Dried fish... How I love her! But now I don't buy it in the store! Absolutely! And that's why.
When I cooked dried fish at home for the first time and compared the cost with the store price, I was a little shocked 😯 The price is different more than 10 times! Therefore, for a long time I have not bought dried fish in the store. In addition to the fact that it is much cheaper at home, much tastier, I am also sure that there is no chemistry here. And the fish is always fresh!
And everything is prepared very, very simply! A bit time consuming, but trust me, it's worth it!
Today I took three types of fish. Here I have saury, smelt and horse mackerel. In total, fish is 2.5 kg. It was all frozen. I gently defrosted it on the shelf in the refrigerator. I never use quick defrost, otherwise the fish will become soft and fall apart!
I clean the fish. I remove my head and all the insides. If caviar comes across, I carefully separate it - and we will also dry it.
I wash the fish well under running water and dry it with paper towels. And now I will salt it.
I make a cut along the ridge with a knife so that the fish can be "flattened". Salt. There should be not too much salt (you don't need to add salt), but not too little (otherwise it will be unsalted). Look - in the video above, I showed in detail how much salt I use for this fish.
I put the fish on a plate and put it in the refrigerator for 7-8 hours.
It remains to prepare the chips. I usually use wood chips to smoke fish. But you can use regular branches - cherry, pear, currant or plum. You can add cherry leaves and rosemary. But I usually use wood chips. I fill it with water and leave it for 1 hour.
It is very important not to oversalt the fish! I do not recommend keeping fish in salt for more than 8 hours. I take the fish out of the refrigerator and rinse it well under running water to remove the remaining salt. Dry well with paper towels. I put the chips on the drier tray. And I put the fish on the net with the skin up.
I dry in an electric dryer for 4 hours at 70 degrees (I have a solar drying mode). If you have a simpler electric dryer, everything works out great too, only in time for a few hours longer.
If you don't have an electric dryer, you can cook in the oven. 70 degrees for about 5-6 hours. The door should be ajar (I put a regular spoon). But much more electricity will be released than in an electric dryer !!!
Here's what happens after 4 hours in an electric dryer:
In general, from 2.5 kg of fish, I got a little more than a kilogram of dry fish. In total, I counted, I save more than 2 thousand rubles on drying alone! Smelt loses most of all in weight. From kg of fish, about 350-400 g remains. But how delicious ...
I am sure there will be many questions in mathematics)) I took everything into account (including energy costs!). Count for yourself. Fresh horse mackerel, for example, costs 116 rubles / kg (I bought it at this price the day before yesterday). Dried - 2.5-3 thous. per kg (this is easy to check by simply going to the store, to any one). So count it. The yield is about 600 g per kilogram. Plus all the costs for electricity (300 W / h, i.e. for 4 hours about 4 rubles), water, gloves... Of course, if you count your work, it can be estimated at a huge amount. But I just did not take this into account. As a result, savings of at least 2 thousand. per kilogram!!! It's simple. Plain math))
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