step by step recipe with photos
Despite the presence of small bones, bream is a first-class fish product. Its special taste qualities and unique nutritional value put it, along with pike and pike perch, in first place among river inhabitants.
Spicy pickled vegetables successfully compete in taste with juicy slices of fish. A classic addition to a flavorful appetizer is baked or boiled potatoes. The head, tail and ridge can be saved for making fish soup or aspic.
Ingredients
- bream 1 pc. (1000-1200 gr)
- salt 100 g
- ground black pepper 0.5 tsp.
- dried thyme 1 tsp.
- dried rosemary 1 tsp.
- onion 300 g
- bell pepper 200 g
- lemon zest 1 tsp.
- sunflower oil 5-6 tbsp. l.
- table vinegar 3-4 tbsp. l.
- parsley 10 sprigs
How to marinate bream
1. For marinating, you can use fresh fish fillet or whole fish without removing the bones. Rinse the bream. Remove scales using a special fish peeling knife. Afterwards, rinse well in cold water. Trim all fins and tail. Rip open the belly and remove all the entrails. Rinse thoroughly and remove the black films inside. Cut off the head. Cut the fish carcass into small pieces up to two centimeters wide. If you want to marinate boneless fish, then separate the fillet from the ridge.
2. Cut the bream fillet into portions.
3. Place the fish pieces in a container with a lid, generously sprinkling with salt. Cover with a lid or cling film. Place in the refrigerator for 2.5-3 hours.
4. In the meantime, peel the onion and cut into rings. Wash the sweet pepper, remove the seed pod without damaging the fruit, cut into slices.
5. Place the salted fish in a colander and rinse well. Leave the excess water to drain.
6. Remove excess moisture with a napkin.
7. Place the dried fish slices in a bowl. Add thyme and rosemary, ground pepper, lemon zest. Stir gently so that the fish pieces are well coated in the spices.
Marinating is a must-have method for preparing many dishes. Since fish is a very tender and delicate product, preparing a marinade for it is a special matter. And the methods of marinating bream differ from the methods of marinating other products, or even other types of fish.
Why pickle bream?
Marinades soften and add flavor to fish, eliminate or weaken unwanted odor and preserve the product for a long time. Thanks to the essential ingredient of the marinade - acid in the presence of table salt, the fish does not lose water during heat treatment, which is why it turns out soft and juicy. The oil used in the marinade preserves the flavors of the spices and prevents the fish from drying out. Seasonings not only aromatize and improve taste: fragrant herbs contain essential oils and disinfect. In the fish marinade, in addition to the traditional onions, black pepper and bay leaves, anise and chervil are used.
How long does it take to marinate bream?
The time for marinating bream depends on the size of the cut pieces and further plans. The period of marinating fish for subsequent heat treatment is shorter than for storage in a marinade. Also, the marinating time depends on the method used: with hot marinating, the product is ready for use earlier than with cold marinating. So, with traditional cold marinating for subsequent storage without heat treatment, the marinating time will be 3 days for pieces about 2 cm thick and 5 days for fillet plates.
For boiled (boiled) and fried marinades, the marinating time until ready is from 3 to 5 hours after preparation to 2 days.
Methods for preparing pickled bream
Cold marinade
Ingredients:
- Fish 1 kg
- Onions 5 pcs.
- Vinegar (9%) 400 ml
- Salt100 g
- Sugar 200 g
- Boiled water 0.6 l
- Black peppercorns 10 pcs.
- Bay leaf 5 pcs.
- Dill (seeds) 1 tsp.
- Coriander (grains) 2 tsp.
Cooking method:
Boil 200 ml of water with pepper, coriander and dill seeds for about 10 minutes. Add salt, bay leaf, sugar and stir thoroughly. Cool the brine, add vinegar and the remaining cold water. We cut the onion into thin rings. Place the prepared pieces of fish or small carcasses in a glass bowl, lay the onion on top and fill with brine. Store covered in the refrigerator. If you make fish in small pieces, it will be ready in 3 days, and if you have whole carcasses, then in 5.
Pieces of bream for cold marinating
Fried marinade:
Ingredients:
- Fish 1 kg
- Onions 5 pcs.
- Carrots 3 pcs.
- Vinegar (9%) 0.4 l
- Salt 3 tbsp. l.
- Sugar 4 tbsp. l.
- Water 2 l
- Black pepper (peas) 20 pcs.
- Bay leaf 5 pcs.
- Vegetable oil for frying.
Cooking method:
- Place onions and carrots in boiling water and simmer over low heat for 10 minutes.
- Then add sugar, salt, pepper, vinegar, bay leaf and continue cooking for about 5 minutes.
- Fry the pre-cut fish into pieces in a heated frying pan on both sides.
- Transfer the fish to glass dishes or jars.
- Cut the onion into rings and place on the fish.
- Pour boiling marinade over it and let it sit under a closed lid in the refrigerator for at least 2 days.
Bream with vegetable marinade
Marinade for fish kebab:
Ingredients:
- Fish fillet 1 kg
- Olive oil 3 tbsp. l.
- Ground red pepper 1 - 3 g
- Ground white pepper 1 – 2 g
- Basil (greens) 50 g
- Lemon 1 pc.,
- Salt 1 tbsp. l.
Cooking method:
The bones are removed from the fillet and it is cut into long pieces to fit the length of the grill. For the marinade, add both types of peppers, finely chopped basil, salt and the juice of 1 lemon to olive oil. On average, 1 kg of fillet contains 3 tablespoons of oil. Next, the fish for shish kebab is marinated for 1 - 2 hours. The fish is rubbed with the mixture and kept. Fish fillet shashlik is cooked on the grill for 15 - 25 minutes.
Marinated fish shashlik
Marinated bream is a very popular dish in our latitudes. Marinated fish is especially suitable as an appetizer for various alcoholic drinks. But, besides this, it will go perfectly with a side dish, for example, boiled or baked potatoes. The marinated bream recipe takes quite a long time to prepare, however, the process itself is very simple and does not require any special skills. Therefore, you should not be afraid, but you can safely start cooking.
Prepare everything you need for marinating
Before we tell you how to marinate bream, let's prepare the necessary ingredients. Firstly, we must have bream (you can also marinate fillets). Secondly, these are 2 onions. Thirdly, seasonings: ground black pepper and salt - at your discretion, as well as 2 tablespoons of vinegar and 3 tablespoons of vegetable oil.
Here, in fact, is the entire simple set of ingredients needed to prepare such a delicious dish - pickled bream.
What about inventory? We will need a sharp knife, a cutting board, a towel (not terry, but a kitchen towel), a glass jar or other container for pickling, a serving plate and a glass jar or other container for pickling.
Preparing pickled bream
Now that you have all the necessary ingredients and equipment at hand, we’ll tell you how to marinate bream:
- Salt the fish. Rinse the fish well under running water, cut off the head and tail, and remove the entrails. The ridge also needs to be removed, but do not rush to throw it away, as it is perfect for making fish soup. Wash the fillet thoroughly and cut into pieces, add salt and put in a jar. We forget about it for three hours. If it's a hot summer outside, it's better to put the fish in the refrigerator;
- We wash the bream. After a three-hour break, we take the fish out of the jar and wash it again. This will allow us to wash off all the excess salt. Cut the onion into half rings. If you wish, you can sprinkle the fish with a special seasoning for fish, but this is not necessary;
- We lay the bream in layers. Take a clean jar (1 liter) and lay out onions and fish in layers, and so on until both are gone. Pour vinegar and vegetable oil into a container. We close the jar with a polypropylene lid and put it in the refrigerator.
It is advisable if the fish is marinated for at least a day, but if you really want to try it, then 8 hours is enough.
What is especially attractive about this marinated bream recipe is that by soaking the fish in such a marinade, it will never be too sour or over-salted. So even those who are completely unfamiliar with the culinary arts will not be able to cook such fish badly.
We saw this method of marinating fish in one of the TV shows on the fishing and hunting channel. True, the chef marinated red fish in it. But we didn’t have salmon or salmon, but there were large white bream in the freezer. And we thought that this method would also be suitable for pickling bream.
By the way, large white bream and bream are very suitable for marinating - their meat is soft and moderately fatty. We tried to pickle white bream in different ways, including according to the recipes posted on this site - it turned out very tasty! And this time we decided to try the “salmon” recipe we saw on the TV show.
But, as often happens, the cooking process made its own adjustments: we replaced some ingredients to our taste, and as a result, the recipe differed from the original shown on the TV show. That’s why we called the dish “Podleschiki, marinated in the original way”!
So, first of all, we defrosted two bream, half a kilo each, and removed the fillets from them with a sharp knife. In frozen and then thawed bream, the tender meat becomes a little loose (this is understandable!), but large rib bones are easily separated, and getting a clean fillet is not difficult.
The resulting fillet on the skin was cut into strips 3-4 centimeters wide. Salt and sugar were mixed in equal proportions, as in the original recipe (three to three teaspoons). And then the creativity began!
The original recipe called for lemon juice, but I only found half a lemon in the refrigerator. By the way, it turns out that it’s easier to squeeze out lemon juice not with your hands, but to use a garlic crusher, putting small slices of lemon into it. Maybe someone has been doing this for a long time, but for me this convenience turned out to be a discovery that I figured out on my own, without outside help!
The juice squeezed out by the spadefoot was still not enough for the available amount of fish, and I was too lazy to go to the store in the evening. And, without further ado, we decided to compensate for the lack of lemon with ordinary 9% table vinegar.
Also, the original recipe included a mixture of peppers, which we also didn’t have, and so we decided to limit ourselves to only red and black ground pepper. We also added finely chopped dill to the recipe, but we decided not to add cognac, which the TV chef advised to pour into the fish for flavor (it wasn’t available, but we’ll definitely try it next time!).
So, we took a plastic bowl, on the bottom of which we placed several pieces of bream, skin side down. Each piece was sprinkled with a mixture of salt and sugar, black and red pepper, dill and poured with a mixture of lemon juice and vinegar. And the same procedure was done with each subsequent layer.
Covering the dish with the fish, we put it in the refrigerator and forgot it for three days. After this time, we boiled potatoes for dinner, marinated onion rings in apple cider vinegar and took out our fish, which had already been thoroughly marinated.
The chef from the fishing and culinary program was not lying: the fish really turned out very tasty, even though we made changes to his recipe, and instead of salmon we used white bream!
Vitaly Volkov,
r.p. Svetly Yar, Volgograd region
