White smoked fish titles. Dried fish

I've always been amazed by people who say they don't like fish. It makes me want to ask: what kind of fish do you dislike? Spicy salted herring, sprinkled with green onions, or smoked capelin, which bursts from caviar? Don't like zander steamed with spices, or flounder pulled from the very bottom of the sea to be fried until crispy? Maybe greasy mackerel baked in foil with lemon and dill causes gastronomic dislike? Or the most tender red meat of salmon fish, which turns out to be delicious no matter how you cook it: steamed, grilled or in the oven? Of course, if all acquaintance with fish cooking consists in tasting bony silver carp, cloudy fish soup and indistinct fish meatballs, which were so loved to regale visitors to Soviet canteens, then we can say with all responsibility: I don’t like fish! In all other cases, such a statement only says that the inhabitants water depths were just not properly prepared.

For whatever reasons people do not eliminate this product from their menu, they deprive themselves of a huge number of interesting fish dishes, voluntarily reducing their own palette of taste sensations.

Fish in cooking

The variety of fish species can confuse anyone. They differ not only appearance, but also the content of vitamins and nutrients, meat texture, aroma and other properties. The meat of all fish contains almost the same amount of protein, but the fat content can range from 0.1% to 33% of the weight. Lean fish species are called lean and, in this case, this should not be taken as an insult.

It is on the fat content that the taste mainly depends, and also on how exactly it is distributed in the carcass. There are types of fish in which the meat itself is rather “skinny”, and fat accumulates in the liver (for example, cod), in the subcutaneous layer, near the fins or on the abdomen. And the most delicious fish species do not have “problem areas”, fat is harmoniously distributed between the muscles, as if they had spent their whole lives in a fitness center.

Choosing the wrong type of fish can ruin even the best culinary idea. What kind of fish to choose to fry? And who better to send to the oven? Which fish is better to cook soup from, and whose karma is to be salted for long-term storage? Detailed description each type of fish and the peculiarities of their preparation in terms of volume will compete with "War and Peace", so I will focus on the inhabitants water element most popular in cooking.

Sturgeon family

Sturgeon, beluga, sterlet, stellate sturgeon

I remember, as a child, I was impressed by a picture from a large Soviet culinary encyclopedia, which depicted a sterlet proudly curled up on a pillow of outlandishly cut vegetables and covered with an intricate mayonnaise net. The child's mind could not imagine how it is, but it was very beautiful, since then the sturgeon has been associated with something luxuriously pretentious and unattainably beautiful, despite the relative accessibility and existence of the mass simple recipes cooking.

In old Russian recipes, you can find the description "red fish" in relation to sturgeons. Here we are talking not about the color of meat, but about the special nobility of these breeds, where “red” means beautiful, valuable. talking modern language, premium class fish.

These fish do not have a bone, but a cartilaginous skeleton, inside the ridge there is a chord - a long strip of specific dense cellular tissue, and along the abdomen and on the sides there are "bugs" - small bone growths. According to them, you can easily determine the belonging of fish to sturgeons. During their life, these fish accumulate a certain amount of fat in the abdomen, but all muscle meat is penetrated with delicate fatty layers, such as, for example, in the most elite marbled beef, because sturgeon meat has an exceptional taste. They are equally beautiful in cold and hot dishes, soups and aspics. Heads and cartilages have a direct path to fish soup or hodgepodge, and the signature dishes of traditional Russian cuisine are pies with a screech - a specially processed backbone chord of sturgeons.

salmon family

Salmon, salmon, trout, chum salmon, pink salmon

The meat of these fish has different shades of pinkish-red color and does not contain small bones. Delicate taste, sufficient fat content and the absence of a pronounced fishy smell make these types of fish one of the most popular both in the restaurant menu and for home festive table.

Salmon go on sale in the form of lightly salted fillets and frozen or heavily chilled carcasses, whole or cut into pieces.

Lightly salted salmon fillet is a ready-made delicious delicacy used for cold appetizers and salads. Thawed meat of these fish is best used for frying and baking. Steaks and fillets are suitable for this. The fattest part is the bellies, they are good salted or, in combination with lean fish meat, for minced fish. And heads, ridges with leftover meat and other trimmings can be used to make a wonderful, rich fish.

Salmon are harvested in the Caspian Sea and on Far East. Far Eastern salmon include chum salmon, sockeye salmon, pink salmon, they produce most of the red caviar supplied to the market, which, although called salmon caviar, is actually obtained from different types of salmon.
Salmon is considered one of the the best views salmon fish, the proportions of fat and muscle in tender meat are ideal.
Trout lives in different water bodies of the world, fresh and salty, so its varieties (lake, rainbow, etc.) differ in size, appearance and fat content, but they all have excellent taste.

flounder family

flounder, halibut

Outwardly, strange fish look as if they were crushed by the whole load of world problems at once. These inhabitants of the seabed, who feel the pressure of water all their lives, have a flat body shape, an asymmetrical head and a certain dress code: dark top, white bottom.

This is one of the favorite fish of the inhabitants of the coastal regions of the Baltic, Black, Azov, mediterranean seas And Pacific Ocean, which is valued for very tender, fatty meat with a rich taste. It is used in many recipes: fried, stewed in sauce or wine, which ennobles the already good taste of this juicy and soft fish by an order of magnitude.
And the delicious halibut meat is also smoked, then cut into the thinnest, transparent slices that simply melt in your mouth.

cod family

Cod, haddock, saffron cod, burbot

Most of the fish of this family are fleshy, dense, have a rather strong fishy smell and are almost devoid of small bones.
The cod itself is highly valued for fatty (up to 70%), rich in vitamin D liver, from which gourmet snacks are made, but its meat is completely lean. Maybe because of this, many have an opinion about his "second-rate" and unsuitability for creating a truly delicious dish. In fact, tender and very healthy cod and haddock meat is great for baking with sauces, fried in batter, steamed with spices and minced meat, which must be supplemented with suitable ingredients: vegetable or butter and onions. These dishes turn out juicy and fragrant, and not dry and insipid, as the cod-phobes claim. In addition, cod is most often sold already gutted and cleaned, which greatly facilitates the preliminary preparation of fish.

Carp family

Carp, tench, bream, carp, silver carp, grass carp, crucian carp, ram, roach

The meat of these fish is tasty, very tender and has a medium fat content, but the real problem is the removal of many small bones. It is almost impossible to remove them all, so cyprinids are rarely served in restaurants, they are not recommended to be included in the children's menu. Best of all, large carps, carps and silver carps look in fried with different sauces, they are also used for stuffing. Like carp, they can be baked in the oven.

It is better to put small fish in your ear, they will make a fragrant broth and rich soup, which must be strained to get rid of the bones.

Representatives of cyprinids such as bream, ram, roach are dried, smoked and dried, then the process of nibbling fish bones becomes a special ritual and can bring some pleasure.

herring family

Herring, herring, sardine, capelin, sprat, anchovy

The meat of these fish is very fatty and dense enough, so they are great for salting and pickling. Particularly popular different types pickled and salted herring in Scandinavian cuisine, where the preparation of this fish has reached incredible culinary heights.

Depending on the fat content, various side dishes and sauces are served with salted herring. Fragrant fatty polar, Atlantic or Danube herring requires a neutral accompaniment, for example, boiled potatoes with greens and onions, and less fatty Black Sea herring is good in a spicy marinade, with spicy dressings or sauces, pates and snacks are prepared from it, for example mincemeat.

For long-term storage, herring is placed in a strong brine, therefore, when preparing snacks from it, the fish sometimes needs to be soaked in water or milk first to remove excess salt.

Smoked herrings are very tasty, but it is rather problematic to implement at home. But frying fresh herring or herring is very easy and simple, while they form an amazing crispy crust. True, the smell in the kitchen will be very specific, all the neighbors will be aware of your fish feast, so it’s better to do it outdoors, on the grill. A great alternative to the usual picnic dishes.

perch family

perch, zander, ruff

Low-fat white meat of these fish has a delicate texture and a lot of useful substances. Pike perch meat is especially dietary, it contains a minimum of fat and a maximum of protein. But their eating can be overshadowed by a certain amount of rather tangible bones, although there are not as many of them as in cyprinids. The smaller the fish, the more difficult it is to get rid of the bones, so large individuals are great for frying, baking and stewing, and it is better to cook minced meat for cutlets from small ones. Fishermen know that the most delicious fish soup in the world is obtained from ruff, and the rest of the perch did not let us down in this sense. Their meat contains a lot of gelling substances, so the rich broth of them easily solidifies, turning into excellent fish jelly. It remains only to add the meat of some boneless fish to it to get a wonderful aspic.

Separate story - sea ​​bass, its other name is sea ​​bass, laurel or branzino.

With this fish there is eternal confusion. The fact is that in English bass is “perch” (moreover, the most common river perch will not be bass at all, but perch - but this is a topic for a separate discussion). There are a great many perches, and in order not to be confused, practical Englishmen (and all English-speaking people) add a description to the name: white bass - white perch, yellow bass - yellow perch, sunshine bass - striped perch, spotted bass - spotted perch. That's sea ​​bass called sea bass, simply and logically. Only sea bass is not a perch at all, the fish belongs to a completely different Moron family, differing greatly both in appearance and taste.
Branzino is the same as sea bass, but in Italian, laurel is a translation of the Latin name, and in Russia this fish has long been known under the name of the sea wolf.

This is a truly versatile fish that is very difficult to spoil with poor cooking. It is valued for its fatty white meat of very good taste and lack of bones. It reveals all its qualities when frying, boiling, stewing, baking in the oven or on the grill, whole or in pieces, solo or stuffed with vegetables.

A few more popular fish that enjoy a well-deserved gastronomic reputation.

This fish, which is gaining popularity in modern culinary at a frantic pace, is nothing more than crucian carp. All its names are somehow connected with gold: golden spar, aurata, dorada (d'oro - gold) - most likely because of the golden yellow stripe near the eyes. And now also thanks to exorbitant prices, which have grown in direct proportion to the demand for this fish.

Dorado was grown back in Ancient Rome; now, having scientific evidence that its meat is not only tender, dense, fragrant, but also very dietary, containing little fat, it was appreciated by all adherents healthy eating. Dorada is bred under special conditions in Greece, Italy, Turkey, France, so the Mediterranean cuisine is rich in recipes from this fish, which grows even tastier under artificial conditions than in nature. You can cook it in any way you prefer: fry, bake, stew, boil, combining with a variety of sauces and side dishes.

By the way, by palatability and the consistency of sea bream is similar to sea bass, so these types of fish are interchangeable in all recipes.

catfish

A distinctive feature of this fish is the absence of scales and bones, except for the ridge. It is believed that the smaller the catfish, the more tender its meat, and large fish living at the bottom, in mud, have tougher meat with a pronounced taste and a specific smell, not always pleasant. In fact, this applies to fish caught in natural reservoirs with stagnant water, but in the product of industrial fishing, the fillet of even very large individuals remains tender, with a special structure, and almost odorless. Catfish is well suited for cutlets, it can be boiled and fried in portions, and medium-sized fish is baked in the oven as a whole. It should be borne in mind that in this fish fat accumulates in the tail, which can taste very different from the rest of the carcass, especially in large specimens.

Pike

Pike sizes can range from 0.5 to 40 kg, carcasses of 2-3 kg are considered the best in gastronomic terms. The meat of this fish has a rather specific taste and smell, besides, the pike is quite bony. But its recognizable taste adds a "zest" to the dish, so it is popular for making minced meat for cutlets and rolls, it is used for fish soup or frying. Pike skin is very dense, it is removed with a whole “sleeve”, therefore a whole stuffed pike has been a classic dish of Russian cuisine for many centuries, however, its preparation requires a lot of effort and skill.

This large ocean fish was little known in the Soviet Union and was almost never used in our cooking, while European and American cuisine use this tasty and healthy product with might and main. Fatty tuna meat has a very pleasant taste, which is difficult to confuse with any other fish. A variety of canned food is made from it (in its own juice and oil), which are widely used in salads, and tuna fillet is fried and steamed, it acquires an interesting texture and rich pink color.

On sale you can find small carcasses weighing 2-10 kg. But the most delicious and expensive tuna fillet comes from large ocean fish. Some specimens weigh about 500 kg. This is information to make it easier for you to imagine such a fillet if you suddenly think of pieces like cod or perch fillets.

A fish that looks more like a snake can cause unwanted associations in people suffering from herpetophobia, that is, the fear of any creeping reptiles. But apart from a suspicious appearance, this fish has nothing in common with snakes. Fatty eel meat is very tender and pleasant in taste, it is considered a delicacy. Hot smoked eel is a popular product of Asian cuisine, in particular, without it there would not be a good dozen types of sushi. But European cuisine also boasts a variety of eel dishes: it is boiled in red wine, fried with spices, baked in dough.

Well, I hope this long digression into the fish kingdom has helped you at least a little bit to understand what's what. And I would like to believe that you have a desire to buy some kind of fish and experiment with it in the kitchen. I personally wanted to, so I will move from theory to practice.

White fish is a very healthy and nutritious product, there are many options for its preparation.

The advantage of fish is also that it contains few calories, but at the same time is rich in useful substances. Therefore, it, of course, should be included in the diet of proper and healthy nutrition.

white fish

In general, white fish is divided into two main groups:

• flat fish, it includes flounder, flounder-ruff (in other words - small flounder), halibut, and also white-barked halibut;
• round fish (striped bass, angler, red snapper, grouper)
• cod family (cod, saithe, haddock, hake).

White fish - some features

White fish are mostly gutted directly into the sea, immediately after it was caught, so as not to disturb the original white color of the meat.

Despite the fact that, thanks to deep freezing, you can find fish on the shelves of shops and supermarkets at any time of the year, the taste of fish cooked immediately after being caught is truly amazing.

White fish is a marine fish, it has the densest meat and delicious aroma, especially the one that was caught in the cold waters of the northern Pacific and Atlantic oceans.

White fish - among the peoples of the world

The diet of the Japanese, who are famous for their high life expectancy, consists mainly of fish. It is she who serves as the main source of protein.

In England, fish has become popular since the time when, according to Christian custom, meat should be excluded from the diet on fast days.

Since ancient times, all valuable types of fish began to be attributed to the “white fish” in Rus', but first of all, omul, white salmon, vendace, and others.

White fish - cooking

The flesh of white fish can be tender, slightly falling apart, or firmer. There are different varieties of white fish, and for each of them it is important to choose your own individual way of cooking.

Halibut and cod and halibut are fish with firmer flesh. Therefore, they are best suited for frying and roasting on the grill and in the oven. In addition, very often these varieties of white fish are added to soups, curries, goulash.

Flat fish such as sole, perch, flounder are best cooked in more gentle ways. Their tender flesh perfectly absorbs excellent flavors if fried in a pan, dried and dipped in flour. You can cook it for a couple.

White fish - recipes

Here are some of the most popular recipes for cooking white fish, which are in demand in the cuisines of different countries.

For the recipes we have given, you can use any fish of your choice with white fillets. First, check that there are no bones in the fish fillet. When the fish is ready, the flesh will begin to fall apart slightly and become matte.

Cod baked with cherry tomatoes

Recipe

1. Place the cod fillets, skin side down, in a skillet with hot olive oil (it's best to use a dish that can be placed in the oven) and fry until golden brown.
2. Then add the cherry tomatoes and place the mold in an oven preheated to 220°C for 10 minutes.
3. If desired, you can add a little balsamic vinegar, as well as finely chopped basil.

Flounder rolls

To prepare the dish you will need

• 4 tsp mustard
• 4 flounder fillets
• 2 tbsp chopped parsley
• cream
• 1 tbsp capers

1. Brush the flounder fillets with mustard, sprinkle with chopped parsley and roll each fillet tightly into a roll. Secure it with a toothpick.
2. Put the rolls in a frying pan, after melting the butter in it, and fry on all sides until cooked.
3. Then add some cream, capers. Especially good with mashed potatoes.

Cod in sauce

To prepare the dish you will need

white fish recipe

1. Put the fish fillet in a greased baking dish. Fill with milk and put the form a heated to 220 ° C for 10 minutes.
2. Melt the butter in a saucepan, add the flour and mix, then drain the milk from under the fish and add it to the butter and flour, prepare a white sauce.
3. Stir in the cream to thin the sauce, season and stir in the chopped parsley. Pour the sauce over the fish and send it to the oven for another 15-20 minutes. Eat hot fish!

Fish soup

To prepare the dish you will need

• 1 small onion
• 2 garlic cloves
• 1 chopped fennel bulb
• 420 gr chopped canned tomatoes
• 500 ml fish broth
• 2 white fish fillets
• grated parmesan

white fish recipe

1. Fry the onion, finely chopped, garlic, 1 chopped fennel bulb in a saucepan.
2. Add chopped canned tomatoes and fish broth. Boil for 5 min.
3. Add the white fish fillet, cut into cubes, and cook for another 3 minutes. Serve with croutons, sprinkled with grated parmesan cheese.

flounder a la meuniere

For the preparation of flounder you will need

• 4 fillets of white flounder
• butter
• juice of 1 lemon
• 2 tbsp chopped greens

white fish recipe

1. Dust the flounder fillet with flour and fry it on both sides in butter.
2. When the fish is cooked, add some butter, lemon juice and chopped parsley to the pan.
3. Bring to readiness and serve.

Fish kebab

To prepare a fish kebab you will need

• 2 white fish fillets
• Cherry tomatoes
• 1 bulb
• 1 yellow pepper
• olive oil
• 1 tbsp sour cream, yogurt

white fish recipe

1. Cut 2 white fish fillets into pieces, put on skewers, alternating with cherry tomatoes, bay leaves, 1 diced pepper, red onion.
2. Grill at the highest temperature on all sides, drizzling with oil and sprinkling with garlic, passed through a press, with sour cream or yogurt.

White fish on skewers

This recipe is from Julia Vysotskaya. For this dish you will need any fleshy fish, it is better if it is not very bony. Rosemary can be replaced with thyme or tarragon or thyme. Be careful not to overcook the fish or it will dry out.

For cooking you will need

• 500 g of any white fish (cod, halibut)
• 100 g bacon
• 1 garlic clove
• 1 tbsp rosemary leaves
• 5 st. l. olive oil
• sea ​​salt
• 1 loaf

White fish recipe:

1. Preheat the oven to 200°C. Wash the fish, dry it with a paper towel, remove the bones, and cut it into cubes into 5x5 cm pieces.
2. Crush garlic and rosemary in a wooden mortar, adding a pinch of salt, olive oil. Roll the fish pieces in the resulting dressing.
3. Cut off the peel from the loaf, break it into small pieces. Thread the fish and bread alternately on the skewer.
4. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper, place the skewers on it, top with the chopped bacon pieces, and drizzle with the remaining rosemary and olive oil dressing.
5. Bake the skewers in a preheated oven for 10-15 minutes. Bon appetit!

ANCHOVIES

KILECHNY AMBASSADOR

ZHUPANOVSKAYA HERRING

OMUL

ACNE

HOW SPRATS ARE PREPARED

POPPER

READY JELLIES

SMOKING FISH

CAVIAR

WHITE AND RED FISH

FISH FILLET

SAKHALIN AND OKHOTSK HERRING

NUTRITIONAL FISH

KETA MOSCHET IKRU

FLOUNDER

FAT IN FISH PRODUCTS

COD AND HADDOCK

STERLET

VYAZIGA

"COD LIVER IN TOMATO SAUCE"

DRIED FISH

HOW MANY EDIBLE PARTS AND WASTE DOES THE FISH HAVE

Anchovies. Anchovy fish - genus pelagic marine fish from the anchovy family, there are 8 species of anchovies. Anchovies are rightly considered a gourmet spicy fish snack. In the Azov-Black Sea basin, the European anchovy or anchovy is caught - a small fish up to 10-11 cm in size, which is caught in huge masses mainly in the Kerch Strait.

The name anchovy, however, actually began to denote only the method of preparation. So, anchovies in tins are often prepared from small White Sea herring, Baltic herring or other small fish, but only according to a certain method of anchovy salting.

Kerch herring. The Kerch herring fish has a well-deserved world fame. By the taste of its tender meat and fat content (up to 22%), this fish is much superior to most other herring.

The best Kerch herring is caught in autumn near Kerch in the Kerch Strait.

By the way, we note that fishing in these parts has its own very ancient history. In particular, during excavations near Kerch, ancient pickling vats were found, as well as coins depicting a fish head.

AND slander herring. Icelandic herring is a foreign name, but the extraction, processing and all the equipment for salting this herring are Russian, Soviet. Every summer, entire fleets of our ships of various sizes, including large processing bases that can hold thousands of tons of herring and tens of thousands of barrels, leave Murmansk and ports Baltic Sea to the North Atlantic to the Iceland region for catching oily Icelandic herring.

Kilechny Ambassador. The list of spices that form a “bouquet” and, therefore, determine the taste and aroma of sprat salting: bitter and allspice, coriander, bay leaf, nutmeg, cinnamon, cloves, ginger, cardamom.

Various fish are preserved with sprat salting, but mainly sprats and herring.

Salmon. There is no tastier fish snack than lightly salted, pale pink, tender and delicate in taste salmon, with droplets of transparent fat protruding on the cuts. Salmon from the Caspian salmon, which lives in the middle part of the Caspian Sea, is especially good.

The best of the Caspian salmon is the Kurinsky salmon caught in the mouth of the Kura. Chicken salmon often has a length of more than a meter, and in weight reaches 40-50 kg.

Salmon. Salmon is a large silver fish from the salmon family. This is one of the most delicious and delicious fish. Our fishermen catch it in the northern waters - in the Kola Bay, in the Pechora, the Northern Dvina and other northern rivers. Salmon is found in the Barents and White Seas, and for spawning it enters rivers and rises to the upper reaches.

According to the place of catch, Pechora, Onega, Dvina salmon, etc. are distinguished. The salmon reaches 150 cm in length, and 40 kg and more in weight. The natural qualities of salmon make it the most valuable fish of our North: it contains a lot of fat (over 11%, and sometimes up to 24%). Salmon ripens in the process of moderate salting and does not require any additional cooking after salting.

Zhupanovskaya herring. In Kronotsky Bay (near Kamchatka) our fishing fleet catches Zhupanovskaya herring. This herring is rightly considered the best herring fish. It is quite large, weighs 400-500 g; it is distinguished by its exceptionally rich fat content (about 27% on average) and a peculiar, pleasant taste.

Olyutorskaya herring (from Olyutorsky Bay) is also very good, tasty and contains a lot of fat.

Burbot. Burbot is undoubtedly a good, tasty fish, but it deserves the exclusive attention of consumers because of its liver. A well-cooked burbot liver (especially canned ones of the same name) is indeed one of the best snacks.

However, it must be said that canned cod liver will not yield, but, perhaps, will surpass burbot.

It is possible, however, to give both livers an equally high assessment, especially since both burbot and cod belong to the same cod family. Burbot is the only freshwater representative of this family permanently living in our rivers.

Mullet. Mullet - warm fish, southern seas. It has wonderful taste qualities.

Particularly good is the mullet of the Azov and Black Seas, caught in late autumn or in early spring. The mullet of the Caspian Sea is larger, but less oily.

Delicious white meat, the absence of small bones made the mullet a good culinary fame: excellent fish dishes are prepared from it (fried mullet, boiled mullet), but dried or smoked mullet, especially not gutted, is the tastiest.

The largest of the mullets, striped mullet, has delicious caviar. Cooks pay special attention to the white "lard" in the abdominal cavity of the mullet. It is worth working hard, carefully dismantling the insides of the mullet in order to separate and use this “lard”, which is distinguished by a very pleasant and peculiar taste.

Omul. Omul is one of the Siberian representatives of the salmon fish family; This fish has tasty and fatty meat. In Baikal, the omul is especially good and reaches more than 2 kg of weight. On fish counters, you can most often find cold-smoked omul.

Teshka. Teshka, or tesha, is the name of the dried and smoked belly part of the beluga, sturgeon, white fish, nelma and other large fish. Most of all they make beluga teshu, since the beluga has the most fleshy and thickest peritoneum. Tesha of any of these fish is distinguished by an exceptionally high fat content.

White salmon and nelma. White salmon is a unique fish. Of all the water bodies that exist on earth, it has survived only in the Caspian Sea, where it migrated many millennia ago from the Arctic Ocean.

White fish - a large fish from the salmon family; it can be up to 32 kg in weight and up to 155 cm in length. The meat of the white fish is very tender, fatty (it contains up to 26% fat), excellent balyki (sleeved and smoked) are made from it.

The famous Siberian nelma fish is similar to the whitefish, but smaller in size and less fat. She is from the same salmon family and has been preserved in the Arctic Ocean basin.

Nelma is caught in Siberian rivers and in the Pechora. From nelma, as well as from white salmon, delicious balyks are prepared.

Smoked sea bass. Sea bass is a deep-sea, large-headed and big-eyed, rather large fish (weighing 1-2 kg, sometimes 8-9 kg), which is caught by our trawlers from the depths of the Barents Sea. A sharp change in pressure during the catch protrudes from the orbits of the eyes of this fish. Sea bass is one of the most delicious fish. It is especially good smoked - cold (balychok) and hot smoked, as well as fried.

Acne. Large hot smoked eels are especially appreciated by consumers. They are exceptionally fatty, delicate in taste and are one of the best fish snacks.

Fried lamprey. Fried lamprey is one of the most delicious and delicious fish dishes. The lamprey has very tender, juicy meat; it is served with vinegar and mustard.

Black Sea oysters. Oysters are a very tasty delicacy; they are fatty and rich in vitamins B and C. Oysters are tenacious: at a temperature of 10 gr. they remain alive for 10-15 days, which makes it easier to comply with the main culinary requirement for them: they must be served alive.

Oysters are good with lemon juice, they are usually washed down with white table grape wine or semi-dry champagne.

How sprats are prepared. Sprats in oil are prepared from the Baltic herring and sprat, from the Caspian sprat and less often from other small herring. The very word "sprats" is a distorted Latin name for the Baltic sprat. Thus, both sprats and sprats are two names for the same fish. Both of these names have long been the designation not so much of the breed as of the method and recipe of preparation. There is a way to cook small fish (such as sprat, Baltic herring, White Sea herring, etc.) in the form of "sprats", just like there is sprat salting, anchovy salting, various herring salting, etc.

For “Sprat in oil”, the fish is thoroughly washed, immersed for a short time in a weak salt solution (brine), and then rinsed fresh water, then strung (through the mouth and gill opening) on ​​a metal twig; a twig with a fish is inserted into the frame and placed in a smoking oven. After smoking, the head and tail fin are removed from the fish, placed in cans, poured with a mixture of refined sunflower and mustard oil, the jar is rolled up (hermetically sealed), sterilized, cooled and put in a warehouse where sprats should remain for several months to ripen; during this time, the oil acquires the aroma of fish, and the fish is saturated with oil, which gives a special delicacy taste to sprats, as well as other canned fish in oil.

Sosvinskaya herring. You probably noticed this small silvery fish on the fish counters, with a wide back, with a pleasant spicy aroma. It is called "Sosvinskaya herring". This name actually does not mean herring, but the Siberian fish tugun from the salmon family, caught in the Sosva River (a tributary of the Ob) and cooked with spicy (spread) salting.

Tugun is also caught in the Yenisei and Lena, but there it is smaller and tastes worse than Sosva.

The weight of this fish is on average 40 g, but not more than 90 g. In good sprat salting, fully ripe, fleshy, tender, with a peculiar delicate taste, it is rightly considered one of the best fish delicacies.

Kopchushki. From the Baltic Baltic herring, the White Sea, Murmansk small herring, from the sprat, fish factories prepare one of the most delicious fish culinary products, commonly called kopchushkas, by semi-hot smoking.

Golden-brown kopchishki, with a delicious smell of freshly smoked fish, neatly packed in small wicker batten boxes, pleasantly decorate fish counters and are always in great demand.

Neva smelt. Smelt is caught in in large numbers in Lake Ladoga, Amur and other water bodies, including the Neva, near Leningrad itself, which created a long-standing habit among Leningraders of this fish in all types of its culinary processing (fried, smoked, pickled). This fleshy fish with a slight cucumber smell inherent in it is considered a delicacy among lovers.

Smelt, especially hot smoked, is indeed a very good fish product, and if there were more of this product, it could become popular not only in Leningrad, but also in other cities and regions of our country.

Mackerel. This beautiful and delicate fish is usually sold to us in canned or smoked form. It is eaten fresh only in the places of catch - on the Black Sea coast and on the shores of the Pacific Ocean.

Small mackerel, up to 300 g, is found in the Black Sea, and large mackerel, up to 1 kg, is found in the Pacific Ocean. Both from the Black Sea and from the Pacific mackerel, excellent canned food in oil is prepared.

Sardines. Canned Sardines in Oil have long been widely known. They are prepared not only from the fish of the same name from the herring family. As the name "sprats", "sprat", and the name "sardine" became the designation not so much of a fish, but of a recipe, a method of preparation.

These delicious canned snacks are prepared from selected fish - ivasi, herring and other small herring. These fish are pre-salted (for taste), then dried, which compacts their meat and gives the skin a silvery tone, then they are poured with refined vegetable oil or a delicious mixture of vegetable oils, sealed in flat tin boxes and sterilized. To improve the taste, sardines are kept after production for at least 6 months, during which they ripen.

Fish smoking. The antiseptic and gustatory properties of smoke have long been used to treat fish by cold and hot smoking. Partial fish - roach, ram, sabrefish, bream - are only sold in small quantities in salted form: this fish is good smoked.

Also processed are tasty: cold or hot smoked herring, sea bass, beluga, sturgeon, cod; only cold smoked - whitefish, fish, shemaya, mullet, chum, chinook, sockeye salmon, omul; and processed only by hot smoking - whitefish, stellate sturgeon, sterlet, mackerel, red mullet, herring, etc.

Cold smoking of fish lasts up to 5 days at a smoke temperature not higher than 40 degrees, and hot smoking - up to 5 hours at a smoke temperature of 90-100 degrees.

Dry firewood, shavings and sawdust are used for smoking, preferably hardwood trees.

The smoke gives the fish a “color” - a color from golden to brown and peculiar, only smoked products have a characteristic taste and smell.

Hot smoked fish is boiled in its own juice, salted only for taste, it cannot be stored for more than 3 days, and even then under proper conditions.

At home, in the absence of a refrigerator, in the warm season, hot smoked fish should be eaten on the day of purchase.

Cold-smoked fish is more salty: it is well preserved for long-term storage.

Caviar. There is no better, more nutritious, valuable and tasty food product than black caviar (pressed, granular) from sturgeon fish and red salmon caviar.

Caviar contains a significant amount of high-grade proteins, fat, vitamins, it is especially recommended to all those in need of enhanced nutrition.

In terms of calories, black and red caviar is superior to meat, milk and other products. So, 100 g of granular or pressed caviar gives the body 280 calories, 100 g of red caviar - 270 calories, while the same amount of medium fat meat gives only 120 calories, and 100 g of milk - 70 calories.

Sturgeon caviar is considered the better and is valued the higher, the larger and lighter the grain; salmon caviar, on the contrary, the tastier the finer the grain; bright red caviar (sockeye salmon) is lower in quality than light orange caviar (pink salmon).

Grained caviar is slightly salted. It is difficult to keep it at home; so that it does not deteriorate, you need a temperature from 0 to minus 3 gr.

Better than any other - beluga granular caviar, followed by sturgeon and in third place - stellate sturgeon.

Excellent sturgeon caviar is produced by the SM Kirov Bank Fish Plant, located in the lower reaches of the Kura River (Azerbaijan SSR).

Pasteurized granular caviar is caviar in small glass jars, hermetically sealed and pasteurized, that is, heated.

If such a jar is not opened, it can be stored at home for a very long time: if you open it, you need to eat caviar in one or two days.

Pressed caviar - fresh sturgeon caviar, only processed differently than granular. Pressed caviar can be stored much longer than granular caviar. The best pressed caviar is stellate sturgeon. Achuev caviar has gained particular fame for its excellent qualities (the Achuev fish factory is located on the eastern shore Sea of ​​Azov, on the Achuevsky arm of the river. Kuban).

The assortment of sturgeon caviar also includes sturgeon caviar. This is a completely benign, tasty and relatively cheap product; once you try it, it will quickly gain your trust. However, it must be taken into account that the ovary caviar is somewhat saltier than the granular and pressed caviar.

Caviar is called roe, salted together with ovarian films (ovaries) of fish.

Together with the ovaries, black caviar is prepared in those cases when, after opening the fish, the caviar turned out to be immature or, for some other reason, the caviar cannot be separated from the film of the ovaries.

Yastik caviar is also prepared from pike-perch ovaries (it is called “galagan”) or from roach and bream ovals (the so-called “tarama”).

Salaka. Baltic herring is called Baltic herring. This is a fish up to 20 cm long (in the northern part of the sea); in the southern part of the Baltic Baltic herring up to 35-37 cm long is caught. Baltic herring is not particularly fat (4.5% fat), nevertheless it is quite good for hot smoking, marinade preparation, for anchovy salting; it is also used to prepare excellent canned fish snacks “Sprats in oil”.

Salmon preserves. Canned food from Far Eastern salmon fish (chum salmon, coho salmon, sockeye salmon, chinook salmon, pink salmon, sim, char) is prepared in its own juice. These canned foods are called natural because they contain nothing but carefully cleaned, washed and boiled in their own juice carcasses of Far Eastern salmon.

White and red fish. In most salmon fish, the meat has various shades of red- Pink colour(salmon, sockeye salmon, salmon, chum, etc.). But there are salmon, such as whitefish, nelma, whose meat is milky. white color.

Salmon with white meat in Siberia and in the north of the European part of our country are called white fish. It must be borne in mind that salmon with red meat is not called red fish. The last name has long been given to sturgeons (sturgeon, stellate sturgeon, beluga, spike, sterlet, kaluga), although their meat is white. The term "red fish" was assigned to sturgeon in the sense and meaning in which everything rare, expensive, beautiful was called red in the old days: "red girl", "red sun", "red product".

Crabs. Canned crabs are prepared by floating crab fishing vessels - crab canning factories equipped with first-class equipment. Our crab fleets operate in the Sea of ​​Okhotsk off the western coast of Kamchatka, where the world's best king crab, whose meat is not inferior in quality and taste to the famous lobsters.

Crabs have a hard, brownish-reddish shell with sharp, prickly spines. The Kamchatka commercial crab weighs up to 2-3 kg, its leg span reaches 1 m.

At the floating plant, crabs are cut. In canned food, male crabs with a hard shell are used, from which they take only meat from the joints of the legs. Delicate white pieces of crab meat, freed from the shell after boiling, are placed in jars lined with parchment, rolled up the lids, sterilized and crab canned food is ready.

Canned crab is a delicacy product containing, among other useful substances, iodine, phosphorus, and lecithin. Canned crab meat has a peculiar pleasant taste and, as it were, preserves the unique smell of the sea.

Canned crab is a great appetizer. Tender crab meat is good in salads and vinaigrettes.

Fish fillet. Every housewife knows how unpleasant it is to butcher and clean fresh fish, especially if the fish has prickly fins, such as pike perch.

To help the hostess and save her from unpleasant work, fish industry enterprises produce ready-made fish fillets.

Fish fillet is the meat of fresh fish, freed from inedible and low-value parts (innards, large bones, scales, fins), thoroughly washed, stacked in the form of a briquette and frozen at low temperature.

Comrade Mikoyan, on whose initiative we began to produce this excellent product, spoke about fish fillets:

...”Fish should be cut and cleaned not at home in the kitchen, but in special factories. Now at our fillet factories they take fish, carefully separate the meat (fillet) from the bones and, after packing it in parchment paper, after freezing it well, release it to the consumer, and the waste is all used for the development of technical and feed products.

The hostesses, presumably, will thank us, as a well-cleaned fish will save them from unnecessary labor and dirty work.

Fish fillet fully retains all the valuable, nutritional and taste properties and virtues of fresh fish. Most produce fillet of cod, haddock, pike perch, catfish and carp.

Sakhalin and Okhotsk herring. An interesting picture is presented by the harvesting and processing of spring Sakhalin and Okhotsk herring. Its catch is measured in hundreds of thousands of centners and exceeds a million, and the bulk is caught within two to five days of the so-called rune course.

The sea near the western coast of Sakhalin these days literally boils from the mass of herring, the water turns white from the milk produced by the herring.

Huge net traps (the so-called fixed nets) are continuously filled with herring, fishermen pass it into floating cages, net bags that can hold up to hundreds of tons of fish at a time. These bags of live herring are towed to fish factories, brought to small vessels - kungas, on which fish pumps are installed. Live herring is pumped hundreds of meters along a tarpaulin sleeve by fish pumps, and it floats along the gutters with water to the salting vats. Near the vat, the fish taken out of the water is sprinkled with salt.

Such a stream of herring, 30-40 tons per hour, flows around the clock on hot days of the fishing season to dozens of coastal fish factories.

Fish nutrition. Fish is digested faster and lighter than meat, which creates the misconception that it is less nutritious. Meanwhile, fish is no less nutritious than meat, its fat is absorbed better than any other, its proteins are complete, and the fact that it is easier and faster to digest is its positive property.

It is best to alternate fish and meat in the diet; this makes the food more complete and varied.

Carp and gudgeon. These fish have more literary glory than culinary virtues ("Karas-idealist", "Wise Gudgeon" in "Tales" by Saltykov-Shchedrin).

Crucian is a small fish (its weight is 300-400 g), lives in all our rivers; it is bred in ponds, often sold live in fish stores.

The gudgeon is much smaller than the crucian. If the minnow reaches 14-15 cm in length, then it is considered that this is already a giant minnow, since its average size is 4-5 cm, and its weight is several grams.

Gudgeon is not a commercial object, but an amateur fishing. Recreational anglers usually catch this fish for bait. If you catch a sufficient number of minnows, then you can cook a good fish soup from them, and fry larger minnows.

Keta spawns. Keta spawns once in a lifetime, and dies after spawning. The fish entering the mouths of the rivers have a shiny, silvery color without spots (“silverfish”), their meat is fatty, pink. A path up to 3500 km long (Yukon, Amur) passes up the rivers of chum, passing up to 70-85 km per day.

As you approach the spawning grounds, the color and appearance of the fish change, as well as the quality of its meat. Lilac or crimson stripes appear on the sides (“variegated” or “half-catfish”). The back of the male becomes somewhat more humpbacked. The color of the meat turns pale. By the time of spawning, the body of the chum salmon is flattened, and the male's teeth are greatly enlarged. The fish becomes completely black, with whitish, unfit for food meat ("catfish"). The fat content in the muscles when following the chum salmon from the sea to the spawning ground decreases from 9.2-11.3% at the entrance to the rivers to 0.2-0.5% at the spawning grounds...

Starting spawning, the fish clears the bottom at the spawning site from silt or grass by blows of the tail. Caviar is released into holes (nests) knocked out by fish in sand or pebbles, after which it is covered with a layer of gravel. The depth of laying eggs ranges from 20 to 30-35 cm and even (rarely) up to 40 cm.

The female usually lays three such nests, after which she fills them with a gravel hillock up to 2-3 m long and 1.5-2 m wide. All this lasts from two to four, less often up to seven days. Having finished spawning, the female guards the nest for several days, after which she dies of exhaustion; males also die.

(“Commercial fish of the USSR”, 1949).

Smelt. In the numerous fish family of smelt there is a very small fish - smelt (6-10 cm long), especially popular among Leningraders and in the northwestern regions of our country, where smelt is caught in large numbers in Ilmen, Chudskoye and other lakes. Belozersky smelts are considered the best. Smelt comes to the market in frozen and salt-dried form; delicious cabbage soup is cooked from it; Frozen smelt is also good to fry or stew.

Shemay and fish. Everyone knows the common carp fish our seas, lakes, rivers and ponds: carp, vobla, ram, bream, carp; but not everyone knows that such tasty, fat-soaked fish as shemaya and vimba are the closest relatives of the vobla.

Dried shemay and fish are distinguished by the best taste. Smoked (cold smoked) fish and shemaya are also very popular among connoisseurs.

Especially tasty are Shemaya Kura (southwest of the Caspian Sea), Shemaya and fish of the Sea of ​​Azov and the lower reaches of the Kuban, as well as Achuevskaya, caught at the mouth of the river. Channels near Achuev. Somewhat lower in taste are the Caspian fish and the Aral shemaya.

A close relative of the fish, a fish called syrt, is also somewhat inferior in taste to the Azov fish.

Keto caviar, pressed, granular caviar will not dry out for a long time if you pour a thin layer of vegetable oil into a jar of caviar on top and tightly cork it.

Flounder. Flatfish - marine bottom fish, relatively little known in the markets Soviet Union.

However, the flounder catch will grow significantly, mainly due to the fishing industry of the Far East. An interesting feature flounder is a flat and asymmetrical body structure: one side is colored, two eyes are placed on it, the other side is colorless and blind. Most flounders have very tender, white and tasty meat.

Some of the flounders are distinguished by a specific marine iodine flavor. It is possible to weaken or completely eliminate this taste, as well as the specific smell emitted by other flounders when fried, by pre-cutting the fish; follows with one movement of the knife, starting from the back of the head, obliquely remove the head and abdominal part of the fish, then remove the insides, and then remove the skin from the painted (eye) side. After that, rinse the fish, bread and fry.

There are many types of flounders in our seas. On the Black Sea there is a kalkan - a large flounder, reaching 1 m in length and up to 10 kg in weight; Kalkan meat is low fat (up to 3%), white and tasty. In the waters of the Barents Sea and in the Far East, in the northern parts of the Bering and Okhotsk Seas various kinds large flounders - halibuts, characterized by a relatively high content of fat and good taste. A significant part of the flounder catch off the western coast of Kamchatka is the so-called yellow-bellied flounder, or four-tuberculate flounder, one of the most delicious and valuable Far Eastern flounders.

Fried flounder is a very tasty, tender and healthy dish.

Fat in fish products. The current opinion about the unpleasant taste and smell of fish oil is completely inaccurate and incorrect. Only some of the breakdown products of this fat have a bad taste and smell.

The taste and smell of fresh fish oil is impeccable; it is almost entirely (95%) absorbed by the body.

The favorite dish of the northerners, in particular the inhabitants of Murmansk, is rich cod fish soup, in which pieces of cod liver are abundantly floating. Such an ear is “covered like amber” with a thick layer of fat.

The fattest and at the same time the most delicious, delicate and pleasant to taste of gastronomic fish products- canned food "Natural cod liver". The fat in this canned food is up to 70% by weight of the product, the pieces of the liver float in a clean, transparent, almost colorless fat, very pleasant to the taste.

A little less fat is the tesha (abdominal part) of the white fish and the Caspian salmon. A significant fat content in this product gives the dried or smoked tesha the finest taste and aroma.

Lamprey is exceptionally high in fat (up to 33%). In the middle of the last century, in the lower reaches of the Volga, lamprey was used instead of ... tallow candles; frozen lamprey with a hemp wick successfully replaced the splinter.

The excellent taste of balyk products from sturgeon, white fish, salmon is also due to the high content of fish oil in them (from 15 to 30%) and favorable for its taste features changes that occur during drying and smoking. Also herring - the fatter they are, the tastier. The fat content of different types of herring can vary greatly: Zhupanovskaya and large Kerch herring have from 25 to 33% fat, and skinny shad or Dolginskaya herring of the Eastern Caspian contains only 1.5-3% fat.

One of the cheapest anchovy fish, caught in the autumn in the Kerch Strait, contains up to 28% fat, and pike perch fillet has less than 1% fat; no one, however, considers pike perch to be a less valuable fish, inferior in quality and taste to anchovy.

But within the same species, fatter specimens, as a rule, are tastier and more valuable than skinny ones.

Many people know the excellent Astrakhan under-ice roach - it is large, fleshy and at the same time, if you look at the light, it is translucent; her caviar is pink, dense, with transparent plates of fat around the ovaries. This roach is caught at the very beginning of the fishing season in the sea, under the ice fields, when it has not yet used up its fat reserves for the maturation of eggs and transitions to the spawning grounds. And the same vobla, being caught a month later in the Volga, with caviar ready for spawning, having already become skinny fish, does not have the taste and value that are inherent in the ice vobla.

Fat is never evenly distributed in the body or even in the meat of the fish. Its placement is bizarre and sometimes peculiar for each family and even genus of fish. In catfish, for example, the entire mass of fat is concentrated in the tail; that's why pies with catfish "reach" (tail part) are so tasty.

Balychki from sea bass are the tastier, the larger and fatter the fish. However, one must be able to cut this balyk well so that there are shiny fat deposits in each piece. The fat in the sea bass is concentrated mainly along the bones that support dorsal fish; there is less fat in dark meat along the sides of the fish and less in the thickness of the meat. Therefore, when carving a sea bass balyk, you should cut the fillet as close as possible to the spine and to the bones located along the back, and then cut (obliquely) flat thin slices of meat from the fillet.

Cod and haddock. Many thousands of tons of cod and haddock annually supply the Soviet Union with the waters of the Barents Sea, the Pacific Ocean and the Baltic. Catches of cod fish will grow continuously in the coming years and will reach a very significant size. Exceptionally abundant herds of cod graze in the bottom layers of the seas of our North. One of the youngest cities in the Soviet Union, Murmansk grew up on cod fish.

Cod is caught all year round ships of our glorious trawl fleet - in summer with round-the-clock sunshine and in winter with round-the-clock night lasting over two months.

Fishing trawlers keep a three-four-week watch in the far north, in the Barents Sea. Each trawler brings from its voyage hundreds of tons, mainly cod fish, fresh (on ice) or salted, from fish weighing 200-300 g to mass quantities of large cod weighing 15-20 kg each.

An excellent boneless, frozen fillet is produced from cod; decapitated frozen cod, carefully cleaned of viscera, with no other bones than a massive spine, is one of the most meaty fish, very beneficial in the household and in public catering.

The scales of cod are small and weak, it can be easily removed. It is necessary to distinguish cod, which has a light stripe along the lateral line, from haddock, also a cod fish, in which dark, almost black stripes run along the sides, and there is a dark spot above each of the pectoral fins. The scales of haddock are much larger and denser than those of cod, and it is recommended to remove or remove it along with the skin.

Salted cod is perfectly soaked in warm water, giving salt well.

Cod should be cooked in boiled and fried form; minced cod in cutlets and meatballs is very good.

The specific smell of cod fish is easily removed by briefly keeping the fish in table vinegar.

Sterlet. Sterlet is the smallest and the only freshwater representative of the sturgeon family; caught in the rivers flowing into the Caspian, Aral, Black and White Sea and in the rivers of Western Siberia.

Sterlet's ear, steamed sterlet "ring" and other excellent fish dishes from sterlet have long been known no less than world-famous Russian caviar.

And I must say that the sterlet, in terms of its delicate and delicate taste, in terms of all other nutritional and taste qualities, fully deserves this fame.

Vyaziga. Vyaziga - a purified dorsal string extracted from the cartilaginous spine of a red fish,

The vyaziga is freed from the internal contents (the so-called "squeak"), air-dried, knitted into braided bundles and put on sale in this form.

Vyaziga contains up to 40% adhesive substances. Pies with elm, pies and kulebyaka with elm have long been famous.

Trout. This sonorous name of a beautiful and tasty fish is associated with the idea of ​​a fast, clean and cold mountain stream, where colorful brook trout, the favorite fish of sports anglers, frolic.

Pied trout is a small fish weighing 200-500 g. Under favorable conditions, individual specimens grow up to 10 kg or more.

In pond farms, another variety is bred in large numbers - rainbow trout, which is sold in fish and gastronomic shops, mostly live.

In the mountain lake Sevan (in Armenia) a special kind of trout is mined - the Sevan trout with fatty pink meat. This exceptionally tasty fish comes to the market in frozen form. For its processing, a special refrigerator was built on the shore of Sevan.

Large lake trout are caught in lakes Ladoga, Onega, Kola Peninsula, in the Karelo-Finnish SSR. The weight of lake trout is from 1 to 6-8 kg, in individual cases- up to 18 kg.

Lake trout are speckled with black spots in the form of the letter "x". The brook is covered, mainly along the back, with black and red spots, surrounded by a light rim. Rainbow trout have a wide rainbow stripe along the lateral line.

Sevan trout are also spotted, but their coloration and location vary greatly.

Trout, both small and large, are good boiled or fried on a spit. Pond farms produce half portion trout (130-170 g) and portion trout weighing 350 g.

Crayfish. Crayfish have juicy, tender, tasty meat, which is especially appreciated by beer lovers.

When there are no fresh crayfish, they can be completely replaced with Cancer Necks. These canned food completely retain the taste, aroma, all the properties and virtues of fresh cancerous meat.

Dried fish. Drying is one of the methods of preservation. The essence of the drying process is the slow drying of the fish under the influence of heat, sunlight and air, which leads to significant changes in the composition of fish meat and a more uniform distribution of fat in the fish carcass. The meat of the fish becomes, as it were, amber and acquires a specific taste and aroma.

The best dried vobla is prepared on cool, dry windless days. early spring when the vobla has not yet spawned, therefore, has not lost either weight or fat; in addition, during this period of the year, according to atmospheric and temperature conditions, drying is most successful. Vobla is dried from 13 to 30 days, depending on the size of the fish.

Excellent taste distinguishes dried fish, shemayu, mullet; Dried bream is also good.

Drying is also used for the preparation of hanging balyk products from red fish (beluga, sturgeon, stellate sturgeon), from salmon, from white salmon, as well as from catfish, barbel, large herring, etc. Only balyk is dried not on hangers, like roach, but on towers up to 10 m high, having a roof, and instead of walls - blinds: suspended pieces of fish are well washed by air, but are not warmed up by direct sunlight.

Dry-cured balyks, obviously, got their name because they hang on the towers for a long time in the process of drying.

For the preparation of balyks, the back, side and tesha (abdominal part) of large and fatty fish are used.

Balyks are not only dried, they can be smoked after drying in a cold way (smoky balyks).

How many edible parts and waste do fish have? Red fish have the least waste. It is estimated that sturgeon provides only 14.4% of waste, while the remaining 85.6% is used as food.

Most of the waste comes from cutting small fish, for example, in small perch and tench they are 62%; eel is beneficial - it has edible parts of 76% by weight. In pike perch, edible meat is 55%, in salmon - 65%, in herring - 54%, in pike - 52%, in trout - 51%, in cod - 46%.

These figures once again confirm the profitability of the finished fish fillet, which, as you know, does not leave any waste at all.

Vobla and ram. Dried and smoked (smoked) roach and ram are a well-known, cheap and popular fish product from time immemorial.

Vobla and ram are varieties of roach (from the carp family). Vobla is caught in large numbers in the Caspian Sea and in the lower reaches of the rivers flowing into it, most of all in the Volga near Astrakhan, and rams are caught in the Sea of ​​\u200b\u200bAzov and in desalinated places of the Black Sea, as well as in the lower reaches of the Don, Kuban, Dnieper, Dniester and Danube.

Red mullet or sultanka. Inhabitants Black Sea coast Crimea and the Caucasus willingly eat a small, beautiful red fish, which is called red mullet, or sultanka. Even if we discard some gastronomic passion for lovers of this fish, we must still admit that fried red mullet is indeed one of the most delicious fish dishes, since this fish is saturated with a peculiar, delicate, remarkably tasty fat.

Red mullet is good fried, canned in oil and smoked (hot smoked).