Have some leftover pickling liquid or got too many fish lying around? Let’s use them up like Pickled herring in a jar!

Summer is probably the most divisive month of the year. During the winter months most of the population eagerly waits for the passing of dark days, low heating bills and not the least fresh locally sourced or even better home-grown fruit and vegetables.

However, when summer finally arrives, a whole lot of fairly unexpected consequences crash onto the life of a family.

There are kids all around the places without anyone in duty to look after them, it’s too hot so we have to pay even more for air conditioning and home-grown vegetables need a lot of care and attention.

The good news though is that kids are up with the rising sun so we can take them out into the garden to do some weeding and watering. If nothing else, this will teach them to appreciate the food that’s on the table for a lifetime.

This is the time to be a good ant and stack up for the winter all the goodies we can by freezing down or can everything that our garden can provide in abundance. Also, we can make some tasty spirits if we have been deemed worthy enough to carry on the family tradition.

If we haven’t been yet inaugurated into the secrets of distilling, we have to stick to canning the fruit we have in our garden besides all the other goodies we want to enjoy again in some form during winter.

Mostly fish isn’t the one we keep in our backyard let alone in numbers that would make it worthy canning them but still canning fish is one of the many ways people keep it edible for long periods of time.

The most popular or rather known dish must be the pickled herring that has been a staple in Northern Europe since medieval times due to the fact that pickling and salting was the only way fish could be stored and transported.

Pickling a herring is a two-step process that first requires the water content driven out of the meat. This happens either by simply throwing large amount of salt on the fish which is referred to as dry brine or making brine and soak it there for a day or two. Check out how to make Brine!

After the salting process is done in order to avoid overly salty results, the fish needs to be rinsed off the brine and it’s ready to be pickled with spices or herbs of our choice.

The most common herring pickle includes onion, black pepper, mustard seed, bay leaves but cloves, lemon, dill, coriander seeds or carrots aren’t far behind on the list either. We can, of course, throw everything in as we please or leave out the ones aren’t in the cupboard, no big deal.

Neither is the type of fish, we pickle. As it was mentioned before, we can pickle anything in this salty or vinegary solution, so if there are no herrings around our home but plenty of sardines are floating in the neighborhood, just use those without having any second thought about it.

The hard or rather fussy part is to clean the fish, especially when we haven’t done it before so if there is a way to make the guy or gal behind the fish counter gut them, let them do it. Boning the fish will require a nice or rather sharp knife (Check out the best chef knives). Do check them out and enjoy this Northern European delicacy anytime or anywhere!

Ingredients

Brine

For detailed instructions check out: How to make brine.

1 tablespoon / 15g Table salt
2 cups / 500g Water

Pickle

1lb / 500g Fish (Herring, Sardines…)
1 piece / 150g Onion (sliced)
2 cloves / 6g Garlic
1 teaspoon / 0.5g Black pepper (whole)
1 teaspoon / 0.5g Mustard seed
1 teaspoon / 5g Salt
1 cup / 250g Water
1 cup / 250g Vinegar
Optional
- 1 Bay leaf
- 1 small Carrot
- 1 teaspoon Cloves
- 1 teaspoon Coriander seed

How to make Pickled herring

Make the brine by dissolving the salt in water. If we aren’t bothered by the smell and have enough space, simply covering the fish slices in salt would do as well.
Gut the fish, remove the heads and scales. With a bit of luck we can ask someone to do this for us where we buy the fish.
Boning is not necessary if we aren’t bothered about the spine which is a bit crunchy. Some like it others don’t. We can take it out by simply grabbing the spin at the exposed end and pulling it out. Sometimes, we need to open the fish first simply by prying it open with our fingers.
Rinse the pieces of fish well then place them into the brine in the fridge or under the brine in case of using dry salt.
After about a day take them out then rinse them off the salt. The flesh need to be firm to the touch now as if it’s cooked. Otherwise it needs to go back under the brine for a day more.
Fill the middle of the jar up with the onion slices. Add garlic, black pepper, mustard seed, salt and any other optional ingredients we wish for.
Place the fish slices in, fill it up with half vinegar half water mixture. Put the lid on then place the jar into the fridge for another day. In case the liquid gets very cloudy that means the brining and rinsing process wasn’t really successful. Eat it up in a couple of days until it’s still edible. If the brining process was successful we can store our pickled herring or sardines in the fridge for up to a month easily. Maybe even more but who can wait that long.

Enjoy!

A bit of salt in some water has magical properties. Check out what can be done with it:

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