Pink salmon is a fish from the salmon family, it belongs to the valuable varieties of commercial red fish. Its meat can be eaten boiled, fried, baked. Salted pink salmon is also very tasty, which is easy to cook even at home.
Unlike fat salmon or trout, pink salmon meat can be quite dry, but proper salting and processing will relieve your fish of this shortcoming, making the dish quite juicy and tender.
You should start by pre-processing the carcass. Rinse the fish thoroughly under running water, rip open its abdomen with a sharp knife and remove all entrails. After that, cut off the head and all fins, rinse again under running water and dry with a paper towel.
For cutting the fins, it is advisable to use special scissors, since it can be quite difficult to carefully cut the fins with a knife without damaging the skin.
Make a deep cut along the back along the length of the fish and carefully separate the carcass from the back, taking care to remove as much of the meat as possible from the bone. Remove large rib bones not separated from the ridge separately. You will get two pieces of pink salmon fillet, completely prepared for salting. You can salt the fish in this form, or by cutting it into portioned pieces.
There are two main ways of salting pink salmon at home: dry salting and using brine.
Dry ambassador
For 1 kilogram of fish, you will need 1.5 tablespoons of salt, 1 incomplete tablespoon of sugar, some black peppercorns, a few bay leaves and vegetable oil.
Mix salt with sugar and black pepper, rub the fish on all sides with the resulting mixture.
Take a glass or enamel deep bowl with a flat bottom, pour a thin layer of vegetable oil into it, put the salted fish, if there are still spices, sprinkle the fish with them on top, put bay leaves next to and on top, and pour a little more vegetable oil on top of all this.
Aluminum dishes for salting pink salmon are not suitable, since this metal will give a characteristic metallic taste to the finished dish, which will greatly ruin its taste.
Cover the bowl with the fish with a lid and leave on the table for 1, 5–2 hours, so that the carcass is slightly salted at room temperature, then put it in the refrigerator for another day. If you did everything right, then the very next day you can serve incredibly tasty and tender salted fish.
Pink salmon ambassador in brine
brine is even easier. Bring 0.5 liters of water to a boil, dissolve 2 tablespoons of salt in it and cool to room temperature. Pour the resulting saturated solution over the fish, close the lid and leave first on the kitchen table, and then put in the refrigerator.
After about a day, take out the pink salmon and try a slice. If it turns out to be slightly salted, then keep it in the refrigerator for another day. When the fish is cooked, drain the brine, put the pieces of pink salmon on a paper towel to dry a little, and lightly brush with vegetable oil before serving.
