Techniques and Tips for Pickling Fish

Pickled fish is one of the most popular dishes during appetizer servings. It could be served in a very simple way, such as cutting the pickled fish into small pieces and serve it together with some vegetables, olive oils and other dressing; some other people will serve it together with crackers while some people might serve it in main dishes as well, together with potatoes, mushrooms, etc.

It is one of the appetizers that is grabbed and finished the fastest when served as most people can accept the taste and likes it very much.

So which type of fish is most suitable to be pickled? Actually all types of fish is suitable but the taste would be better with small fish with very fine and delicate meat. Watch out for the fish bones though, as usually we would prefer to use fish with small bone and thin skinned.

Northern pike perhaps is one of the fish that is used in pickling most of the time. You couldn't go much wrong with this. The pickling process usually will dissolve the bones of the northern pikes and makes it even preferred as the fish for pickling. Other than this, a lot of people also choose salmon and sardines for pickling. Some even pickled on shrimp, oysters as well.

There are a lot of ways when we want to do fish pickling but the idea is the same. Soak the fish in a container with water, vinegar, salt and sugar. Leave it for 5 days to 20 days, depending on different types of recipes. One thing it has in similar is that it is very easy to be done.

A few things that we need to keep in mind when pickling fish is

1. We need to make sure that the fish is frozen for a few days (at least 3 days) to kill all the parasites in the fish that could potentially cause serious stomachache and food poisoning.

2. Water need to be clean, boiled and left cool to remove all the other particles in the water. Mineral in the water that is high in iron, calcium or magnesium could result in off flavors of the pickled fish and also the undesirable color changes.

3. Make sure the fish is submerged in the vinegar marinade. Shut the brine, bottles or container used tightly to ensure the fish is well pickled.