Cooking minced fish is not a pleasure, to put it mildly, but this is not a reason to refuse a huge assortment of dishes, the main component of which is minced fish.
A few simple tricks - and fish in the family menu will appear more often. In a wide variety of forms!
Minced fish dishes - basic technological principles
From minced fish you can cook many interesting and delicious dishes. You can buy frozen minced fish in the distribution network, but when you start preparing the cutlet mass from it, you need to consider that frozen foods sometimes contain more liquid than is allowed.
If you are going to cook fish cakes from ready-made frozen minced meat, then slightly change the technology of cooking the cutlet mass to get a more viscous consistency of minced meat. To bind the fish mass from fresh, chilled fish, white bread soaked in water or milk is added. Replace bread with flour, semolina, without adding liquid to the cutlet mass from frozen minced meat. Such a technique will achieve the desired consistency.
If a choose fresh fish for minced meat, then you will have to face a problem that is unpleasant for all housewives: fish, especially river fish, do not smell appetizing raw, and this smell eats up for a long time on the surface of a cutting board, table, dishes, not to mention the scales that fly apart during cleaning all sides.
Fresh, live fish put in a vinegar solution (10%) so that the vinegar gets inside. The unpleasant odor will disappear, after which you can begin to clean and cut the carcasses.
To save yourself from the hassle of cleaning the kitchen after cleaning the scales, take a transparent film, wrap it in a container in which the fish lies. In the film, make two holes for the hands. The film will not allow the scales to fly around the kitchen, stick your hands into the holes and proceed to cleaning.
Grease cutting boards and worktopso that the fish smell is not absorbed when cutting fish, and after work, wash with ordinary detergents. Oily film on the surface of the board will repel water with a fishy smell. If this is not enough, then wipe the kitchen utensils in contact with raw fish, lemon peel or parsley juice after washing.
The best raw material for cutlet mass is spinal fish, in which the skeleton does not contain a large number of bones: catfish, zander, pike, hake or pollock, icefish, pangasius, all fish of the salmon family.
For the preparation of minced meat, only skinless fillet is used. Fish fillet is chopped and passed, as a rule, through a meat grinder twice: for the first time minced meat is made, and the second time it is passed through a meat grinder, with a finer mesh, after adding bread or rolls of wheat flour, spices, onions.
To increase the viscosity, an egg is added to the minced meat. To make semi-finished products from low-fat fish varieties more juicy, add butter. After grinding, the minced meat is beaten to create a fibrous structure, which will help maintain the shape of the products during frying.
For aroma and special taste minced fish dishes add onions, garlic (some national cuisines), fresh, very finely chopped greens.
Breading not only decorates the dish with a crispy and rosy, appetizing crust, but also helps to preserve the juice inside the cutlets, zraz, meatballs, rolls.
For frying and baking a variety of shells can be used for fish semi-finished products: from flour, white crackers, a mixture of nut crumbs with flour or crackers, coconut flakes. So that the breading does not crumble, the semi-finished products are pre-coated with an egg-milk mixture, a mixture of flour and water. Breading can be single (for simple dishes) and double.
Fish is a perishable product, and the harmful bacteria in it multiply so quickly that when the mass is passed through a meat grinder at room temperature, the fish fillet in combination with other components (milk, vegetables) instantly loses freshness. Therefore, prepare the fish cutlet mass only from products pre-cooled to 2-5 ° C. At this temperature, the growth of bacteria stops. After preparation of semi-finished products, immediately proceed to hot processing.
If it is necessary to preserve raw foods in raw form, then immediately after cooking they must be subjected to deep dry freezing.
Decoration of any fish mince dish is sauce and side dish. The classic version of a garnish for any fish dishes is potatoes, boiled rice, eggs, mushrooms, stewed vegetables, and if you submit sauces prepared according to different recipes to ordinary fish cakes, then the cakes will look like a new dish every time.
1. Minced fish dishes - potato mincemeat with herring
Ingredients:
Potato 750 g
Herring 530 g
Onions 150 g
Parsley (greens) 120 g
Vegetable oil110 ml
Mayonnaise 60 g
2 eggs
Order of preparation:
Cook the peeled potatoes until tender, drain the water, dry the potatoes, wipe through a sieve, then cool. Repeat herring fillet and prepared onion through a meat grinder. Combine mashed potatoes with prepared mass, add finely chopped parsley, refined oil, mix thoroughly. Give the finished mass the shape of a loaf, grease with mayonnaise, set for baking for five minutes. When serving, sprinkle with chopped hard-boiled eggs, decorate with fresh herbs.
2. Minced fish dishes - fish galantin
Products:
Cod fillet 1.2 kg
Bread 300 g
Cream, drinking 150 ml
Onions, 200 g
Oil 60 g
Eggs 1 pc.
Garlic
Tomatoes 350 g
Horseradish Sauce 150 g
Cooking Technology:
Remove the skin from the prepared fish fillet, pass the pulp through a meat grinder, add wheat bread soaked in milk, combine with finely chopped passivated onions, add softened butter, add a beaten egg, salt, pepper, mix everything thoroughly. On a cling film, sent on the work surface, put the fish skin, with the inside up, put the forcemeat on it, wrap it in the shape of a roll, cook in salted water, and cool under pressure.
Serve with slices of fresh tomatoes and horseradish sauce, shape with parsley.
3. Minced fish dishes - Alaska pollock chops with sauce
Ingredients:
Milk 180 ml
White bread 400 g
Pollock fillet (without skin) 1.6 kg
Butter (for baking)
Breadcrumbs
Salt
Vegetable fat for frying
White pepper
Dill
Lemon zest
Onions 250 g
Cooking Technology:
Cut the fish fillet into pieces, chop with a meat grinder, along with white wheat bread soaked in milk. Pass through the meat grinder again, adding onions. For flavor add lemon zest, chopped dill. If desired, garlic can be added to minced fish. Add salt, ground white pepper to the minced meat, mix thoroughly and beat. Form the meatballs, breading them right away in breadcrumbs. Fry on both sides in a pan over high heat. Bring to readiness in the oven by lining the baking sheet with foil and greasing it with plenty of butter.
While serving, pour the sauce. Tomato or sour cream sauce with onions are suitable for the meatballs.
Garnish - boiled potatoes or mashed potatoes, vegetables.
4. Minced fish dishes - meatballs with rice from freshly frozen mackerel in tomato sauce
Ingredients:
Stuffing 1.0 kg
Boiled rice 200 g
Onion 150 g
Salt
Flour 60 g
Pepper
Coriander
For the sauce:
Lettuce 150 g (net)
Carrot 250 g
Leek 200 g
Parsley
Cilantro
Tomato Sauce 300 g
Mixture of peppers
Celery (root) 50 g
Order of preparation:
Combine the minced meat with chopped onion, boiled rice, season with salt, ground coriander, pepper. Add flour, mix well and beat. Form balls (60-70 g). Blanch in a little water.
Cut carrots and pepper into cubes, stew in water, in which meatballs were cooked until half cooked. Heat the oil in a saucepan, let the chopped onion, combine with blanched vegetables and sweet and sour tomato sauce. Stew for 10-10 minutes, then add spices, chopped herbs and chopped celery. Adjust the taste. Put meatballs in a saucepan, cover with sauce and simmer for another 5 minutes over low heat.
5. Minced fish dishes - meatballs in sour cream sauce with dill
Ingredients:
Minced fish 1.2 kg
Onion 100 g
1pcs egg
Wheat roll 250 g
Milk 150 ml
Lemon zest
Minced parsley
White pepper
Butter 80 g
Salt
Sauce:
Sour cream (20%) 300 g
Fish broth 100 ml
Dill
Green onions
Garlic
Spice
Cooking:
Grind the roll, soak with milk. Combine with finely chopped onions, parsley, fresh lemon zest and minced fish. Stir everything, add the egg and butter, season with salt and pepper. Beat and stand in a closed container in the refrigerator.
Roll balls of 25-30 g and blanch in boiling water. Put the meatballs on the dish.
Combine the warm broth with sour cream, stew for five minutes, add a couple of cloves of chopped garlic, chopped dill, ground spices. Serve the meatball sauce.
6. Minced fish dishes - red fish roll with mushrooms and eggs
Ingredients:
Cutlet mass, fish (recipe number 1) 800 g
Fried champignons with onions 400 g
Boiled eggs 5 pcs.
Rusks, breadcrumbs 200 g
Raw egg 1 pc.
Flour 30 g
Oil 50 g
Order of preparation:
Spread baking paper on a work surface, grease it with oil. Put the prepared minced fish on a rectangular sheet, with a layer of 1.0-1.5 cm. Top with a layer of fried champignons with onions and chopped eggs. Form the roll with the seam down. Wrap with oiled paper and bake in the oven at 180 ° C, 10-15 minutes. Take out a baking sheet, remove the paper and grease the roll with a beaten egg. Sprinkle with breadcrumbs. Brown for 5-7 minutes.
Serve with sour cream sauce (recipe number 5).
Minced Fish Dishes - Useful Tips
- When frying fish, add a piece of butter to the pan, turning the fish on the other side: the fish dish will acquire a more delicate and pleasant taste. If you are cooking fish cakes or another dish of minced fish, then put the oil in the minced meat. This is especially good if the stuffing is made from low-fat fish (zander, pollock, hake).
- Spicy greens, garlic, lemon will help remove a specific fishy smell.
- Add a little sugar to any mincemeat: it gives juiciness to semi-finished products, improves their taste.
- Fish products are fried on high heat from two sides, after which, if necessary, bring to readiness, covering with a lid.
- To keep the crisp in fish cakes, after frying, place them for 5 minutes in a very hot oven.
