Brine for smoking perch. A simple recipe for smoking perch

Smoked perch is one of the most affordable delicacies for smoked food lovers. The dish can be varied, thanks to the existence of many recipes. You can cook everywhere in a smokehouse, even in an ordinary high-rise kitchen, since modern models allow you to do this. So, you can taste the delicacy without fear of possible poisoning with carcinogens, which are mandatory in industrially prepared fish. Using the methods described below, you can cook both regular and sea bass.

Important! For smoking at home, use chips or sawdust from fruit trees such as sweet cherries, cherries, apple trees or apricots. You can use alder. In all other cases, you run the risk of spoiling the dish with an unpleasant smell or taste.

Preparation for smoking

Preparing for cold processing fish is the same as salting or pickling hot-smoked perch. Small carcasses do not need to be cleaned or gutted. Larger fish are best cleaned, decapitated, and intestines removed. Next, you just need to fill the perches with salt, not being afraid to oversalt. The fish will take exactly as much product as it needs. The salted fish is placed in a container, covered with foil and placed in the refrigerator for a day before being smoked. You can salt without a refrigerator, then the process is completed within a few hours. There is another recipe - perch can be marinated in brine, adding spices to taste to the water, in addition to salt. After removing the fish, before smoking, it must be soaked in cold water for half an hour and then dried.

Hot smoked perch

Hot smoked perch and sea bass are cooked in a smokehouse at temperatures up to 60 degrees C. The cooking time depends on the size of the fish and can vary from 2.5 hours to 6. For hot smoked perch, it is important that the temperature regime is strictly observed during the first half hour or hour , then it can be lowered to 50 degrees C.

How hot smoked perch is prepared and features you can watch in the video.

Cold cooking

Cold smoked perch takes longer to cook. The recipe for salting or pickling is the same. Dried carcasses are placed on a wire rack or hung on hooks. The temperature regime of the smokehouse should not exceed +30 degrees C, You can smoke the product in a day, if the fish are small, larger carcasses are prepared for up to 3 days.

Chemical composition and calorie content

This type of fish is rich in nutrients, the smoked product is not much inferior to the fresh one:

• the product contains a large amount of saturated fatty acids;
• many macro- and microelements: calcium, potassium, iron, copper, iodine, zinc, chromium, molybdenum and others;
• many vitamins: A, C, B1, B6, B12, E, PP and others;
• a lot of protein, a little fat, carbohydrates are absent.

The calorie content of perch is low - only 165 thousand calories per 100 grams of product. In hot smoked perch, in comparison with cold smoked, the calorie content may be slightly higher, but not much.

Beneficial features

Smoking perch does not deprive the fish of its beneficial properties:

• a large amount of proteins helps to maintain good physical shape;
• it is useful for intense brain activity;
• fish contributes to important metabolic processes in the human body, including during the formation of DNA;
• the product regulates blood sugar;
• has a beneficial effect on mucous membranes and skin.

Smoking perch at home involves large batches that may not be eaten right away. So, the problem of product safety arises. Depending on the period for which you decide to leave the perch, you can store it:

• In the refrigerator: up to 5 days - hot smoked fish, up to 10 days - cold cooking. It is important to check the carcass for the presence / absence of mucus before use. She is the first sign of corruption.
• Depending on the temperature regime, the product can be stored in the freezer for up to six months.

If you have any interesting information on how smoked bass is prepared, share it in the comment block.

Description

Hot smoked sea bass is an amazingly tasty fish cooked with your own hands in a homemade mini-smokehouse. You don't need any knowledge or experience to make this simple recipe a reality. You will love both the process itself (especially its short duration) and the final result, the taste and aroma of which cannot be conveyed in words.
Having a carcass of smoked sea bass at their disposal, any housewife can easily prepare not only amazing sandwiches, but a very simple and delicious salad that will amaze with its nutritional value. At the same time, the calorie content of the product is very small. Nutritionists determine it at the level of 100 kilocalories per hundred grams of fresh product, and if you smoke it, the calorie content drops to 88 kilocalories, which allows you to use smoked perch meat even for those people who are actively involved in calculating the energy value of products. In this case, proteins are the predominant component.
Smoked red sea bass is not only a very tasty fish, but also an excellent dietary product. Eating the meat of this type of fish has a beneficial effect on the functioning of organs and systems of the human body, especially such a vulnerable thyroid gland. Taurine contained in sea bass meat is of great benefit, since it is this vitamin that promotes active cell growth and rapid tissue regeneration.
Attention should be paid to such an important fact as cutting sea bass at home, which does not conceal any difficulties at all - fish comes to the shelves of our stores in the form of a finished carcass, most often frozen.

We will gladly share the secret of how to smoke hot smoked red sea bass at home with chefs of various levels in a detailed recipe with step by step photos... Once again, you will be convinced that it is very easy to prepare unique and impeccable delicacies.

Ingredients

Hot smoked sea bass - recipe

Cooking an amazing red perch delicacy does not take long. If the perch is frozen on your table, let it thaw naturally. In order to preserve its quality, defrost it only in the refrigerator, placing the carcasses in one layer in a deep bowl with tightly wrapped cling film. This will keep the fish from chapping.

Arrange the fish carefully on the grates of the smokehouse, as shown in the photo. Carcasses should not touch each other.

For seven carcasses, you need to set both levels of the smoker. Do not worry - there will not be a lot of fish, do not force the unit to idle.

This is how a mini-smokehouse looks like, assembled in two levels. After making sure that the fish is comfortable, set the grates aside for a while.

Light a fire, let the charcoal burn in a special tool, and then carefully place it in the pan. Then place a sawdust tray over the top of the fire with a generous handful of alder chips. Pour boiling water into the bowl of the water seal, and then put the perch carcasses in place again. The mobile smoker is ready to use - cover it with a lid. Now watch the reading of the thermometer: as soon as the hand reaches 90 degrees Celsius - start the countdown.

After forty minutes, open the smoker, then add some shavings and admire appearance perch. If you wish, you can turn the carcasses over to the other side. Close the smokehouse and wait.

After the next half hour, the hot smoked sea bass will be completely ready.

In order to take a sample from a fragrant fish delicacy, it must be cooled to a cold state. It will take three to four hours. During this time, the fish will be saturated with smoke and will look like in the photo. Use a sharp knife to separate the fillet from the bones and skin, and then cut it into portions. And if you were preparing fish for beer, then simply cut the carcasses across into thin pieces, leaving both the skin and the ridge - it will be much tastier. Hot smoked sea bass ready.

There is an opinion that only lazy people who do not want to mess with fish smoke perch. Indeed, it is not necessary to peel and gut it to smoke perch.

But since laziness and lazy people in particular are the engines of progress, today we will still try to smoke this tasty fish.

If you have caught a lot of small perch, then smoking is probably the best way to cook it. And no matter how much you caught it, even a huge amount of fish can be smoked in several approaches.

So what do we need to do just before smoking?
The first step is to thoroughly rinse the fish under cold water. We begin to salt the “clean” fish. Salting is done in different ways, depending on the amount of fish.

When there is little perch, it is advisable to rub each individual "individually" with salt. If there are a lot of fish, then, as an option, you can do this: evenly fill the bottom of the vessel in which you will salt the perches with salt. Then we put the first layer of fish on the bottom. We also sprinkle this layer with salt and put the second layer on it. There is no need to regret salt for this matter.

After salting, close the container with a lid and put it in a cool place for several hours. If you have the time and patience, it is advisable to hold the fish for 12-24 hours.

After a certain time, we take out the perches from the refrigerator (or from the cellar) and rinse again under the tap. Before smoking, we must “wash” all excess salt from the perch. I wash the fish “in three waters”. And then I put the fish in a saucepan and completely fill it with cold water. After 30-40 minutes I rinse under the tap for the last time. That's it ... Now the perch is ready to smoke!

At the bottom of the smokehouse, we throw a small amount of sawdust or chips of alder, apple or bird cherry. Experienced smokers have noticed that each wood gives the fish its own flavor. I recommend that you try using sawdust or shavings from each of these fruit trees to smoke to see when the perch is the tastiest!

Then we put the first grate in the smokehouse and put the fish on it. It does not need to be laid in dense rows - it is necessary that the perches do not come into contact with each other - this way they will smoke better.

After placing the fish, close the lid of the smokehouse and put it on a small fire. The smoking time depends on the size of the perch, but, as a rule, 15-25 minutes is enough for small and medium-sized fish.

When the smoking time has passed, remove the smokehouse from the heat and let it cool down (you cannot open it immediately, as the okushka can ignite !!!). But after the smoke box has cooled down, carefully open the lid. The fish should turn brown. Enjoy your meal!!!

Every fisherman, whether he is a professional or an amateur, can easily recognize a perch if the latter is hooked. In addition to the characteristic color of a yellow-green hue with dark stripes on the back, it is given by the peculiar shape of the dorsal fin. Perch, as it were, consists of two parts, with one part being hard, with spiky rays, and the other being softer. Similar needles are present in the anal fin.

The perch is a predator, it can be seen even at the first meeting. The disproportionately large mouth with many teeth is the result of nature's work so that even small individuals can feed on small fish. Some perches even have tusks.

Whoever caught a perch at least once, probably remembered its small scales, which fit so tightly to the body that sometimes it seems like it is such a skin.

If we talk about large representatives, then in the river you can find a perch weighing only a few hundred grams, while sea species are larger and weigh more than 10 kg. The perch have their natural enemies, even in the underwater world, they can easily fall prey to larger predators.

We have already mentioned the color of the river inhabitants, but the sea bass is completely different from its brother. It can be distinguished not only by its characteristic red color, but also by its huge eyes.

Despite the fact that the perch is not considered a commercial fish, it lives in all types of water bodies of the northern hemisphere. The only thing that he needs for life is a weak current, the presence of vegetation and animal food. Marine representatives prefer shallow water, although they can feel great in the depths.

Useful qualities of perch meat

Fish as a food product is recommended not only for adults but also for children. Useful substances can be passed on to the baby in the womb, so there is not even a question of including seafood in the diet. However, many today prefer to compose a menu based on the total energy output, mistakenly discarding the fish, considering it a high-calorie product. A nutritious product should not be confused with a nutritious one.

For an illustrative example, consider the chemical composition of perch meat. To begin with, we note that its calorie content does not exceed one hundred thousand calories. This indicator is calculated for 100 g of product, therefore, by simple operations, you can calculate the energy yield of the whole dish.

Smoked Bass - Low Calorie Nutrients.

The next point is how the fish is cooked. It is traditionally believed that smoked foods are harmful to the body. We must destroy this stereotype, as it has no basis. Smoked perch is even less high-calorie than, for example, fried or boiled, and the amount of nutrients when processing the product with smoke is maximally preserved.

There are rumors about the dangers of such food due to the presence of carcinogens, but with proper smoking, the level of harmful deposits may not be so significant.

For the rich content of vitamins, proteins and microelements with such an indicator of calorie content, perch is classified as a dietary food. Even those who are prescribed a strict diet can eat fish in any form. Smoking perch is the most common way to cook it. The smoke-soaked delicacy will not only become a great snack, but also fill the atmosphere with warm memories that accompany the entire smoking process carried out at home.

The content of fatty acids and vitamins makes the perch meat extremely healthy. Due to the variety of trace elements that enter the body in pure form, the work of the heart, nervous system, endocrine system is normalized, metabolism improves, the level of cholesterol in the blood returns to normal. The most amazing property is that with regular use of this fish, the aging process of the body slows down.

Several secrets of success

In real life, it is much more difficult to perform this or that manipulation than both are mentioned in theory. As a result, incorrect actions often lead to product damage. Such a sad ending is typical for smoking. You need to clearly understand that there is no single correct formula that allows you to cook fish. Everyone chooses for himself the most favorite recipe, supplementing it with his own ideas. But there are some rules that remain unchanged. They are considered to be a guarantee of success in cooking.

Smoking food means exposing it to smoke containing substances that can preserve and retain organic fibers, giving them their characteristic taste and smell.

Possible errors can lead to the fact that the fish is saturated with carcinogens - heavy volatile elements that are a product of wood decay. Failure to comply with the requirements often leads to the development of microbes in the tissues of the fish, which is subsequently fraught with rotting. You can continue to list failures, but it will be much more effective to formulate the basic requirements for proper smoking.

• Choose only fresh fish.
• Cut it right.
• Salt, ensuring reliable preservation.
• Maintain a constant temperature for this or that type of smoking.

Each item contains some nuances. If you provide them, then you can easily smoke the perch in the smokehouse.

Choosing fish in the store

River perch can be the prey of any spearfisher. Fresh fish caught by yourself is the most suitable material for smoking. This does not mean that those who are far from fishing do not have the opportunity to fulfill their culinary dreams. We'll have to be content with what the stores offer us. Usually on the counter you can find sea bass frozen. Freezing does not make it possible to properly verify the freshness of the product, so you will have to rely on visual characteristics.

• The perch carcass must not contain any breaks or cracks.
• If for some types of preparation this does not matter, then when smoking you need to choose only whole fish.
• It is desirable that they are the same size. In this case, the smoking process will take place evenly and will end at the same time.
• The unpleasant smell inherent in perishable fish cannot be hidden even by deep freezing. Consequently, the quality of the product can also be assessed by smell.

If you are lucky enough to find chilled fish on sale, then remember that its shelf life is very limited. Freshness can be checked by pressing your finger on the carcass. The deformed place should disappear in a few seconds. The eyes of a fresh fish are transparent and not sunken. The gills should be light pink in color.

How to salt fish for smoking

Unfortunately, the salting procedure is not limited to the banal addition of salt to the container where the carcasses are stored. Salt must effectively penetrate the fibers of the fish to remove excess moisture, otherwise all conditions are created there for the growth of bacteria.

You won't be able to quickly salt the fish, so you need to calculate the time. First, the carcass is cut. You don't need to take off the scales.

• First, it will become a kind of protective shell and will retain the juice that is released.
• Secondly, it is very difficult to remove scales from a perch carcass, and when it gets smoked, the skin will come off easily.

All cutting comes down to removing the entrails. Some experts advise leaving the guts and gills if the carcasses are small. We recommend separating at least the gills.

Long-term stay of fish in brine is called pickling, it is necessary for the breakdown of fibers and the destruction of microbes in them. After pickling, salted fish is considered edible. There are two ways to salt fish before smoking: dry pickling and liquid pickling.

1. In the dry method, salt is mixed with ground black pepper and the resulting mixture is thoroughly rubbed on each carcass from the outside and from the inside. The salted fish is placed in a bowl and covered with cling film on top. In this state, she must stay for at least 6 hours. River perch has a specific smell that you shouldn't get rid of, it is the smell of fresh fish. Avoid using a lot of spices, as they will not do the trick to discourage the taste of the fish.
2. A liquid marinade is prepared by adding salt and spices to hot water. The water is heated in order for the ingredients to dissolve better, to give their taste. But you need to lay the fish only in the cooled marinade. The amount of salt depends on the desire of the culinary specialist, because some people like light-salted foods.

It is almost impossible to oversalt the fish. Firstly, this is its property, and secondly, in both cases described, the next step will be soaking the carcasses in clean water for some time. After removing excess salt, you will have to ventilate the perches to get all the moisture out.

Cold and hot smoking

To cook deliciously a product smoked with natural smoke, you must use a special device. The oven, which is used by residents of apartment buildings, only gives a kind of imitation of the process. The baked fish will have to be additionally processed with liquid smoke. Hot smoked perch is cooked in a smokehouse under the influence of smoke with a temperature of about 100 ° C degrees. Cold smoking has some significant differences. The results are also different.

In the first case, the fish will be smoked for less than an hour. Its meat becomes loose, the bones are easily separated. It looks like it is not baked in consistency, but it has a characteristic taste and smell. Such a fish is stored for only a few days. Despite this, recipes for hot smoking are more common on various forums, due to the simplicity and speed of preparation. Such a fish is great to cook in the country for a family dinner or lunch.

It will be possible to smoke the fish with cold smoke only after a few days. The resulting meat will be firm, with a pronounced fishy taste. In this form, it retains many vitamins and nutrients. The smokehouse is designed so that the smoke cools down to 27 ° C before entering the fish section. Cold smoked perch will stay in the refrigerator for several weeks. The difficulty lies in the fact that it is difficult to smoke fish without interruption, and this is the main condition. For perch, a day of smoking with cold smoke will be enough. As a result, you will be able to cook your favorite dish deliciously and enjoy it with pleasure.

Vladislav Paikov

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If you like to smoke or just dream of learning, then you can please your loved ones with easy-to-cook smoked perch. In this article you will find material on the topic "smoked perch recipes for smoking".

Sea bass differs from river bass not only in body structure, but also in chemical composition.

Table chemical composition perch:

Vitamins table:

Mineral table:

As can be seen from the table, freshwater fish is inferior in many respects to sea fish, which has more tender and fatty meat. Therefore, cold smoked sea bass turns out to be very tasty and juicy.

Beneficial features

Fish is well absorbed by the body and the feeling of satiety after eating it lasts a long time without causing heaviness. Hot smoked red perch has these properties.

When replacing red meat with fish in the diet, blood cholesterol levels are reduced. It is useful for hypertension and diseases of the cardiovascular system.

The large amount of fish extractives increases appetite and promotes good digestion.

Eating fish strengthens the nervous system (vitamins of group B), bone skeleton (vitamin D, calcium, phosphorus), tooth enamel (calcium, phosphorus), vision (vitamin A).

Training

First you need to prepare the perch for smoking.

The fish is sold chilled or frozen. Frozen before processing is thawed.

After that, the head of the sea bass is removed. With freshwater - you can leave. But it is advisable to remove the gills. In both individuals, the dorsal fin can be removed, since it is prickly and can injure during processing.

Scales are not peeled before smoking. The viscera are removed through a hole in the abdomen.

You can salt the perch before smoking with a dry salting, rolling the semi-finished products in 1 grade medium-sized salt (100 g of salt per 1 kg of product). They put the carcasses in a bowl, on a substrate of salt, sprinkle each row with salt and fall asleep on top.

You can salt perch for hot smoking with the addition of ready-made spices for fish. An assortment of spices can be chosen according to taste: black pepper, white pepper, ginger, garlic powder.

You can also add salt in brine or pickle the smoked perch. The brine is prepared from water and salt, in a ratio of 10: 1. Carcasses must be completely immersed in liquid.

You can marinate sea bass for smoking with lemon juice, ginger, olive oil, hot red pepper and dried garlic. This mixture is applied to the carcass and wrapped in plastic wrap.

You can salt perch for hot smoking in 2-3 hours, and for cold one - salt it within 48-72 hours.

After salting, semi-finished products are washed, blotted with napkins, dried. For the cold method, it can be dried by hanging in the shade for 24 hours.

How to smoke and how long

Sea bass and freshwater fish can be smoked hot and cold. This process is easy to carry out in nature, in the garden, in the home kitchen. All that is needed to properly smoke perch is a smokehouse, quality wood chips and well-prepared fish.

Hot smoked perch is cooked at a temperature of 80 to 120 ° C, on average 25-35 minutes. Under such conditions, the pulp is well baked, it is easily separated from bones and skin.

The cold method requires maintaining the temperature no higher than 30 ° C. Accordingly, the time for smoking perch is increased to 8 hours or more.

Hot smoking

Hot smoked perch turns out to be unusually tasty. The smoker recipe is presented below.

To smoke hot smoked perch at home, prepare a smoking machine. Chips or shavings of deciduous trees are placed in the chamber. Place the drip tray for fat flowing down during smoking on top of the wood materials.

Important! According to the recipe for smoking perch in a hot-smoked smokehouse, the chips should not be ignited. To prevent this from happening, it is moistened with water.

A grating is fixed in the upper part of the chamber. In order to properly nourish the perch in a hot smoked smokehouse, you need to arrange the carcasses on the wire rack so that they do not touch each other, otherwise lateral surfaces will not smoke enough. The device is closed with a lid and placed on a heating source. It can be a regular fire, stove, barbecue or gas burner. Time is counted from the moment the steam appears from the steam outlet pipe. You can cook hot smoked perch in half an hour.

Advice! It is advisable to chill hot smoked river and sea bass in a smokehouse by opening the lid. It is not recommended to shift the fish while hot, otherwise the carcasses will break.

After smoking the perch at home in a hot-smoked smokehouse, it is kept in the air or in the refrigerator for several hours to ripen the pulp. During this time, smoking substances will make the products more tasty, with a rich, but not harsh aroma.

Cold smoking

Smoking sea bass in a smokehouse, like freshwater, is quite simple.

The smoke generator is charged with chips, connected with a tube to the processing chamber. Semi-finished fish products are placed on a grate reinforced in the upper part of the chamber. Close with a lid. They turn on the compressor and set fire to the chips. The smoke entering the chamber processes the fish, giving it a smoked flavor and aroma, and softening muscle tissue.

In smokehouses without a smoke generator, the hearth is melted, the products are loaded into the processing chamber on the grates, and the lid is closed. The smoke generated during the combustion of wood enters the chamber through the chimney. Smoke until cooked. Cooking time is 8-10 hours, longer for larger fish.

Readiness is determined by the consistency of the pulp, smoked taste and aroma of the products. According to the recipe for cold smoked perch, the consistency of the pulp is denser than that of hot processed products.

Cold smoked perch is cooled and dried in the air for 24 hours.

• Cold smoked freshwater and sea bass are better stored. When the temperature in the refrigerator chamber is + 2 + 4 ° С, you can not worry about their good quality for at least 3-4 weeks. Freeze in the freezer if you want to keep it longer.
• under the same conditions it will last much less - from 3 to 7 days.
• For long-term storage, you need to properly salt the perch for hot smoking, because with a lack of salt, the products deteriorate faster.
• If you want to send the fish for storage, do not cut it. For long-term maintenance, it should remain intact after smoking.