Before deciding how to soak salted fish at home, you need to decide for what purpose it is needed. Salted fish is soaked for frying, boiling and changing the taste.

Salted fish contains up to 12% salt. For cooking fish dishes use a product containing 3%, maximum 5% salt. This is why you need to soak the fish.

You can soak fish in water, milk, tea, kvass and beer. Soaking in water aims to reduce the salt content of the product. It is soaked in milk to improve the taste. Tea has tanning properties and allows salted fish not to disintegrate during frying. Soaking in kvass and beer, except for changing taste characteristics, allows you to soften the muscle fibers of the fish.

During soaking, the salt content in the fish tissues decreases, but at the same time, the process of destruction of muscle fibers begins to occur, which creates favorable conditions for development pests and bacterial infections. That's why it is important not to miss the moment when the salt content has dropped to permissible limits, and the destruction processes have not become irreversible. You can stop the development of harmful microorganisms heat treatment or acidic environment.

There are a few simple rules when soaking fish:

• the larger the volume of liquid, the better;
• the thinner the layer of carcasses, the faster salt goes into liquid;
• the carcass should be completely covered with liquid.

Soaking in water

You can soak in water from 12 to 36 hours, with the exception of some herring dishes, where the soaking time reaches 3 days. It is better to change the water every three hours. After changing the water, it is better to keep the container in the refrigerator or a cool place. To remove excess salt faster, before soaking it is necessary to scale and gut the carcasses. It is more convenient to clean under water so that the scales do not fly apart. We cut large specimens lengthwise along the back and remove the spinal bone. We remove the gills immediately small fish It’s easier to remove them with your head.

Quick soak

Soak salted fish you can do it in another, faster way. Soak in water for 3 hours, then another two hours in cold raw or boiled milk, or tea.

Soaking in milk

To soak in milk, you don’t need to gut it right away. Fill the whole carcass with milk and put it in the refrigerator. You can soak for up to 24 hours and gut just before cooking.

Soaking in tea

Soaking in tea is no different in technology from soaking in milk. It is necessary to take into account that the stronger the tea, the more elastic the fish will be during further preparation. Strongly strong tea may impart a characteristic bitterness to some types of fish.

In beer or kvass

It is better to soak fish that is too salted and even dried in beer or kvass. In addition to the fact that these drinks perfectly absorb salt, they will also add softness to the product.

Before cooking, the skin of the soaked carcass must be removed. To prepare fish broth, soaking for twelve hours is enough. Received fish broth practically does not require salting.

Before frying, soaked fish should be wiped with a clean, dry cloth or napkin. If it is stuffed, instead of a napkin, you can use bread or a roll, which can be added to the minced meat.

Many people have a question about whether it is possible not to soak fish. Lightly salted, fatty, large and unspoiled ones do not need to be soaked. Salted fish can be rinsed, dried with a napkin, gutted, skinned, flattened, and bones removed. Properly served and served salted fish is an independent product, ready to eat.

One of the favorite dishes of Russians is salted fish. It could be traditional herring, and mackerel, and pink salmon, any species beloved by everyone and many other species. Salting fish is a true indicator of a housewife's skill in the kitchen.

According to the degree of salinity, fish are divided into groups:

• Strongly salted.
• Medium salt
• Lightly salted.

The most salt-rich fish contains more than 14 percent salts. Fish of average salinity contains salt from 9 to 14 percent. Lightly salted fish is fish with less than 9 percent salt, but more than 5 percent.

However, many recipes traditional cuisine include lightly salted fish. And also many of us are fans of lightly salted fish. Therefore, housewives have to soak it to achieve an acceptable amount of salt.

Of course, you can try to buy ready-made lightly salted fish, but this is almost impossible. Because most often the dish turns out to be very salted. And it is almost impossible to eat it.

How to cook delicious, tender lightly salted fish from regular salty? And do it right in order to save appearance, taste and healthy vitamins.

Why is soaking necessary?

Firstly, for culinary reasons, and secondly, to preserve your health.

Lightly salted fish tastes better, it becomes more tender, and in this form it is included in many recipes. For example, there are many salads where, along with fish, mostly red, they use:

• quail eggs, tomatoes, carrots,
• grapefruit, eggs, spinach.
• There is special kind Olivier with lightly salted fish,
• with vegetables and herbs in the “Tsar’s” salad.

And many more options. If all these recipes included salted fish, the taste would not be the same, and the dishes would have to be washed down with water.

How to catch more fish?

Over 13 years of active fishing, I have found many ways to improve the bite. And here are the most effective:

1. Bite activator. Attracts fish in cold and warm water with the help of pheromones included in the composition and stimulates its appetite. It's a pity that Rosprirodnadzor wants to ban its sale.
2. More sensitive gear. Read the appropriate manuals for the specific type of gear on the pages of my website.
3. Lures based pheromones.

You can get the rest of the secrets of successful fishing for free by reading my other materials on the site.

In addition, an additional reason for soaking fish is that excess salt is harmful to the body. Daily norm salt for an adult is 7-10 grams. Which we use as part of regular food.

If we increase the dose of salt in the diet, it is harmful to health. For example, in ancient times, a common method of suicide among the Chinese was to eat half a kilogram of salt.

Here are the harmful factors that ordinary salt with its excess in the body:

1. Salt is not digested or absorbed at all. But it has a negative impact on internal organs. It contains no vitamins or minerals.
2. Salt strengthens sensitive nervous system humans and causes heart disease.
3. It affects the mucous membranes gastric tract and intestines.
4. Removes calcium from the body.
5. Salt accumulates in joints and other places inside the body, leading to many diseases.

What you need to have for soaking fish

• Kitchen tools for cleaning and processing fish. Knife, board, scissors.
• The solution itself in which you will soak the fish.
• Soaking container with lid.
• Salty fish.
• Spices.

Methods of soaking

There are many ways to soak salted fish. They vary depending on how much fish to cook, what kind of fish we're talking about, well, just from taste preferences author of the dish

Here general list soaking methods:

1. The simplest and easy way- soaking in water.
2. In milk.
3. In tea.
4. In specially prepared marinades.
5. Industrial soaking methods. When a lot of fish are placed at the bottom of a special container, running water is turned on, and it washes the fish and drains into the sewer. To increase the speed and improve the quality of soaking.

It is important to remember that when soaking fish, not only salt is removed, but also useful material, and taste qualities. Therefore, moderation is important in this matter.

red fish

Since this is the most expensive type of fish that you can buy in the store, the methods for soaking it are also quite complex and require many different additional ingredients.

Here is an example of such preparation:

1. Red fish are removed from the fins, tails, and heads and cut into pieces. In some cases, the fillet is removed completely.
2. Add spices as desired to the fish container, add cherry syrup, vinegar and boil the marinade.
3. IN hot composition put the fish.
4. When it cools down, it is washed and filled with the same marinade, strained through a sieve.
5. So it is left for a period of time from several hours to a week in the refrigerator.

In another recipe, red fish is soaked in strong tea, sometimes with sugar. Some housewives additionally pour vodka and cherry syrup into the solution.

But the most common and beloved method is soaking the fish in milk. It becomes tender, soft, its taste ceases to be sharp. To soak fish in milk, you should take the following steps:

• Buy fresh milk.
• Place it in the refrigerator for a while. It should be cold.
• Place the fish in a flat container.
• Pour milk so that it completely covers the fish pieces.
• Leave her in refrigeration chamber so for a while.

The time for soaking the fish depends on the degree of its salinity:

• If the fish is large and heavily salted, leave it in the solution for a period of one day to a week.
• If we are talking about fish that is medium salted, it is best to soak it from an hour to several hours.
• There is a quick soaking method if you are short on time. Can be used hot water or marinade. Do not boil the fish in the marinade, but place it in the hot mixture. Then it will quickly release excess salt.

For drying, smoking or just eating it “raw” - there is no difference. This only applies, in my case, to river fish. Maybe I’m wrong, but catching the “smaller brothers” from store-bought red fish, ivashi, or - the percentage is small.

At first, I became interested in the Internet on forums. They told us how to soak fish in milk and vinegar. I tried it. Neptune knows him, maybe milk is not like that, maybe it can only be combined with it certain type fish, but not the same taste, for the life of me. I’m generally silent about vinegar. Herring with onions and vinegar on the table is great snack, but the trick doesn’t work with sorog, dace or perch. I wouldn’t want to seem picky, but for a native Angarian... it’s creepy.

I settled on the simplest and, as it turned out, effective way- soak in water and periodically replace it completely. For you who are faced with this issue for the first time, I’ll tell you straight - don’t expect that you will get what you want the first time. The taste and color...you understand. You will have to go through this procedure two or three times until you get fish with the required salt content that suits your taste.

How to soak salted fish

So, there is a container, say, with a sorrel or bream salted for drying. The fish remained under oppression for 3 - 4 days, during which time the container was filled with brine. Or maybe it was originally salted in brine, it doesn’t matter.

Next comes the washing process. If the fish is small in size, then you can get by with the kitchen sink and wash each tail separately. At large quantities a bathroom will do. Dump all the fish into it and fill it cold water and rinse. The task is to get rid of the remaining salt on the scales, the resulting mucus and other dirt that accidentally comes across. We do not spare water, we wash the fish 2 - 3 times.

Having done the washing, we proceed directly to the soaking stage. The container should be taken as large as possible. The fish should not be in it like in a sprat jar. I do this in the bathroom.

Now the next question arises - how long to soak the fish?

The soaking process takes several hours. The time depends on how long the fish has been exposed to salt. The following formula is used on average: the number of days the fish has been salted, the number of hours it needs to be soaked.

For example, if salting lasted 4 days, then the fish should be soaked for 4 hours.

The calculation is simple, but in reality it is not immediately possible to achieve the required salinity. We all have different taste preferences, so the right time is determined experimentally.

So, simply placing salted fish in a container of water is not enough. It is often advised to do business at night. Filled it up and went to bed. Believe me, this is the wrong approach. Water changes should be done at regular intervals. That's why best time There will be a period of wakefulness during the day when it will not be difficult for you to change the water after half an hour or an hour.

By the way, there is one more nuance here. The water is changed more often if there are a lot of fish or they are large, or the container is too small. Accordingly, I fill the bath completely with a bucket of soroga or dace and change it after 30 - 40 minutes.

As you can see, the plot is creative and you won’t be able to soak the fish quickly. But it's worth it. After drying or smoking you will have on your table excellent dish. At least to foamy drink, at least to please the soul.

Bon appetit.

Regards, Oleg

The process of soaking herring from salt.

Salted herring is considered sufficient useful product, since it can be served as a snack, with onions, put on a buttered sandwich. And many housewives like to add herring to various salads. It’s a shame, but store-bought herring often turns out to be very salty, which means it needs to be soaked. There are many different methods that allow you to soak over-salted herring.

What to do if the herring is too salty, what should you soak it in?

Not a single feast in our country is complete without salted herring. After all, each of us loves low-fat, appetizing herring for its incredible, memorable taste. But what to do if the herring turns out to be very salty after purchase? Listen to our useful recommendations.

Before choosing a method for soaking salted herring, first rinse it under running cool water. This is necessary so that excess salt is washed off the skin of the fish. As a rule, herring is cut into separate pieces of equal sizes. If you wash it in small pieces, it will wash out much faster. But if the fish is small, you can rinse it whole before soaking.

If you bought ungutted fish, then before soaking, clean it, remove all the insides, cut off the head, cut off the fins, remove scales. Divide the fish into layers, remove the skin. To remove the skin faster, make a small cut in the head area, between the skin and the cape. Remove the skin along the fat layer in one direction, while holding the meat with your hand. Remove the rib bones too, and in the end you will get herring fillets.

As soon as you clean the herring, cut it into equal pieces so that their thickness is no more than 1 cm. Only then rinse the prepared pieces thoroughly in cool water. Follow these steps:

• Place the fish pieces in a colander and place it in the sink.
• Turn on only cool water, not warm
• The fish should remain in this state for approximately 1 hour.

If, after all the methods used, you were unable to soak the herring, then you can use the express method. It is as follows:

• Place salted herring into a pan filled with hot water
• Keep the fish in the water for 2 minutes. Do not boil the water
• Then soak the fish in cool water for about 10 minutes.

Please note that if you use one of the methods, do not keep it longer than the allotted time indicated in the recipe. For example, if you leave herring in milk or cool water for a day or more, then it may spoil. After soaking, do not store the fish for too long. Try to eat it immediately after soaking.

Remember important point– soaking over-salted herring means that it will lose a lot of salt, and with it useful substances, for example, protein. Hence, nutritional quality product will be greatly reduced. If you do not need to make the herring less salty, then eat it as you bought it in the store.

How to properly soak herring from salt in milk and how long to soak: recipe

Yes, this often happens when the fish is very salty, therefore, it needs to be soaked. You can do this in ordinary water, or you can do it in milk. It is milk that allows the fish to become more tender and not so salty. To begin, remove the bones from the fish, cut off the tail, head, cut the belly, and remove the entrails. Remove the skin, dividing the fish along the spine.

After removing the bones and entrails, cut the fish into small pieces. Place the herring in a bowl, pour cool milk over it, and refrigerate for 4-5 hours. During this period of time, change the milk a couple of times.

There is another similar method. You will have to do the following:

• Clean the fish, remove the bones, cut it. After all, herring cut into pieces will release salt faster than in its whole form.
• Pour cold milk into a small bowl and immerse the pieces of herring fillet. Put it in the refrigerator so that the herring does not disappear
• Keep the fish in milk for 4 to 8 hours. It all depends on its salinity. Change the fluid every couple of hours. You may soak the herring overnight, then you will need to add more milk.
• Take the finished herring out and wipe it with paper napkins.

Herring soaked using this method turns out tasty, tender, and soft. Prepare any snack from it at your discretion.

The third method of soaking is this:

• Clean and rinse the herring under running water. It must be cool
• Dry with a paper towel
• Cut it along the ridge, cut it into slices
• Place in a bowl with cool milk and place in the refrigerator
• Soak for 8-12 hours. Change milk every 3 hours

As a rule, salted herring is soaked for 5 hours. Here you have to take into account how salty the fish is. If 5 hours is not enough, keep her for another 4 hours. Then remove and dry.

How to properly soak herring from salt in water: recipe

To remove excess salt from fish, immerse it in liquid for a certain time. In this option there will be ordinary water. This method is considered the simplest and most convenient. When a salted herring is immersed in water, diffusion of salt occurs from the very beginning, which passes from the fish's body into the liquid. You can speed up this process by using the following methods:

• If possible, increase the surface area of ​​the liquid that the herring will come into contact with.
• Soak the fish in this way - the concentration difference formed between the herring and water should be increased

What do these two methods mean? Let's try to figure it out:

• To fulfill the first requirement, clean and gut the herring before soaking
• To comply with the second requirement, change the water with herring as often as possible

The fish is soaked in both running and changing water.

Soak in running water:

• To soak in running water, gut the herring, place it on a wire rack, and immerse it in a container filled with water. Make sure there is space between the bottom of the pan and the wire rack. Water should flow into this space through a tube.
• Over time, the water will begin to rise upward, washing the herring and flowing out of the container. Therefore, place the container with fish in the sink. Soaking using this method will take you approximately 6 hours.

Soaking in changing water:

This option is considered simpler and more accessible. To use it, do the following:

• Fill the prepared herring with cool water in the following calculation: 2 liters of water/1 kg of salted herring. Take cool water so that its temperature is no more than 12 degrees Celsius.
• Don't change the water very often. First do this after an hour, then after 2 or 3 hours.

In extreme heat, make sure the liquid is always cool. In order to cool it faster, you can use pieces of lude.

As you noticed, soaking salted herring in water is not a very exciting task. But you can also use other methods. Choose at your own discretion.

How to properly soak herring from salt in tea: recipe

Previously, our ancestors used big amount salt, since thanks to it the product could be preserved much longer. This, of course, is not fiction. Experience has shown that a lot of salt is used to process herring; the fish retains its freshness longer in the refrigerator. Consequently, in ancient times, people came up with a method that made it possible to quickly and very effectively obtain not such salted fish to cut it for the dinner table.

For this method, you will need to take the most ordinary black tea. You may have the following question: why, why tea? The answer is simple - the infusion of the black drink contains a huge number of tannic components that soften the cloying taste of salt. In addition, if you soak too much salted herring using cool water, then its pulp may become watery and lose its own taste properties. If you take strong black tea, it will prevent the fish from becoming softer.

To soak herring, prepare a fresh drink and add granulated sugar, leave the infusion to cool. If the herring is not too salty, but you still want to soak it, then cut it into two equal parts along the ridge, leave to soak for about 1 hour. If the fish is really too salty, and its taste is sugary, then add a couple of tablespoons to the tea a spoonful of vodka or syrup made from cherries. Soak the fish in this liquid for 2 hours, maybe even more.

We offer you one interesting recipe herring after soaking. You can treat your friends to it at a party. To prepare you will have to stock up:

• Herring – 1 piece
• Strong tea
• Vinegar – 120 ml
• Granulated sugar – 1\2 tsp
• Ready mustard – 1.5 tsp
• Onion – 1 pc.

Soaking process:

• Clean the insides of the fish by cutting its belly. Remove the tail, head, and fins. Remove the skin and fillet the fish
• Place the fillet in a container. Pour tea into it so that it can cover all the herring pulp. If your fish is very fatty and the flesh is loose, then tea can correct the situation
• Leave the fish for about 6 hours, highly salted for 8. Change the tea 4 times

Preparing the snack:

• Cut the fish into pieces and put it in the herring bowl
• Sprinkle with chopped onion rings
• Mix granulated sugar with vinegar, add ready-made mustard
• Add oil
• Mix the sauce, pour into the herring bowl for the fish
• Leave it for 30 minutes to let it sit

How to soak salted herring quickly?

This next soaking option will look familiar, but it's a little different from the previous options. For it you will have to take these products:

• Vinegar
• Salted herring

• Immerse herring only in cool water.
• If you decide to do this in the summer, then keep the bowl filled with water in the refrigerator for a couple of hours. If you don’t have a refrigerator at hand, then try to change the water every 2 hours, maybe even more often. Otherwise, your fish will be lost.
• In order to speed up the soaking process, pour 70% vinegar into the water. The proportion of vinegar and water is as follows: the first product should be 10 parts, the second – 1 part.
• As soon as the herring floats to the surface, it means that it has lost excess salt. After this soaking, the fish tastes much better. When left in this solution for a long time, the herring will become a little larger, as it will be able to absorb water.

What to soak stale, spoiled salted herring in?

• Very often, each of us makes the mistake of buying spoiled salted fish in the store. Yes, the situation is unpleasant. But it can be easily fixed. In this case, it all depends on the type of fish that was spoiled. If you bought salted herring, then only one option will help you - soaking the fish in milk. Put it in the liquid, keep it there for a while, about 5 hours.
• But you need to be extremely careful. If your fish was fresh then you need to salt it. Add granulated sugar mixed with spices into the brine. This set can give the herring a pleasant taste, and the salt will serve as a neutralizer so that the fish does not rot. But if the fish was badly spoiled, then it is better to throw it away.

Video: Soaking salted herring

If you do not need to make the herring less salty, then eat it as you bought it in the store. Herring soaked using this method turns out tasty, tender, and soft. As you noticed, soaking salted herring in water is not a very exciting task. Experience has shown that a lot of salt is used to process herring; the fish retains its freshness longer in the refrigerator. If your fish was fresh then you need to salt it. This set can give the herring a pleasant taste, and the salt will serve as a neutralizer so that the fish does not rot.

What to do with over-salted herring?

Leave in the refrigerator for an hour or two (depending on the saltiness).

Through the incision made, you should remove the caviar from the belly of the fish if it is of interest to you. You will have to separate the herring meat from the spine with your hands and a knife. Usually the meat is separated from the bones quite easily; to remove the smallest and thinnest bones stuck in the meat, you can use ordinary tweezers.

Sometimes you don’t have enough patience, sometimes there is no one nearby who can support and advise. The portal was created to help you change your life in the direction that is more attractive to you. Thick-backed herring will be much tastier than its slimmer counterparts. Fish with a thick “belly” often contain caviar or milt. First of all, the fish must be gutted, removing all the insides.

Fish, regardless of the method of its preparation, is a storehouse of useful substances for the human body.

First, you need to determine what it will taste like. It's simple. When serving, sprinkle with chopped egg and dill. Cut the herring into cubes. Decorate the top with a mesh of mayonnaise, beet roses and carrot leaves. 2 herring fillets.

At home and hiking conditions You can get some fresh water with the help of improvised means. However, it is difficult to obtain large amounts of fresh water using this method, because when you remove the lid, a huge part of the drops will flow back into the pan. It is possible to improve this desalination plant. When cooling fresh water freezes faster than salted one.

What to do with over-salted herring

Or you bought over-salted fish in a store and were upset, and are even going to take it back, demanding back the money you paid for it: you shouldn’t do this. We clean the fish from all the bones. There should be just a little vinegar so that the water is only acidified. Add a drop of vinegar to the last water. And believe me, no one will even say that it was hopelessly oversalted. You can decorate the top with a bow.

You will simply sharply reduce its shelf life, and the amount of salt that will be lost is minuscule. It has been verified. This is just a deception - an UNPROFESSIONAL trick from SMART GUYS. The herring will take up salt in 3-4 days - no more and no less. In our house we really love herring, I generally love any salted fish, but that’s a separate topic. So, I quite often salt the herring myself. Ninotchka! I wrote that we are “Starting a series of simple homemade recipes and tips.” Anyway, THANK YOU for the recipe. It can be tricky... The entire Internet is teeming with recipe options. And then I read somewhere that the upper fin of pike perch is poisonous, so I prepared aspic for Shrovetide. Then almost every apartment will smell of fried herring. But the herring is very tasty, lightly salted, and I never add salt to it, I just rinse it of brine and clean it. But I will definitely take your advice!

In this case, housewives are looking for information on how to eliminate such a problem. To make the search easier for our readers, we will try to group information on how and in what composition to soak herring in a table. This “reanimation” method is suitable for both whole fish and already cut herring. It is used if the herring needs to be served to the table within a short time.

In this case, distinguish the fish different salting It’s not difficult even at first glance, and to do this you just need to evaluate the color of the eyes and gills of the salted product. Unscrupulous sellers resort to such techniques as gutting the fish and then selling the filleted herring. The liquid should smell like salted fish, and the latter should not come into contact with air (that is, it should be completely covered with water). Even in one bucket there may be fish of varying degrees of saltiness.