on that next time, just keep in mind)

Ambassador

The first and extremely important process that shapes the taste of smelt is salting. Rule: fish should not be salted. Smelt should be salted in strong brine for an hour to an hour and a half, depending on the size. If the smelt is very small, try salting it for about 30 minutes. Salting fish for drying is similar to salting for hot smoking. There is no point in salting with dry or mixed salting, adding sugar or various additives, or putting in the cold. First of all, it is important to understand that salt penetrating into the fish slows down autolytic reactions and deactivates enzymes and bacteria involved in the maturation process. If you salt the smelt up to the spine, until the blood clots, and then soak it, as many do, all autolytic enzymatic reactions in the fish will slow down.

Thawed fish should be placed in a container with strong brine in a 1:1 ratio. All fish must be completely defrosted to a positive temperature. This is very important. If the fish is not completely thawed, it will interfere with the salt diffusion process. Salt plays an important role in the ripening process. But the salinity level at this stage should not exceed 1%. Ideally 0.75%. The surface layers and skin must be exposed to the preservative and neutralizing microflora and the action of salt. The inner layers of meat, caviar and milt will be slightly salted due to diffusion from the skin, and the internal organs will be partially salted due to the entry of high concentrations of salt solution through the gill covers. The caviar and muscle tissue of the fish are sterile. But the contents of the insides are not. But don't be afraid of it.

The working salting temperature can be taken as: +5 0 C ±2 0 C for fish and +18 0 ±2 0 C.

In my opinion, after strengthening with salt, brine can be used several times. I don't see anything criminal in this. The density of brine is 1.2 kg/m 3.

After the brine drains, the smelt is sent for hanging. You cannot wash or rinse smelt. The brine film is now a barrier to pathogenic microflora.

Drying

Drying of smelt begins at a temperature of 25 0 C. At this time, when high humidity is established in the chamber and at this temperature an active enzymatic process begins, which forms the taste of the final product. As moisture from the inner layers is brought to the surface layers from which evaporation occurs, the salt diffuses into the inner layers. During the process of fermentation or maturation, low salt concentrations do not inhibit the processes, but rather direct these processes towards the formation of taste.

It is necessary to structure the drying process in such a way as to prevent excessive overripening and also not to accelerate the dehydration process, since it is possible to overdry the surface and thin muscle tissue, which is a conductor of moisture and salt. If the fish dries out during the active fermentation stage, then without removing portions of water and adding salt, the fish will inevitably become overripe inside, and this is almost always irreparable, since it can no longer be called fermentation, but decomposition. The fish may look completely normal, but the taste and smell will be very disgusting.

In the process of further drying, along with the loss of moisture, the concentration of salt inside the fish increases, which begins to block active enzymatic processes. At the same time, fat begins to move through muscle tissue. (To be honest, I don’t fully understand this process myself.) At the same time, it is at this moment that it is very advisable to expose the fish to ultraviolet radiation. The diffusion of fat is associated with the transformations of vitamin D. As in human skin when tanning, fat is released to the surface, previtamin D contained in fat is converted into provitamin D under the influence of ultraviolet radiation, which allows fat from the surface of the skin to be absorbed back and provitamin D is already transported to the liver. Something similar happens with dried fish fats. Fish exposed to light objectively tastes better. But energy-saving lamps, including LED lamps, do not work because they shine in a narrow spectrum of visible light.

About us and not us.

This is where the cornerstone of drying lies. We set up our dryers so that the process is controllable and stable. Unlike most of my colleagues, we don't chase drying times and don't pour stupid information about speed into our customers' ears. We never promise the client that we will dry smelt in two days, although, of course, we know how to dry quickly and can do it faster than any of our populist colleagues shouting about miracle dryers, dehumidifiers or the refrigeration machine that “opened” the bicycle and even hiding behind mine articles on their websites. My team and I encourage you to intelligently produce a high-quality product based on the laws of physics and chemistry.

Shall we make cool dried smelt together or will you just waste raw materials?

Now I am carrying out a number of drying works. Main tasks: work out the ambassador, check the output of the GP, test the UV radiation and test the light.

The first part of the work confirmed the correctness of the salting process described above. It is very important not to over-salt the fish. I sorted the fish into large, medium and small. Tuzluk was used with a density of 1.16 kg/m 3 . Large smelt was salted for 1 hour, medium smelt for 40 minutes, small smelt for 30 minutes. The salinity of the smelt is excellent.

Table of GP output for several control samples.

A day after removing the fish from the dryer and placing it in the refrigerator, large specimens lost weight (they dried out during storage), and small control samples gained some weight, which may be a measurement error or there is still some system that requires confirmation .

I decided to dry the large and medium samples additionally to find out the weight loss limit.

Kirill Nedosekov, 2017