I prepared this material back in May, but I don't have enough time to complete it. So I made up my mind ...
Early in the morning on May 9, when all normal people are going to the central square for a parade or a picnic outside the city, my family rushed to the market. Why? Yes, because all the deadlines are overdue, and you can't buy roaches anymore. They waited, called. There were few fish, as well as sellers. We bought roach and ... rudd. Someone (including my husband) will spit and say that it is not appropriate to salt it, but ... They took it, they took it. Further events developed very quickly ...

Why fast? Judge for yourself - a pickled barbecue was waiting at home! And fish is not a product that you just need to buy. Deteriorate quickly. Therefore, even before the trip to the picnic, I had to sort the fish, rinse it (rinse well - the gills, lightly press on the tummy to get out of it ... no, not the eggs - the contents of the intestines) and salt. So, the recipe itself!

The method is wet or brine.

You will need a fish:

Fish is not very large for wet salting. The fish is not gutted, because in its belly it has “all the gusto, that is. fat". Experts advise not to wash the fish, but only to wipe it with a dry towel. But in Astrakhan they wash her, because she is snotty (from the heat or what?).

And about 1.5 packs of salt. Use only coarse salt. "Extra" and other high grades of salt are unsuitable for this purpose.
The purpose of salt is to remove moisture from the fish, not to give it a special flavor: it has a great fishy aroma in itself. Coarse salt dissolves more slowly and absorbs more, sucks moisture out of the fish.

Put some salt on the bottom in an enamel bucket, saucepan or basin. The fish is laid in dense rows: head - to the tail, back - to the stomach, and even better - back to the abdomen: this way oppression will work better.

Each row is salted abundantly. You can do more, just while taking a photo - the salt is wet, it seems that there is very little of it.

So much salt is poured onto the top row so that it covers all the fish. But for a special taste - add a little sugar. If you come across a variety of poorly salted fish (like a rudd 😉), then a saturated salt solution or prepared brine is pumped into the belly of the fish before salting. This procedure is performed through the mouth with a rubber syringe. Douching the belly accelerates the salting of the fish from the inside, and it does not have time to spoil.

Put a wooden circle or an enamel lid from a smaller pan on top,

and oppression on her; usually a large cobblestone is used for this purpose, previously washed from dirt and scalded with boiling water.

Heavy pressure prevents the formation of gas bubbles and cavities in the fish, in which putrefactive bacteria can develop, and not at all in order to flatten the fish or squeeze out the juice from it. After 4-5 hours after salting, she starts up the brine herself. This is the so-called brine. If there is no cobblestone, use a pot of water.

During the whole period of salting, the fish should be in the coldest place possible. Salt very slowly penetrates into the fish meat, and where the fish has not yet had time to be salted, there it is protected from spoilage by the cold. At home, you can salt fish in the refrigerator, in the cellar on ice. I just stood in a cool shaded place.

After 2-3 days (depending on the size of the fish), the back of a normally salted fish becomes firm, the meat is dark gray, and the caviar is yellowish-red, if you pull it by the head and tail, it creaks. However, it squeaks once, if you pull it again - no squeak!
Salted fish is washed, soaked in water. Based on hours / days, i.e. how much was salted by day, soaked by the hour, preferably in running water. The fish should give away excess salt, but also not be lightly salted, since in the latter case it may deteriorate during drying. The golden mean of soaking occurs at the moment when salted fish begins to float. This is exactly what is required: the ambassador will become tender, the back of the fish will be amber-transparent in the light, and after drying, the meat will acquire a reddish color.

Then they are washed again and prepared for stringing on the bottom, or, as we call them, chalki. The whole question is, for what to hang the fish for drying: if by the tail, then the fat will flow out of the peritoneum through the mouth or gills; if behind the head, then the fish will remain all with fat in the peritoneum: it will be tasty and savory, like a Caucasian cheburek. For salting, you need to use only fresh, just "asleep" fish.
With the help of a boot needle, twine is pulled through the eyes, and so that the fish on the bottom does not slide towards each other, the overlap on the head is done twice. Or use wire. I often use regular paper clips - to more conveniently hang the fish away from each other.

After washing, the fish is very wet, so it is hung out at night to weather it, and in the dark, flies do not fly. In the morning, the fish is sprayed with a solution of table vinegar: its pungent smell scares away flies well. Then they are hung in the shade in a ventilated place - in the attic or somewhere under a canopy. If you hang a wet fish bottom during the day, then until the fish is dry, you will have to stand nearby and scare off flies. The fly sculpts its eggs only on a damp surface. When the fish dries up and the gills are covered with a crust, the flies are no longer dangerous for the fish. To protect against flies, they make special fish dryers or cover the fish with a gauze canopy.

Vobla is common in the Caspian Sea, the Lower Volga and is an important commercial fish. It belongs to the species of common roach from the cyprinid family. It lives in a flock and can reach 0.8 kg in weight and 30 cm in length. It is considered more delicious than other types of fish suitable for drying. In addition, it can be cooked in the ear, fried, dried, smoked and salted.

The fish is often used as an appetizer for intoxicating drinks. Those who like to enjoy such a dish need to know how to salt the vobla correctly at home.

A large amount of fresh roach can be stocked up in the spring. Just during this period there is a lot of it due to spawning. Catching such a representative of roach is not difficult, since it is very unpretentious.

To salt fish at home and get the desired result, you must follow the following rules:

• • choose more voluminous carcasses, since the taste of the final product largely depends on how much fat is contained in the fish;

• • for salting fish in natural conditions, the catch is harvested for 2 hours in the shade, covering it with grass (preferably nettles);

• • gutting is not necessary, but in this case, an incision is made on the abdomen in small fish, and along the ridge in large fish;

• • carcasses are not recommended to be washed, but they must be thoroughly wiped with a rag;

• • for drying, medium-sized specimens are better;

• frozen fish is defrosted on the table or bottom shelf of the refrigerator;
• use only coarse rock salt;
• salt in an enamel and glassware.

Advice! When gutting, you need to act carefully, without touching the gallbladder, otherwise the fillet will acquire a bitter taste.

Recipes for salting roach are simple, do not require a lot of money, time and effort.

Dry method

In this way, it is better to cook fish not for drying, but simply as a salty snack. Cover the bottom of the cup completely with salt, lay out the carcasses, salt and continue until the ingredients run out. Cover the salted fish with a flat plate, and then wait about 12 hours until it releases its own juice, then we put the oppression and put it in the cold.

Salting in brine

The method is great for drying roach. We select only fresh, not large specimens. We string each carcass on a string or wire through the eye hole. For brine, we use salt at the rate of 250 gr. for 1 liter. water. The saline solution should be so bitter that a raw egg will float in it. We completely fill the vobla with such brine, and then after 3 days we take out the product and check for readiness, it is determined by the dark gray color of the meat in the section. We wash the fish and hang it for subsequent drying. The calorie content of the finished dish is only 176 kcal.

Drying recipe

Before drying the vobla, it is cleaned of entrails, the gills are removed and thoroughly washed under running water. Cover the carcasses with salt on all sides, filling in the incisions. They lay a container with fish, while each layer is salted. You need to put the backs up. The product is pressed for three days. It is necessary to prepare the marinade, for this we dissolve 25 grams in one liter of water. vinegar and fill in fish carcasses for 3 hours. We take it out, leave it to drain a little, install a spacer in each abdomen and hang it in a ventilated place, securing the tail or head.

Advice! It is necessary to allow excess air to escape, especially in the heat. To do this, slightly squeeze the body of the roach.

If you do the calculation by day, then drying can take from two weeks to one month. Everything will depend on the size of the roach. Readiness is determined by the drying of the back and the yellow-pink color of the cuts. Dried slave is low in calories and has only 88 kcal.

The ritual of consumption

When you salt and dry the fish, be sure to beat it off. This is an old tradition before eating roach. Before tasting, it is cleaned of scales, the head and belly are removed. Fillet on ribs is considered the most delicious.

Beneficial features. The chemical composition includes:

• a large number of various protein compounds;
• fatty acid;
• vitamins B and C;
• macronutrients - calcium, sodium, phosphorus, chlorine, etc.;
• trace elements - molybdenum, nickel.

In this regard, the use of roach prevents cardiovascular diseases and is suitable for dietary nutrition.

Dried and dried roach is a primordially Russian delicacy. It turns out delicious both when frying and in the ear. But salting followed by drying or drying is of particular importance. Every fisherman knows how to salt roach correctly. There are many recipes, but they are all based on simple, classic methods that do not require a lot of ingredients and effort. The process of salting at home will not be difficult, but on the contrary, it will delight you with its simplicity and delicious result.

But how the vobla ambassador is described in the book Demezer A.A. (comp.) Canning and processing of agricultural products at home, M., Selkhozizdat, 1963

But there are still many small or medium-sized fish, such as sprat, tulka, anchovy, bleak, roach, roach, bream, pike, ide, river perch, ram and others, which, of course, can be saved by an ambassador.

Salted fish, if skillfully processed, can be stored for a relatively long time.

Three main methods of salting are widely practiced: dry, wet (brine) and mixed. With dry salting, the fish is sprinkled with dry salt or rolled in it; with wet salting, the fish is kept in brine; such an ambassador is called mixed when the fish is salted at the same time with dry salt and brine.

The essence of salting as a canning method lies in the fact that dry table salt, when it comes into contact with the fish, absorbs some of the moisture from the surface of the fish and dissolves in it, forming a brine. The latter penetrates into the fish meat and saturates the meat juices with salt. At the same time, part of the moisture is released from the fish into the brine surrounding the fish, gradually increasing its amount. Together with water, some organic substances, in particular soluble proteins, pass from the fish to the brine. Brine, enriched with soluble proteins, minerals, and sometimes fat, is already called brine. Saturated with salt, the juices of fish meat acquire such a concentration at which the vital activity of the putrefactive microflora is greatly impeded.

Small fish are salted whole with dry salt, without cutting or gutting. First, the fish is washed well to remove mucus and impurities and allow moisture to drain. After that, such small fish as sprat, tulka, anchovy, bleak, smelt and others are poured onto a clean table or smooth board, sprinkled with salt on top and mixed well with your hands or a wooden spatula. Then it is poured into a sturdy, clean wooden barrel or keg and leveled and compacted in them. Each portion of the mixture (fish and salt) in the barrel is additionally covered with salt, and salt is poured on top with a thickness of up to 1-2 centimeters. A wooden circle is placed on top of everything, and a load is placed on it. The barrel with the fish is placed in a cool place.

For fish salting, 15-18 percent of salt (by weight of fish) of medium grinding is consumed. Small fish should not be salted with especially fine salt, since such salt, as they say, can "burn" the fish, that is, form a crust on it, through which it will be difficult for the brine to penetrate the fish meat. After 2-3 days, the fish in the barrel will be salted, but you can use it for food only after about 10-14 days. By this time, the fish meat will acquire some "maturity" - it will become more tender.

Medium-sized fish - roach, roach, tench, ram, Baltic herring are salted either whole or after gutting or cutting. Fish is gutted when its abdomen is full of undigested food. Larger fish - small cod, river perch, small bream and others are best gutted at home. To do this, the fish is cut with a sharp knife from the side of the abdomen or from the back. When gutting a fish from the side of the abdomen, an incision is made from the kaltychk (bone of the shoulder girdle) to the anus (Fig. 1). Through the incision, all the insides are removed from the fish, and with them caviar or milk. Then the fish is thoroughly washed with cold water and left for a while to drain the water.

It is not uncommon for every fisherman when the catch is not just abundant, but very large, and it needs to be quickly processed so that it does not disappear. The first option is to fry the fish. But if the family is small and cannot eat much, you have to try other processing methods. For example - salt. This is the simplest and most versatile harvesting method if you know how to properly salt fish caught in the river. There are many recipes offering salting fish at home. They will be discussed further.

Spicy salting

For work, you need to prepare:

1. Tara. It can be a deep bowl or basin, an enamel bucket, a wooden box. You can also take a plastic container. But nothing metallic can be used.
2. Spices. There must be black pepper and laurel.
3. Edible salt. It is desirable - not very small, and in no case iodized.
4. Cargo. They can be a not very heavy stone, a couple of bricks wrapped in a plastic bag, a jar or a small enamel pot of water, or any other similar object.
5. The lid is slightly smaller than the top of the pickling container.

Salting fish should be done immediately after fishing.

This salting option is designed for perch, bleak and other medium-sized fish. The catch should be fresh, preferably just caught. You need to choose specimens of approximately the same size weighing up to 1 kg.

The catch must be washed and gutted. Further, salt (0.5 cm) is first poured into the salting dishes on the bottom and the fish are placed, starting with larger individuals. Having laid the first layer, sprinkle it with a thin layer of salt on top, add several leaves of laurel, 2-3 grains of pepper, coriander. Then fish again, salt with spices and so on to the top, or until the fish runs out.

Attention! It's time to do oppression in order to displace all the air from the fish - the cause of putrefactive reactions. To do this, you need to take the lid, lay it on the fish, and put the "salted" cargo on top.

Now you need to move all this stuff to the coolest place in the house (or apartment) for 72-96 hours. After the end of the salting process, remove the lid and rinse the fish under running water so that all the salt is washed off. When the water is clear, leave the pot like this for 60-90 minutes.

Some fishermen claim that it is necessary to keep the fish in the water for every 24 hours of salting - 1 hour. For example, if the fish were in salt for a day, then soak for 1 hour, if for 2 days - 2 hours, and so on. Then drain the water, cover the table with newspapers in several layers and put the fish on top to dry.

After 3-4 hours, it will become dry, which means it will be ready for use. Such a treat has excellent taste and excellent smell. You can use it with beer, mashed potatoes and porridge - a universal snack turns out. The spicy salted fish can be stored for a long time, but only in the refrigerator. However, it usually does not sit for a long time.

Dry salting

Usually this is how vobla, gobies, and perch are harvested. It is necessary to prepare them in the same way as in the previous recipe - rinse, gut and salt, laying in layers in the chosen container. You don't need to use spices, but some people still add sugar or their favorite spices. After two, maximum three days, the fish carcasses are washed, wiped dry with cloth napkins and hung by the eyes or the tail on a rope.

Advice. Experienced fishermen advise to hang the fish by the eyes - so all the bad liquid will easily drain. And if the fish hangs on the contrary, with its tail up, then liquid of an unpleasant taste and smell will collect in the head.

You need to hang tightly, but in such a way that air passes between the individual carcasses. Moreover, place the product not in the sun, but in the shade. For example, on a balcony or in a room where there is a constant draft. So the catch will dry better, and then it will not get damp.

If the process takes place in the spring, when there are no flies, then you do not need to do anything, just wait until the product is ready, but in the summer, the catch hung out for drying must be wrapped in cheesecloth folded in 3-5 layers so that the flies do not get there. If you do not do this, then maggots will quickly start in the fish, and it will be unusable for consumption. How much to dry carcasses depends on the taste of the owners. Someone keeps this for several days, someone - half a day.

If a large vobla, perch, goby is caught (which is rare, but it happens), then it must be gutted and freed from the head. Then - make several cuts along the back from head to tail and rub into them with salt. You can - with spices. After sprinkling the entire catch with salt, leave it for 8-10 days in a cool room. The emerging brine (brine) must be drained every day. After washing, while hanging each individual for drying, a wooden spacer is inserted into the abdomen (for example, toothpicks or twigs peeled from bark).

You will need a press for salting fish.

If the whole process is carried out correctly, then the carcass will look like a balyk in appearance, which is why this option of salting is popularly called “balyk”. The taste of the resulting product is very exquisite.

Small fish, such as roach, are even easier to salt because they do not need to be gutted. It is washed, salted, laid in layers, and the container is placed in the refrigerator for 3, maximum 5 days. Then the product is washed, kept in clean water for an hour. After that, they are dried on paper towels and the carcasses are hung on a string or on a skewer. The catch is dried from 5 to 10 days - it all depends on the size of the roach and the air temperature outside or in the room where the product is being dried.

Wet Ambassador

The process goes like this:

1. The fish need to be laid with their bellies up. Salt. For 1 kg of catch - 100 g of salt. To make the taste softer, you can add sugar - 0.5 tsp.
2. Put a lid on top, a circle - what fits under the pickling container. You can make a circle from linden, aspen.
3. Place the container in a cool place for 4-8 days. Do not touch the eye-catching brine.
4. Remove fish from liquid, rinse. Dried in the open air.
5. Store in a basket. You can use a wooden box.

If the fish is small, it can be immersed in brine for salting. It is prepared from 3 liters of water and 1 kg of salt. Next - rinse, dry and store.

Sag ambassador

It is used for oily fish. Large fish are prepared and hung on rods. Then - placed in a saline solution. The brine should be so salty that the raw potato will float. It is necessary to place the carcasses so that they are not strongly squeezed one another. After a week, the product can be taken out of the brine and, after washing and drying, can be eaten.

If a big catch is caught in the summer heat far from home, you can proceed as follows:

• Salt fish carcasses in a large plastic bag.
• Bury the bag in the soil (it doesn't matter if it's sand or earth). The burial depth is 0.7-1 m. The soil layer will serve as protection from heat and, at the same time, as oppression.
• To prevent moisture from dew or rain from penetrating into the bag, a small bag must be put on the neck.

If the fish carcasses are large, then they must first be gutted, wiped dry (you cannot wash it!), And the head and tail must be cut off. Rub each carcass on the outside. Pour salt into all incisions and the inside. Wrap in clean burlap. You can also use a cloth napkin. Wrap tightly with twine, bandage. Before cooking, carcasses are soaked using milk or water. Then they cook - boil, stew, fry. The choice of option is to taste. You can also eat it raw, seasoned like a herring.

Advice. If a large catch is caught in winter and is thoroughly frozen on the way home, it is not worth salting such fish: after defrosting, the structure of the tissues is already broken, therefore it is gaining a lot of salt. Because of this, it is very difficult to catch the moment when the carcasses are salted and the fish can be significantly salted. In addition, carcasses can disintegrate when soaked and hung. It is best to process the catch that survived freezing and defrosting into stew.

Salting large river fish: video

How to salt river fish: photo

Vobla! How fish is salted on the Volga! The complete process of cooking dried roach, from catching, salting, to drying!

Salting

In a container intended for salting, it can be, for example, a galvanized basin; coarse table salt must be poured on the bottom. Any not too large fish, in this case a voble, but it is highly desirable that the freshly caught one must be tightly packed in a bowl with salt in one layer and covered with a layer of coarse salt.

So you need to repeat the layers of roach and salt until the entire catch is over. Next, cover the container with a lid slightly smaller in size than the diameter of the container itself, put the load on top. The fish should be salted for about three days.

After this time, the roach must be thoroughly rinsed under cold running water. You need to rinse very well! You can even leave the fish under a good stream of water for a while. The fish, which has been salted for three days, is washed under running water for 1.5 - 2 hours. Only then will all excess salt be washed out.

Drying

After that, the vobla needs to be hung up for drying. The vobla is hung up in "bundles" - collecting 8-10 pieces by size, small separately, larger - also separately. Bundles of roach should be hung in a cool place, in the shade, but never in the sun. To prevent the ubiquitous flies and wasps from reaching the drying delicacy, it must be covered with gauze. It is best to string the fish through the eyes so that all excess liquid drains off.

After several days the dried roach is ready to join the friendly company. And in order for the finished cured roach to survive longer, it must be folded into a three-liter jar, covered with a plastic lid and refrigerated.
And now a video on how to salt fish: