How to dry ram at home recipe. Dried ram is a favorite homemade delicacy. Which fish is suitable

Salted fish is the perfect snack for beer. And to be sure of its quality and taste, it is better to salt it yourself. Find out how you can salt the ram.

What kind of fish is suitable?

Small and medium-sized fish are suitable for salting, as large ones will not be completely salted and remain raw inside, which will affect the taste and increase the likelihood of contracting intestinal infections when eaten.

Instead of ram, you can use any other medium-sized fish for salting, for example, rudd, scavengers, ruffs, sabrefish, minnows. The average fat content is optimal, since at low the fish will turn out to be very dry, and at high it will have an unpleasant taste.

Gut the fish?

Opinions about gutting fish before salting are divided. But if the ram was caught in the summer, then in the reservoir it probably fed on freshwater microorganisms and greens, and in this case, if the insides are not removed, an unpleasant odor may occur. In addition, the pulp will acquire a characteristic aroma and bitter taste, so gutting is still desirable.

It is not necessary to cut off the tail and head, it is enough to make a small incision in the abdomen and get everything superfluous. Next, the fish is thoroughly washed and dried. This completes the preparation, and you can go directly to the ambassador.

How to salt?

How to salt ram at home? The process is simple but requires patience. In addition, there are three main methods: drying, dry method and wet. All options are considered in detail.

Dry way

This option is simple and requires a suitable container (it can be a wooden box or an enamel basin), salt and fish directly.

Description of the method:

At the bottom of a clean container, pour a layer of salt about 7-10 millimeters thick.
Rub all the fish with salt, pushing it into the mouth and gills. You can also make several holes for better salting.
Put the fish on the salt, sprinkle it with a centimeter layer of salt. Laying for better compaction is done with heads to tails and backs to bellies so that there are no free spaces.
After laying in layers and sprinkling all the fish with salt, cover it, for example, with thick cardboard, a perforated board, or a lid with a diameter smaller than the container itself. Place an oppression weighing about 7-10 kg.
Send the container to a cool place, such as a refrigerator, cellar or balcony (during the cold season).
How much to salt the fish in this way? The duration depends on the weight of one carcass: about 100-150 grams - two days, 500-700 grams - three to four days, more than 800 grams - from five to seven days to two weeks (for large specimens).
In the process of salting, juice will be released, which must be drained daily. Readiness can be determined by the absence of liquid.
Now wash the salted fish and soak it in water to remove excess salt, and then in an acetic solution (50 ml of 9% table water per 10 l) to kill bacteria and repel flies.
It remains to hang the carcasses in a ventilated room and dry to the desired state. You can also dry the fish in wooden open boxes or on trays, turning regularly.

Advice! If the mass of oppression is increased after a day or two, then the fish will be salted more fully and well.

wet way

Such a recipe involves salting in a concentrated saline solution. And you will need this:

fish;
water;
table salt (100-150 g for each liter of water).

Instruction:

Immerse the washed and, if desired, gutted fish in the prepared saline solution so that it completely covers the carcasses.
Press down on top of the fish to prevent it from floating up.
After two to five days (depending on size), remove the carcasses, rinse thoroughly or keep half an hour in cold water and dry.

Drying

This method is also easy. All you need is fish and salt. The process is also simple:

Rub the fish very carefully on all sides with salt. Make holes and pack salt into them.
Prepare a wire or rope, string salted carcasses on it.
Now hang the strung fish in the courtyard of a private house, on a balcony or in a constantly ventilated room. To protect against flies, you can cover the structure with gauze or arrange something like a tent or dome from this material.
The ram will be salted for at least two days. And the longer the period, the drier the pulp will be, so adjust the timing at your discretion, taking into account taste preferences.

Finally, some helpful tips:

If you decide not to gut the fish, then for high-quality salting inside, you should pour a strong saline solution through your mouth through a syringe. Some fishermen do this immediately after receiving their catch.
You can optionally add various seasonings to the salt to give the finished salted ram an aroma and piquancy.
It is best to use coarse salt, as fine salt will increase the salting period and may form a crust on the surface.
If, when using the wet method, a little bit of granulated sugar is added to the brine, then the finished fish will be more tender and even more palatable.
If you plan to dry large fish, then to speed up the process, make several longitudinal cuts in it. And small carcasses will dry out anyway.
If the fish is very dry, then it can be made softer if moistened with a brush or sponge, and then wrapped with parchment. Next, periodically moisten the paper so that the pulp absorbs moisture. You can also correct the situation with under-dried rams if you wrap it in a newspaper that will absorb excess liquid.
Properly salted ram is stored for up to 3-5 months, and in cold and sealed packaging - up to 9-10.

Salted ram will be a success if you choose the right recipe and follow all the salting rules.

Today I want to share with you the recipes for cooking one of my favorite dishes, namely - ram (ram).

Taranka (ram) - the common name for dried dried fish.

For the preparation of a ram, various fish of the carp family are mainly used: roach, ram (from the name of which the concept of “ram” arose), vobla. But in fact, you can make a ram from a larger list of fish: goby, bream, pike, perch, crucian carp, sabrefish, silver bream ...

Taranka is considered a Russian national beer snack. Cooking rams (drying in salt form) lasts from several days to several weeks, and depends on the size of the fish and the recipe, as well as the expected result, because. someone wants a dried ram, and someone very dried. The fish is salted in brine (brine) and aged for 3-4 days. Live-salted fish turns out to have a better taste, since, having swallowed brine, it salts more evenly. After that, the fish is hung out in the open air and dried. Large fish are sometimes cut so that it dries well.

Training. We take enameled dishes (or stainless steel), sprinkle the bottom with 0.5 cm of salt. Wash the fish thoroughly. If the fish is not large up to 0.8 kg of the inside, we do not release it, if more, we release it.

Salting. We rub the fish with salt, and pour salt over the gills. If the fish is more than 1.5 kg - in addition to the released intestines, we also make a longitudinal incision on the back, and also fill it with salt. Salt is better to use large, because. fine salt makes a crust on the fish, through which the brine will not salt its body. We put the fish in a container, and when the first layer of fish is laid, sprinkle it on top with another 1 cm of salt, then lay the 2nd layer, and again sprinkle it on top with salt. When the salting is over, put some kind of lid on the fish, but so that it does not press close to the walls of the dish, and there is a small amount of air. Put something heavy on the lid to crush the fish. We put a container with salted fish at the very bottom of the refrigerator. If winter - on the balcony, but in no case in the sun. Periodically drain the juice from the container with the fish.

Salting time: small fish (up to 0.1 kg) - a day or two. Medium fish (up to 0.8 kg) 3-4 days. Large fish from 1 kg and above - 5 days to 2 weeks, depending on the size and ambient temperature. An indicator of a good salting of the fish is the cessation of the abundant release of juice by the fish.

Preparing for a sign. When the salt has done its job, take the fish out of the brine and rinse it thoroughly in clean water. After we collect again in a container of clean water, and soak the fish for 2-3 hours. Then we rinse again and, for example, I added 25 ml of vinegar to 3 liters of water during the second rinse. This prevents the possibility of getting into the fish when drying unnecessary living organisms (let's not talk about the bad).

Some designs of boxes for drying rams

Hanging. For hanging, we take some kind of box, you can rivet from several boards. The box must be well weathered on all sides. We cover it with gauze or mosquito net so that flies cannot sit on the ram. Which can lay their eggs there, which in turn can turn into worms. Before hanging the ram, break its gills so that they dry faster. If the fish is large, then place spacers from matches on the cut belly. We do hanging. It is better to hang the fish head up so that the brine and internal liquid do not flow out of the fish. So it will be fatter and tastier. Hanging out is best done in the evening so that the ram can become weathered and dry overnight. We completely cover the box with a hanging ram with a net, and put it in the shade, in a well-ventilated place, for example, on an open-frame balcony. If possible, do not place the box on the south side so that the temperature is not too high.

When to shoot the fish is up to you.

Another method of cooking ram

Required inventory. For salting the caught fish, it is necessary to have a special container, in which salted fish can be laid in rows. In a private house, in a dacha in the yard, you can use boxes made of wood or thick plywood with drilled holes in the bottom to drain fish juice into the ground. You can also use plastic and metal containers (the latter must be covered with a layer of enamel). Good and durable is a rectangular container made of thin stainless steel. Usually such capacious and deep containers are made to order and are rarely found on sale. In plastic, enameled and stainless steel containers for draining fish juice, a special stand is additionally made, which is used for dry salting. Such containers with a stand are especially relevant in cases where fish is salted at home, for example, on a balcony.

For home salting, the author uses a monolithic plastic container, which has the following dimensions: length - 45 cm, width - 35 cm and height - 25 cm. At the bottom of the container, according to its size, a plywood sheet 1-1.5 cm thick is cut. around the contour of the canvas at a distance of 10-15 cm from each other, we drill holes with a diameter of 10 mm, as well as several holes in the center of the canvas to drain the fish juice. Two or three wooden blocks about 30 mm thick are cut out under the bottom of the canvas. Between the canvas lying on the bars and the bottom of the container, a gap is formed for the thickness of the bars. For convenience, the bars are fixed to the canvas with screws with an anti-corrosion coating. But still, it is more reliable to fix the bars with a nylon cord, tying their ends through the drilled holes, and melt them with a match (the fact is that the screw heads, in contact with salt, will darken over time and rust will form on them). After a special pallet is made of durable plywood on blocks, it is necessary to cut out of plywood (or knock down from a planed flat board) several more canvases without blocks (in the amount of three or four, depending on the height of the container) to the size of the container. Additional sheets of plywood serve to cover the rows of fish laid for salting. The first row of fish is laid on a pallet with blocks, which is first sprinkled with coarse salt, and salted fish is already placed on top. (More on this will be discussed below). The stacked row of fish is covered with a plywood sheet (in this sequence, the rest of the fish is laid to the very top of the container). Each intermediate sheet must have several drilled holes, both along the contour and in the center, to drain the fish juice to the bottom of the container. The canvases are adjusted exactly to size with a small gap of 4-5 cm from the walls of the container. The ends and edges of the cut canvases are processed with sandpaper.

For high-quality preparation of a ram, it is necessary to have loads of various weights. So, for dry salting, the author uses discs of collapsible dumbbells with an anti-corrosion coating and a small bag made of durable dense fabric, filled with dry river sand. The weight of a bag of sand is 15 kilograms. It is also necessary to have a piece of porous material or an air-permeable blanket, which is used to cover the container with fish and cargo. At the time of salting the fish, the cover is pulled together with a linen elastic band in order to completely exclude the penetration of wasps and flies into the freshly laid fish.

Equipment for drying fish. In order for the drying process to proceed normally, it is necessary to equip a special place. In the yard, they can serve as a place located under a wide roof canopy, which protects well from rain and sun. After salting and soaking, the fish is placed in specially knocked down boxes of planks, covered with a fine nylon mesh. The box has a door, rigid rods are fixed inside it, on which fish are hung with hooks made of metal wire. Another option for drying fish is also possible, which involves the use of several identical rings of thick copper wire. The diameter of the rings is 40-70 cm. The number of rings is from 5 to 7 pieces, depending on the thickness of the wire. In the upper part of the rings, a rigid rod passes, fixed to each ring with a dense winding of copper wire. The rings are equally spaced from each other. On the rod are metal hooks for hanging fish. General view - a cylinder, covered on all sides with a mesh or a double gauze canopy, fastened with buttons. A strong nylon cord is threaded along the entire length, with which the device is easily fixed at the desired height.

In apartments of multi-storey buildings, where the area is limited, you can use part of the balcony or loggia facing the street. For this purpose, it is necessary to carry out simple construction work that does not take much time. We will need some tools and the ability to handle them. (What the equipped balcony looks like can be seen in the photo brought to your attention). Necessary tools: a hacksaw, a drill, drills, a hammer, a punch, a screw, nails, as well as: a nylon cord, two wooden planks, a piece of gauze (with a margin - for double wrapping). In the extreme frame, which rarely opens and is securely fastened on metal hinges, besides it is additionally fixed with bolts, a wooden plank 2 cm thick and 5 cm wide across the frame at a height of 40 cm from the box itself is attached above and below. It is important that the bar is not less than the specified thickness and width. The bar is attached to the frame with four screws (two on each side). At the ends of the plank cut to size, points for drilling are marked with a pencil, in place of which holes are drilled with a drill. Then the bar is applied horizontally to the frame and the drilled holes are marked with dots, which will serve as screws. The diameter of the drill should be slightly smaller than the diameter of the screw. The marked points on the frame are carefully drilled to a depth of 2.5 - 2.8 cm into the body of the frame and away from the glass. Opposite the wooden plank on the wall, in the same sequence, the place of attachment of the second plank is marked. Holes in the wall are punched with a punch or puncher to a depth of 4-5 cm, the punched holes are lubricated with PVA glue and wooden plugs made of durable wood - oak, acacia, birch - are tightly hammered into them. Holes for screws are also drilled in wooden plugs. The second plank on the wall is also fastened with four screws. Another important point: before attaching the planks to each of them, nails are hammered into the rib at the same distance from each other and to a depth at which an incompletely driven nail will peek out one and a half centimeters above the plank. Nylon cords are stretched between the wooden planks fixed on the frame and the wall. The cord should be under slight tension. If the cord sags, it is shortened by tying a single knot on it from the edge.

Preservation and transportation of caught fish. Caught fish must be preserved and brought home unspoiled. If you fish in early spring or late autumn, then in this cool season the fish is well preserved. And if in the warm season, then you need to know the basic requirements for the preservation of the caught fish. Fish should not be in closed and airtight bags, plastic bags, etc. Fish quickly deteriorates if kept in a container of water - the water heats up quickly. Since the fish is a rather delicate product, when playing it, you need to learn how to hold it with your hands so that it is not injured. The hook should be removed carefully with tweezers or small pliers. During transportation, a wicker basket made of wicker can serve as a reliable container, in which the caught fish is necessarily shifted with nettles or reed leaves. Allow the fish to dry before laying, but in no case rinse it with water. Caught fish can be easily preserved for quite a long time if it is shifted with oak, cherry, nettle, currant, walnut leaves. During transportation, the fish must be provided with air access, otherwise its shelf life will be reduced. To keep the fish for a long time, for example, two or three days, it is necessary immediately after the catch to remove the insides, gills, wash the meat from the blood, rub it with vinegar and lower it for 10-15 minutes in salted water. Then take dry crushed wormwood or thyme, nettle or white bread, pre-soaked in vodka and put in the fish's peribranch space. After long-term storage in the described way, the fish is suitable for eating, but it cannot be made into a ram. It should be remembered that only freshly caught fish is suitable for making a ram, which was stored for no more than a few hours after the end of fishing. The faster the caught fish is delivered home, the better it will be preserved and the better the ram you have prepared will be.

Salting. The oldest and easiest way to preserve fish is salting. Salted fish releases water from itself, and water dissolves salt, forming a saline solution - brine. For salting, as mentioned earlier, only fresh and intact fish is used. Salt for salting should be clean, without any impurities and coarse grinding. When salting fish for drying, two main methods are used: dry and wet (brine). With the dry method of salting, cooked fish, preferably of the same size for each layer of salting, must be washed with running cold water and put in a spare container, from which it will be convenient to get it for salting. Next to this container there should be salt and the main container in which the salting will be carried out. At the bottom of this main container for salting, we put a pre-made pallet made of plywood on blocks and thickly sprinkle with salt the entire area of \u200b\u200bthe pallet (the thickness of the salt layer is up to one centimeter). We rub large and medium-sized fish with salt under the scales (from tail to head), be sure to stuff salt into the gills and put them on the pallet in dense rows - head to tail, back to stomach (With this folding of the fish, oppression will work better) Sprinkle the laid fish a layer of salt in such an amount that a flat surface of poured salt forms on top of the fish. Then we cover it with a canvas cut out of plywood and make sure that it lies strictly horizontally and is stable, if necessary, we level the surface by adding salt.

So, the first row of fish is laid and salted. The remaining fish is laid in the same sequence, which is covered with the last upper canvas. We put a load on this canvas. A few words should be said about the use of cargo. You should not put the entire load on the fish laid for salting at once. In the first 6-7 hours of salting, it is worth using a load weighing a little more than half of the weight of the total load, and then report the rest of the load. So the process of salting fish goes more evenly. The weight of the load depends on the size and quantity of the packed fish. The larger the fish, the heavier the load should be. For example, when salting large bream weighing 1-2 kg, the author uses a weight of 17-20 kg. For medium-sized fish (250-500 grams), the weight of the load is 12-15 kg. The top row of the laid fish is sprinkled with a thick layer of salt so that it covers all the fish, and when all the fish are laid, the container with the load is covered with a double layer of gauze or a porous cloth that allows air to pass through well, and wrapped with a linen elastic so that the cover is tightly pressed to the walls of the container to prevent the penetration of wasps and flies to the laid fish.

With home salting, fish, depending on the size, can be under load from 2 to 7 days. Small fish are aged for two days. Not gutted fish of medium size (250-500 g) - 3-4 days. Fish exceeding the average size (600-800 g) is aged up to 5 days. Please note that in the latter case, the insides of the fish must be removed. The entrails and blood clots are removed before salting and in large-sized fish (weighing 1 kg or more). In this case, a shallow incision is carefully made along the ridge from the inside with a knife towards the dorsal fin without damaging the skin. Salt is also poured inside the abdominal cavity of the fish, then the fish is pressed down with a load from above and aged for up to 7 days.

With the brine (wet) salting method in an enameled or stainless steel container, such an amount of salt is dissolved in water (with thorough stirring) at which a raw egg floats on the surface of the brine. Fresh fish is dipped in salt brine so that the brine covers it completely. A wire mesh is placed on top (mesh wire - with an anti-corrosion coating), and a load is placed on it. For brine salting, medium-sized fish (300 - 500 g) are selected and kept in salt brine under oppression for 3 days in a cool place.

Soaking. Soaking is used to reduce the salt content in fish and to avoid the formation of salt crystals on its surface. Salted fish is washed with cold running water. The gills and belly of the gutted fish are especially thoroughly washed. Small fish are soaked in fresh water for half an hour, larger ones should be soaked for several hours (for example, the fish was salted for 5 days, which means that the process of soaking in fresh water should last 4-5 hours, and the water must be drained twice and the container filled (the author uses a plastic bath) with fresh fresh water.Note that during the soaking process, after the first water has been drained, it is useful to leave the fish for 1-2 hours without water so that salt redistribution occurs in the fish meat, and also, to reduce the salinity of the inner layers of the fish.If the fish begins to float during soaking, this indicates that the salting becomes tender.In this case, if you look at the fish "in the light", then its back will be amber-transparent.After drying, the meat becomes slightly reddish color.

Drying. Before you hang the fish for drying, you need to lay it out on paper so that it dries a little, or wipe it dry with a clean rag. The author hangs the fish on specially made stainless wire hooks, after piercing a hole for the hook with an awl. Usually such fish as blue bream, silver bream, roach, white-eye are hung upside down. Large, gutted fish - bream, ide - head up. In general, if the fish is dried gutted, it is hung upside down so that the fish oil does not flow down, but remains in the fish meat. During drying, a wooden cross strut is necessarily inserted into the belly of the gutted fish. This is done for better drying of the fish. Drying time can be different, it depends on the air temperature and the size of the fish. The drying process usually lasts from 1 to 4 weeks. If the fish is strung through the eye sockets (using a needle and a strong cord), then it is necessary that the fish be located with its backs in one direction; and so that she does not crawl towards each other, the overlap on the head is done twice. And, of course, careful control over the fish hung out for drying is necessary. The fish must be securely protected with a net or gauze from flies and wasps. At night, there are no flies, and at this time the fish can not be protected with a net or gauze so that it dries to a dry crust. Flies lay their eggs only on the wet surface of the fish. In the early morning, after drying overnight, the fish can be lightly sprinkled with a solution of table vinegar: its pungent smell repels flies. But it is better to immediately hang the fish in a specially equipped and protected from flies place. To do this, a gauze canopy is widely used, the ends of which must be slightly wrapped and fastened with ordinary clothespins or fastened with buttons that are previously sewn on.

Storage. It is best to store ready-made, well-dried (but not over-dried) fish in cans, corking the cans with lids. Large fish can be stored wrapped in parchment, but not in plastic bags, because in this case the fish will not have access to air. In this form, a ram, for example, blue bream, sabrefish, silver bream, can be stored for quite a long time - up to 4 months. Dried fish is also well stored in a cotton bag in a cool, dry place. If the fish is dry, you can restore the elasticity of freshly dried fish. To do this, the fish must be soaked in water and wrapped in damp paper (keep the paper moist for two days, wetting it with water as it dries).

Conclusion. To get a delicious back of dried fish of gentle salting and amber color, you need, of course, a certain experience of drying at home. But experience, as they say, is acquired, and over time, you can learn how to make a ram not only from small white fish, but also from large fish that weigh more than one kilogram. The author was preparing a ram of bream, the weight of each of which exceeded two kilograms. Dried large spring or autumn bream is something special! You can't buy these in the store!

I would like to say a few words about salt waste from dry and brine salting. If salting takes place in the yard, then a small depression must be dug under the container so that the fish juice flows into the ground through the holes drilled in the container. The salt remaining after dry salting is folded into a bag and thrown away with it into the garbage container. If there is very little salt, then it can be thrown into the toilet, but in no case should you try to drain the salt waste into the sink - the entire drain system located under it may become clogged. If the drying of fish is carried out in a specially equipped place on the balcony, then in the balcony frames of the glazed balcony there should be a window covered with nylon mesh. No matter what floor of a multi-storey building you live on, flies will still fly to the smell of fish. And ventilation is necessary in order for the fish to “ripen” well. The author got out of the situation by making a plug-in frame covered with mesh, which he uses when the doors of balcony frames open.

In a plywood sheet to overlap the rows of fish during salting, you should not drill many holes, as the strength of the sheet itself is violated. So that during the drying of fish, metal hooks do not cling to the gauze canopy, a newspaper folded several times is placed on top of the hooks.

That's how everything is. If you have an interesting recipe for drying rams, send it, and maybe it will fall into this article.

Discuss this article on the Good Forum

Tags: ram, ram, dried fish, dried fish, how to cook ram, ram how to dry, ram for beer, ram recipes

Once upon a time, the name of the ram - or, as it is called with a soft pronunciation of the southerners - the ram - really took its name from small representatives of the Tarani species. But since then, the name has long been applied to any fish - crucian carp, scavenger or roach prepared in this way. How to properly salt a ram so that at the end you get not damp and not overdried, but the very one - your favorite snack for any kind of beer?

To obtain the same ram at the exit, various cooking technologies are used - dry salting, where nothing is used except fish and salt, wet salting, where salt brine is needed, and salting under oppression, where the fish is pressed down by some kind of weight. Any of these methods of salting rams will end with hanging fish drying - on twine or twigs.

How to salt a ram at home with dry salting - a recipe

For dry salting of the ram, take salt - always large, stone, and in no case iodized. Wash the fish, no need to gut or clean (the fish should be no larger than 30 cm). Let the moisture dry - spread the fish for a few minutes on a cotton cloth that absorbs water.
We rub the carcasses with salt - based on 10 kg, about 1.5 kg of salt - very carefully, “rubbing” under the scales, stuffing them into the mouth, under the gill covers. We put a ram on the wire (scourge, twigs) - pulling the selected base through the fish eyes.
To dry the ram not in the sun, and in a good breeze - the attic is ideal for this. Drying takes from 2 to 7 days, check the fish for bending: a poorly dried ram easily bends, an overdried one breaks. When the fish barely bends at a small angle - shoot and try.

How to pickle a ram with wet salting at home - a recipe

Prepare a brine - enough 0.5 cups of salt per 1 liter of water. It is not necessary to boil the brine, heat it up so that the salt dissolves, and fill the fish with cold water.
We lay the ram on the bottom of enameled or other non-oxidizing dishes (but plastic is not welcome). The ram is placed on top of each other "tail to head". When all the fish is laid, fill it with ready-made brine for 3-4 days.
Similarly to dry salting, we hang the fish to dry.
Do not forget - not only you love salted ram, but also flies, wasps. By wrapping the ram with two layers of gauze, you will avoid damaging the fish.

Fragrant and tasty fish taranka (taranka, ram) from the carp family has always been popular in southern Russia and Ukraine - it was dried and served with beer. Subsequently, any dried fish, such as roach and roach, began to be called a ram. Dried ram was the most affordable and cheap snack in Russia, so it was very popular. All residents of the Kuban and the Azov region know how to make a ram: first, the fish is salted and then dried, as a result of which it acquires a special spicy taste and aroma. You won't find better beer snacks!

How to cook a ram: choose and process fish

Since any dried fish is now called ram, for this dish you can take not only ram, roach or roach. Other varieties of fish are also suitable - bream, bream, sabrefish, pike, crucian carp, rudd, ruff and gudgeon. A very tasty ram is obtained from blue bream, silver bream, upper fryer, vomer, perch and goby. The fish should be of medium fat content and small in size, otherwise it will not salt and deteriorate. The fattest fish, bream, vomer and sabrefish, is of medium fat content, ruff is very tender and has few bones, dried perch is sweetish, and pike is richly tart and spicy.

It is not required to process the fish in a special way to salt the ram - it is enough to rinse it well and remove the insides if the fish is small. Some gourmets love whole ram - everyone has their own tastes. However, in the summer, when the inhabitants of rivers and lakes feed on greens and microorganisms, it is better to gut even small fish, otherwise an unpleasant odor will appear during the drying process, and the taste of such a ram will be bitter. By the way, it is also better to remove the gills - they can spoil the taste of the fish. How to salt the ram, if you still decide to leave the insides? To do this, before salting, pour a saturated saline solution into the throat of the fish - for this reason, many people prefer to salt the live ram. The fish opens its mouth and swallows the brine, which makes it possible to salt the internal organs with high quality.

First, the fish is salted and then dried. How to pickle a ram at home? There are different recipes for salting rams, but they usually use two methods - wet and dry. The wet method is suitable for small fish, the dry method is suitable for large fish weighing more than 1 kg.

Wet salting fish

According to this recipe, the ram is salted in a fairly concentrated brine, and the degree of salt concentration is checked with a raw egg - it should float to the surface. A strong solution for salting fish is called brine, and the fish is kept in it for about 3–4 days, and so that it does not float and salt evenly, it is covered with a metal mesh on top or a grate is placed on which the load is placed. The bucket, basin or pan where the ram is salted should be placed in a cold place so that the fish does not deteriorate. For wet salting, fish weighing less than 0.5 kg is usually taken. In general, the question of how much to salt the ram depends on the size of the fish - the larger it is, the longer the salting process will be.

After that, the salted fish is well washed and soaked in fresh water - small for 30 minutes, and large for several hours. At the same time, it is recommended to change the water several times, and after the first change of water, let the fish lie down in the air, come to its senses and allow the salt to be evenly distributed in the tissues. Then again you can put it into the water, and when the fish starts to emerge, the soaking process can be considered complete. Don't worry about how to salt the ram without over-salting it - it is believed that it will absorb as much salt as it needs. Salted and soaked fish becomes slightly transparent and takes on a light amber hue.

How to make a ram: dry salting method

The fish is first rubbed well with salt, salt is poured into the abdomen, into the incision on the back and into the gills, if you decide not to remove them. The carcass is pierced with a fork or knife and salt is rubbed into the holes. Pour about 0.5 cm of salt into a large stainless steel metal dish, lay the ram in tight rows back down and generously sprinkle salt on top to get a real salt layer 1 cm thick. Approximately 250 g of salt is required per 1 kg of fish.

Make another layer, and then lay a plate smaller than the pan or a wooden board on top - this is necessary to provide fresh air to the fish. Put oppression on the lid and put the fish in a cold place, such as a refrigerator, cellar or balcony. At the same time, make sure that the sun's rays do not fall on the fish. By the way, at first it is better to put a small oppression, after about 6-7 hours it can be strengthened - so the fish will be salted evenly. Interestingly, in Russia in the villages, fish was salted in a wooden box with holes, which was placed in a spacious container.

During the salting process, a liquid is formed that will have to be drained, and the salting time depends on the size of the ram. A fish weighing up to 100 g is salted for 1-2 days, medium-sized fish weighing 600-800 g need 3-4 days, and large fish will need from 5 to 14 days until completely salted. As soon as the ram ceases to secrete juice, it is ready, but first it should be washed well and soaked in cold water for 2 hours, then held in vinegar water for an hour - take about 50 ml of vinegar in a bucket of water. This is done to prevent the reproduction of pathogenic microorganisms, due to which the ram deteriorates very quickly.

How to dry a ram correctly

Make a double thread and string fish on it at a distance of at least 7 cm from each other, passing it through the eyes so that valuable fat and brine do not flow out through the mouth, but remain inside. Some fishermen dry the ram on hooks, and lay the small fish on a wooden surface and turn it over as it dries. Such a ram turns out to be especially tasty, tender and rich. Fish "garlands" should be hung in a well-ventilated place, but in the shade - in the attic or on the balcony, taking care of the absence of insects. By the way, soaking in vinegar water is a reliable prevention against flies, because the smell of vinegar repels them. If the flies sit on the fish, it is better to throw it away immediately, as they can lay eggs on it. For more reliable protection against insects, it is better to put together a special box for drying fish and cover it with a fine mesh.

Many people dry fish in Isidri dryers - in this case, you need to slightly open the gills (if they are not removed), cut the belly and strengthen it open with toothpicks.

After 3 days, the fish can be considered dried. If you want dried ram, wait 2 weeks. Properly dried ram is not soft or hard, has a pleasant taste and smell, is distinguished by a reddish-amber hue without yellow spots, and glows slightly in the light. Wet-salted fish becomes juicier after drying, and salting without water gives drier fish.

How to make a ram delicious: gourmet secrets

For salting, use coarse salt, which has the ability to draw moisture from the fish. The less liquid in the fish, the faster it will dry out later and turn out to be tastier. In addition, fine salt forms a crust on the surface of the carcass and prevents the fish from salting.
Adding a small amount of sugar to the brine makes the fish very tender, piquant and tasty.
What weight should be oppression during salting? Usually put a weight of 3-20 kg, depending on the size of the fish and personal preferences. If you salt fish in the summer, cover it with a cloth or gauze so that insects do not get inside.
If you want the fish to dry well, cut it slightly after salting. This applies mainly to large fish, because small fish dry out much faster.
Many housewives during dry salting drain the brine from the pan or bucket by hand, which is not very convenient. The ideal option is to drill holes in the bottom of the dish, and then the liquid will drain on its own. Then this dish can always be used for salting fish.
If you dry the ram, moisten it with water and wrap it in parchment for 2 days, periodically moistening the fish. Too dry fish can be ground to the consistency of flour and sprinkled with salads, soups and main dishes.

We store the ram correctly

Dried ram is stored for up to 4 months if it is cooked according to all the rules. You can lay it in layers in sterilized jars, roll up the lid and put it in the cellar - this way it will remain fresh for up to 10 months. Often, the fish is kept in a basket, a bag, wrapped in parchment paper, and a dried ram feels good only in a cool place in a plastic bag or foil, and it has a shorter shelf life. In the refrigerator, the ram is stored in the freshness zone - for this, the fish is smeared with olive oil and placed in glass jars. You should not keep salted fish in the air for a long time, because the fish oil oxidizes, and the ram acquires a not very pleasant taste. At low humidity, the fish becomes moldy, at high humidity it dries out, so the ideal storage conditions are 80% humidity and a temperature of 3–8 ° C. In kraft paper, on one side covered with polyethylene, the ram is stored for 8-10 months.

Taranka is a completely dietary and very healthy product containing protein, valuable fish oil, iodine, chromium and many other useful substances. Dried fish protein provides a complete metabolism, and omega-3 fatty acids protect against cancer, stroke and heart attack. From the ram, unusually tasty soups and snacks are obtained. Given that the calorie content of the ram is only 88 calories, you can afford to eat it at least every day without fear for your figure!

It is better to choose a container with slots, as over time the fish will begin to secrete juices that need to “leave” somewhere.

We place a box with fish in a cold room and keep it for at least 5-10 days (depending on the size of the carcasses).

Wet Ambassador

How to salt ram at home, if you want it to remain juicy? Then use the technology of wet salting of fish. All preparations are identical to the dry method, except for the container in which the fish will be stored. There should be no holes in it so that the secreted juice from the fish does not go anywhere.

You can add a little sugar to the brine, then the taste of the fish will be more tender.

Again, oppression is required. In a day or two, brine (fish pickle) will appear. The ram will be salted somewhere in a week and a half. Then it should be removed from the brine, washed, dried and placed in some kind of storage container.

Today we no longer use the brine for the second time, but in the old days brine was used several times in the fishing grounds.

Dried and dried fish

Salting ram at home can be done for future use: dried and dried ram. How to salt a ram is described above, now let's consider the question, such technologies for additional processing of the product are applicable to such fish.

We wash the salted fish and soak it in clean water for a couple of hours. We string fish carcasses in the tail area on a wire and hang them in a well-ventilated place. Direct sunlight for drying is contraindicated. Dried fish is more moist than completely dried, it will be ready in about a week.

More recipes on our website:

Salting grayling at home does not require special skills. After a quarter of an hour, this incredibly tasty fish will be ready to serve. Definitely salt it...
Well-organized salting of bream at home will not take much time and effort, but almost all lovers of beer and snacks will be able to enjoy the result....
Salted fish is not only a delicious dish, but also a way to keep the fish product in a usable condition. Salted silver carp at home - a simple dish....
Red fish is good because it is delicious in any form - no matter how you cook it! But who would refuse lightly salted fish, for example? Salting trout at home...