How to clean red fish caviar from film. Useful tips: how to separate caviar from the film. Choosing fish in the store

No matter what dieters and fans of asceticism say, caviar on the table is a sign of good taste, especially when the table is festive. But if black caviar is a symbol of a luxurious Russian feast, then red caviar is a sign of economic wealth in the family. Meanwhile, even on prosperity, you can save a lot if you do some things yourself. For example, salt the same red caviar at home. Let's study.

How to choose red fish for pickling caviar

Red caviar at home begins with choosing the right fish in the store. For our purposes, we will need fish with red meat, such as salmon, such as trout, salmon or pink salmon. You need an ungutted carcass of a female of any size, which will definitely contain caviar (and it will be in any, because such fish are caught only when they go to spawn).

Distinguishing a female from a male is not a problem. The fact is that the female salmon is... “more feminine”: she has rounder outlines, a more delicate and softer color and a short, rounded head. No points or predatory appearance (like the male). If you are choosing for the first time, following these instructions, try to do it yourself, and then consult with the seller. You will find that your opinions are likely to coincide.

How to pickle red caviar at home correctly

Since you bought frozen fish, defrost it. It is recommended to do this in natural mode, that is, first transfer it from the icebox (freezer) to the refrigerator, and then let it thaw at room temperature.

The process of salting caviar itself consists of two stages of action. First, you need to clean the caviar from the film in which it is located, and then place it in a salt marinade, that is, pickle it. Each stage has its own subtleties. Let's start with cleansing.

Cleaning eggs from caviar

The caviar is in two film bags (bags) - you need to get rid of them. The work is painstaking, but necessary. This must be done extremely carefully so as not to damage the caviar itself. (Unless there is another goal).

Using your hands, carefully separate the caviar from the film.

Next, place the caviar in a bowl and fill with cold water. Using a wooden stick, we begin to mix intensively in one direction. Periodically we take the stick out of the water and remove the remaining film, which wraps very well around a wooden skewer. In this way, we will sufficiently clean the red caviar from the film.

Now line the colander with gauze, folded in half, and place the caviar on it. And let the liquid drain.
Next, we will move the caviar in a colander over dry gauze. Small particles of film and crushed eggs will stick to the fabric.

Preparing salt marinade - brine

For brine we need water, salt and sugar. How much water should I take? I take enough so that it completely covers the caviar, that is, approximately twice the volume of the caviar.

How much salt and sugar? For a glass of water - 2 tablespoons of salt and 2 teaspoons of sugar. This is “according to science”. A popular way to determine the correct salt concentration is also quite popular: place a fresh egg in the amount of water that will be used to prepare the solution. And start adding salt. As soon as the egg floats to the surface, stop - there is enough salt for red caviar.

So, let's prepare the marinade. Pour salt and sugar into the water and boil. Then we cool the water a little, because we don’t need boiling water, but so that it’s “enough for your finger.”

Salting red caviar

Pour brine over the caviar and leave... For how long? I leave it for about 20 minutes, because I need the caviar to stand in the refrigerator for 2-3 days (more is still not possible). If you plan to serve it to the table right away, 7 minutes is enough.

Place the caviar on cheesecloth and let dry. It can dry up to 2 hours. Then transfer to sterilized jars greased with olive oil. And put it in the refrigerator.
Caviar is ready to eat in 3 hours.

A delicacy such as red caviar is a storehouse of health-promoting microelements and vitamins. We often see it at holiday feasts as a stand-alone snack or as part of a dish. Usually they buy the finished product at the grocery store, believing that cleaning and preparing it yourself is a complex and time-consuming process. Contrary to popular belief, cleaning it at home is easy.

Having decided to pickle caviar yourself, you need to know how to clean it. This stage is important because the further success of preparing the final product depends on it. What needs to be cleaned from: each egg is placed in a special cell called a cell. All the sockets are connected to each other, forming a kind of bag. This is what you need to cleanse the future delicacy from. At first glance, it may seem that this is a complex and lengthy procedure. This is wrong.

There are several cleaning methods, you just need to choose the most suitable one. By following the order of the preparation steps and performing them correctly, the end result will be well-cleaned caviar ready for salting. Cleaning is important: without removing the film, the product will taste bitter.

Method one is the easiest

With this cleaning option, you need to have a colander and hot water. This method is preferable for mature and large caviar. The only condition is that the holes in the colander must be larger in diameter than the eggs themselves.

Place the caviar in a clean bowl and pour over hot water. Important! The water should be hot, not boiling water. Otherwise, the eggs will harden and lose all their taste. After this, carefully begin squeezing through the holes. All the film will remain in the colander. If any eggs remain in the bags, remove them with a fork.

The second method is operational

Sometimes you need to clean quickly. In this case, this method is most preferable. Prepare a saucepan and a wooden spoon.

The caviar is placed in a pan and filled with hot water (not boiling water!).
Under the influence of water temperature, the eggs will burst and become cloudy with a grayish tint. Their consistency will become loose.
Place a wooden spoon in the center of the dish and begin rotating it between your palms. The opaque yoke will begin to wrap around the spoon as you roll it. You just need to clean the spoon periodically.
At the end of the procedure, small pieces of film may remain; they can be removed by hand.

An important point: do not keep the caviar in the water for too long, as it will harden. An alternative to this method is to place the product in a sieve and hold it under running hot water. After this, stir with a fork, while removing the crust.

Method three - combined

Suitable for those who have a lot of time at their disposal. With this method, cleaning and salting occur at the same time.

Prepare a steep brine solution. Dilute half a glass of salt in one liter of cold water.
Place the caviar in the solution, after dividing it into 4-6 pieces. It is necessary to break it very carefully without damaging the eggs.
Leave it to lie in the saline solution for at least 2 hours.
After this time, the film can be easily removed from the eggs by hand.

The method is convenient because the caviar is salted during cleaning. This option is also relevant if the caviar has lost its freshness - the brine solution has the ability to revive the caviar.

As you can see from the methods described above, cleaning is not at all difficult. Self-prepared caviar is more delicious than the one purchased in the store.

Irina Kamshilina

Cooking for someone is much more pleasant than for yourself))

Mar 9 2017

Content

Sometimes when purchasing uncut chilled or frozen red fish, caviar is found in it during cleaning. Housewives should know that this valuable product can be salted at home. The result is a delicacy that tastes no worse than store-bought, with great benefits and nutritional value. Salting pink salmon caviar at home - find out the features.

How to pickle pink salmon caviar at home

You can also buy a ready-made chilled product for subsequent processing in order to obtain the required amount of the delicacy. It would be best to salt pink salmon caviar at home, because salting extends the shelf life of the product. You should start by processing the eggs - films containing eggs that hold them tightly, preventing them from crumbling.

The shell must be removed from the oysters without damaging it, otherwise the substances contained in it will lead to the appearance of bitterness. The bags of eggs are washed with running cool water and can be used as a whole for pickling, but most cooks prefer to peel them. After separating the films from the grains, they are washed three times, dried and the brine is prepared. Are you wondering how to salt pink salmon caviar? There are three methods:

wet (in brine) - concentrated brine of table salt, where grains are placed, left for half an hour, then left for several hours;
dry– rubbing with salt and slow marinating (up to 10 hours);
accelerated– the product is made in five hours, but is not stored for long.

After salting, the finished grains are optionally seasoned with oil, which extends their shelf life by five days. Without it, the product is stored in the refrigerator for a maximum of three days when using brine, and when dry salting - 14 days. There is a way to extend the shelf life - put the salted eggs in sterile jars, pour in melted butter and put them in the freezer. You can defrost them only once, but you need to eat the appetizing product two months in advance.

How to remove the film from pink salmon caviar

The most important step in making a homemade delicacy is this step: you need to remove the film from pink salmon caviar. You can get eggs in several ways:

Scald the berries with boiling water, carefully rub them on a coarse grater until a film remains on your hand. Instead of a grater, you can use a sieve with large holes or a colander.
Wrap the eggs in gauze, hold them under running water, and stir constantly.
Transfer the yastyki into a deep bowl, carefully bring to them the included mixer with attachments for mixing the dough without a whisk, operating at minimum power. In a few seconds, the blades will wrap the films onto the nozzles, leaving the eggs intact.
For neat housewives, it will not be difficult to simply scrape the caviar out of the bags with a fork or spoon.

Recipe for salting pink salmon caviar at home

Every cook knows what to do with pink salmon caviar - prepare, salt and store it. There are not many options for processing methods, so choosing the appropriate step-by-step recipe for salting pink salmon caviar at home is easy. You can make a standard healthy product, salted with brine or dry salt, diluted with sunflower oil. There are other methods of salting the “royal” delicacy - with cream, fried onions, lemon juice and herbs.

Homemade pink salmon caviar

Number of servings: 3 persons.
Calorie content of the dish: 575 kcal.
Purpose: for a snack.
Cuisine: Russian.

Homemade pink salmon caviar is prepared using the “wet” method - using a concentrated solution of brine salt. In addition to salt, it includes a little sugar to add great flavor and increase shelf life. The resulting delicacy must be eaten within two days, but if you fill it with refined sunflower oil, the shelf life will increase to half a month.

Ingredients:

caviar – 250 g;
water – 250 ml;
salt – 20 g;
sugar – 5 g.

Cooking method:

Separate the eggs from the film, rinse and dry.
Boil water, dissolve the sugar-salt mixture, strain through a sieve or several layers of gauze.
Cool the brine to 30 degrees, pour in the eggs.
Leave for two hours, drain the brine through cheesecloth.
Place the finished delicious dish into jars. Place in the refrigerator to cool.
Spread on buttered sandwiches.

From frozen pink salmon

Cooking time: 2.5 hours.
Number of servings: 5 persons.
Calorie content of the dish: 1170 kcal.
Purpose: for a snack.
Cuisine: Russian.
Difficulty of preparation: medium.

Caviar from frozen pink salmon turns out no worse than when using chilled salmon, if it is defrosted correctly. To do this, place the eggs in the refrigerator at a temperature of up to 6 degrees for eight hours. Such long-term defrosting will preserve the integrity of the eggs and prevent them from bursting due to temperature changes. All you have to do is follow the step-by-step recipe, which will teach you how to cook pink salmon caviar.

Ingredients:

pink salmon caviar – 500 g;
water – 2 l;
salt – 100 g;
sugar - teaspoon;
refined vegetable oil – 40 ml.

Cooking method:

Defrost the product, remove the opaque films - fill with a brine of half water and 35 g of salt. Heat the solution, stir it with a spiral mixer operating at low speed.
Carefully remove the films and pour out the brine. Prepare a new solution in a saucepan using the remaining water and the sugar-salt mixture. Bring to a boil, cool to 30 degrees, let the eggs sit for 20 minutes.
Drain the brine and place the product on a clean towel to dry for 15 minutes.
Place in a jar and fill with oil. After two hours, delicious pink salmon caviar is ready to eat. Store for several months.

Five Minute Recipe

Cooking time: 5.5 hours.
Number of servings: 5 persons.
Calorie content of the dish: 1150 kcal.
Purpose: for a snack.
Cuisine: Russian.
Difficulty of preparation: medium.

A quick recipe for pink salmon caviar: Five Minutes is called that because it takes exactly five minutes to prepare the pickling mixture, but the pickling itself lasts longer. This option for processing the delicacy assumes that the delicious caviar will be eaten within a couple of days. It turns out lightly salted, tender and retains its pleasant aroma. Some of it can be filled with oil to preserve it longer.

Ingredients:

red caviar – half a kilo;
salt – 60 g;
sugar – 5 g.

Cooking method:

Clean the eggs from the film and wash the eggs.
Place in a bowl, add salt, sprinkle with sugar, and stir gently.
Cover with a lid or saucer and brine for five hours at room temperature.
You need to cover it so that a slight pressure is created on top.

In order for any cook to be able to salt pink salmon caviar correctly, you should listen to the advice of experienced professionals:

You can check the concentration of brine this way: put peeled raw potatoes into water, if they float up, then the solution is ready for salting;
per kilogram of grains requires two liters of brine;
the brine must be boiled and the flakes removed from it;
drain the brine carefully using gauze;
a warm solution should be poured into the eggs - up to 30 degrees, so that it better saturates them;
you can get a tasty product if you salt the caviar with the addition of cream and onions - cover with chopped onions, pour in salted cream, leave for an hour;
lemon juice and ground white pepper add sophistication to the delicacy;
It is better to choose glass jars for storage - plastic or metal will give an unpleasant aftertaste.

Price

In retail stores and markets, the price of pink salmon caviar ranges from 1600 to 2500 rubles. per kilogram. The cost depends on the type of packaging (in plastic buckets the product is cheaper than in tin cans), on the manufacturer (the most expensive is Kamchatka), on the size of the eggs (small ones - from 140 rubles per 100 g, large ones - from 350 rubles for the same weight). At home, salting pink salmon caviar will be much cheaper and more profitable, and you will not need to use preservatives in production.

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It is becoming increasingly rare to find red fish with caviar in the retail trade. Today, sellers have become adept at identifying females and clean the eggs themselves. However, sometimes you get lucky and manage to snatch an uneviscerated fish. As a rule, you come across pink salmon, but in more expensive species it is more difficult to find a “lucky” fish. They will tell you how to identify the “right” fish and how to properly clean the eggs.

How to determine the sex of a fish?

In order to determine whether there is a female or a male in front of you, you need to pay attention to the head of the fish.

The male has a more elongated head, with a more pronounced lower jaw, which is slightly extended upward. If you take two fish of different sexes, you can determine that the male’s head is more aggressive, and the female’s muzzle looks more gentle and neat.

The color of the male is usually brighter and more saturated. Some hobbyists determine the presence of caviar by examining and determining the thickness of the abdomen. However, this is not entirely correct, since instead of caviar you can find milt. Of course, you can eat them too, but our goal is caviar, so we’ll look for it.

Learning to properly cut fish

It is not enough to find a real female among the many males; it is important to be able to cut her correctly. The abdomen should be opened very carefully, since the gall bladder is located nearby, which is located near the head of the fish. If you are careless and pierce it, the caviar will acquire a bitter taste and will be considered spoiled. If you didn’t look closely and pierced it, then you should immediately rinse all the insides of the fish under cold running water. The caviar is in the nest. This is a film that is shaped like an elongated bag. The caviar is not salted in it, although some try to experiment, but the result is something similar to herring caviar.

Proper cleaning of caviar

If you know how to properly clean caviar, this procedure is quite quick and simple.

Let's reveal the secret and say that it is necessary to clean the caviar in boiled water. To do this, add a heaped tablespoon of salt to a liter of boiled water. Heat the water to 50 degrees and remove the pan from the stove. Caviar is placed in heated water in a tray, two pieces at a time. You shouldn’t put too many pieces, as it will be quite difficult to get rid of the film later.

After placing the caviar in the water, you should carefully stir the caviar with a fork or whisk. As you stir, an ill-fated film is wound around the whisk, which must be removed from time to time. After the film is removed, the water is drained through a colander, and the remaining film is removed by hand.

You can also clean caviar in other ways. For example, some recommend breaking the eggs into several pieces, each of which must be gently kneaded with your fingers, being careful not to crush the eggs. Ideally, the eggs will fall out on their own into the prepared container.

Others recommend using a colander. The yastyk is placed in a colander or sieve, which is immersed in hot water for a few seconds. The water should be hot, but under no circumstances boiling water. After placing the sieve in the water, carefully stir the sieve with a fork. As a result, the entire film will remain on the fork, and you will get separated eggs. You should not keep caviar in hot water for a long time, as it may harden.

There is another way to clean caviar. To do this, you need to place the eggs in a colander with holes larger than the eggs themselves. Next, pour boiling water over the crust and place a large plate under a colander. Using light movements, squeeze out the eggs through a colander. As a result, there will be individual eggs in the plate, and a film will remain in the colander.

It’s better to salt caviar

After cleaning the caviar, it is necessary to prepare it for food. You should not fry it, as it will become tough. It's better to salt it. To do this, you need to prepare a salting solution. A kilogram of caviar will require about four liters of solution.

To prepare, you need to dissolve one kilogram of salt in four liters of water, put it on fire and boil for 8 minutes. Next, the solution is cooled to room temperature and the prepared caviar is poured over it. It must be kept in the solution for about 10 minutes, and if storage is planned for more than two weeks, then the caviar should be kept in the solution for 25 minutes. Next, the water is drained through a colander. You can add a teaspoon of vegetable oil to the resulting caviar; this will prevent the eggs from sticking together. Next, the caviar is placed in prepared jars and placed in the refrigerator for several hours.

In principle, cleaning caviar is not a complicated process. The main thing is to do everything correctly and carefully, and then pickle it and enjoy the natural product.

Red caviar is a valuable delicacy with many beneficial properties. In stores it is sold already peeled, salted and packaged in containers. Fresh unsalted caviar cannot be sold, as it spoils quickly.

When cutting a red fish carcass, you can find a yastyk - a film sac in which the caviar is located. To salt the delicacy, it is necessary first of all to get rid of the caviar films, otherwise the caviar will acquire an unpleasant bitter taste. The product must be defrosted before cleaning.

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Cleaning and salting

You can peel red caviar from the film at the same time as preparing it for storage. To do this you need:

Prepare brine at the rate of 3 tablespoons of caviar per liter of water.
Pour the brine into an enamel container, bring to a boil, cool to approximately 60 degrees.
Dip the eggs with caviar into the heated brine and leave for 30-40 minutes.
Taste the caviar: if there is not enough salt, leave it in the brine for a while, rinse the over-salted product in running water.
Gently stir the caviar with a whisk when it has reached the desired level of salting. During stirring, the caviar will begin to separate, and the films will remain on the whisk: they must be constantly removed; if they dissolve, the product will become sticky.
Catch the caviar with a spoon, spreading it in an even layer on gauze.
Cover the gauze with caviar with a thick paper napkin and pat lightly: this will help dry the delicacy and get rid of excess films.
Wrap the caviar in gauze and hang until the water drains.
Transfer the caviar into a glass container and place in the refrigerator.

Before immersing the delicacy in brine, you need to check its temperature by throwing in a small piece of caviar. If the color of the product has not changed, the temperature is optimal.

other methods

If you don’t plan to salt the caviar right away, you can remove the film from it in several ways, for example:

Break the eggs into several parts and gently knead each one until all the eggs are separated from the film.
Place the film bags in a colander with large holes, pour boiling water over them, and quickly shake the sieve until all the caviar falls out through the holes.
Place the yastyki in a large container, pour boiling water over it, then stir gently with a wooden spoon. The loose film stuck to the spoon must be removed, then carefully catch the small remnants of the bags. After this, the caviar must be thoroughly washed in cold water until it hardens.
To prevent the caviar from becoming hard, you can place it in a pan in a sieve or colander with small holes and fill it with hot water.