Especially fatty fish, which include the vobla, make very tasty gourmet products, if the withering should be done properly. Dried and dried fish can be eaten without additional culinary processing, it lasts a very long time and is quite good.
To prepare a sun-dried roach, you must first prepare the fish, salt it, and then dry it in the air. Carcasses with medium to high fat content are suitable. Under the influence of heat or sunlight, such fish gradually loses water, and complex chemical and biological processes take place in its meat. This is how the vobla acquires a peculiar taste.
Preparing roach for withering
Fresh vobla is gutted, washed in running water and salted. Rub the fish with salt, stuff the belly with it. Then they are strung on thick yarn, this must be done through the eyes, making punctures with a metal needle. The ends of the yarn are tied together.
Salt the fish with bundles, that is, with pans. In a container prepared for salting, the fish is placed in bundles, sprinkled with dry coarse salt. Salt will be distributed unevenly along the vobla - on the lower layers of salt it turns out less than on the middle layers, on the upper layers it is more. In addition, the upper part is also covered with salt, with a layer of one and a half centimeters. On top of the fish, they arrange oppression to create pressure. This is how the mixed fish salting is performed.
Dry salt consumption - 12-14% by weight of fish. A not very large vobla can be salted in two days, a large one will need 5 or 6. If the depth of the salting dishes is sufficient, the vobla can be mixed to improve salting. To do this, the lower layers are swapped with the upper ones.
Withering fish
A well-salted fish has a dense back, the meat on the cut turns out to be dark gray, the caviar is yellow-red. The fish is washed in fresh water, cleaned of mucus and undissolved salt. After that, you need to hang the vobla on poles in the air - for wilting.
On the pole, it is necessary to arrange the bundles of fish so that they do not turn out to be crowded, but they must be distributed in two tiers. As a last resort, it can be placed in several tiers. Sometimes the vobla is not hung on poles, but on a rope, stretching it along the eaves of the house or between the supports. You can wrap the vobla in cheesecloth to protect it from flies if there is no special drying room.
It is necessary to dry the vobla for about two or three weeks - it depends on the weather and how large the fish is. Readiness is determined as follows: the back should be shrunken, the meat is elastic, tough, the cut turns out to be an even pink-yellow color, the caviar should be orange-red.
It is best to dry the fish in spring. At this time, the wind is usually moderate, and the days are quite sunny and clear. Fish withered in spring acquires a special aroma and taste.
