Jellied fish is a traditional holiday dish. And stuffed jellied fish is also a very extraordinary dish. The minimum content of small seeds in pike perch makes this fish ideal for stuffing, moreover, this process is not very laborious.
Cooking stuffed fish just seems daunting. In fact, you just have to try to cook stuffed pike perch once and it becomes clear that everything is very simple. And making broth for pouring is quite a trifling matter.
To prepare a stuffed carcass, you will need:
- one pike perch (2 kg);
- onions - 2 pieces;
- 2 eggs;
- ghee - 100 g;
- White bread;
- milk;
- salt;
- ground black pepper;
- sugar.
To prepare fish jelly you will need:
- peeled onions - 3-4 pieces;
- husk;
- peeled carrots - 5-6 pieces;
- salt;
- black peppercorns;
- Bay leaf;
- gelatin - 1 tbsp.
First of all, the pike perch needs to be cut: cut off the head, fins, tail, cut the abdomen and remove the entrails. Then you need to remove the skin from the fish. This will require a long, sharp knife. The pike perch should be placed with the cut belly down on a cutting board. Press it firmly with your left hand in the place where the head was cut off, insert a knife between the skin and meat in the region of the ridge and begin to cut the skin down to the board. This must be done carefully, the knife is gradually moved deeper.
It is not necessary to ensure that the skin is perfectly clean. If necessary, you can cut off excess meat from it later. The skin must be removed from the sides first. After that, both halves of the skin must be lifted up, connected together and finally cut off from the ridge. This is the most crucial moment. The skin in this place should not be damaged in any way.
Then you need to separate the meat from the bones. To do this, you need to make an incision deep into the ridge along the line, which seems to be specially "drawn" on the sides of the fish. After that, cut the dorsal part from the ridge, and separate the abdominal part from the rib bones.
Now you need to cook the minced meat. To do this, all the meat cut from the bones must be passed through a meat grinder along with two onions and two slices of white bread soaked in milk. In the resulting minced meat, you need to drive 2 eggs, pour in 100 grams of ghee, add 2 teaspoons of salt, 1 teaspoon of sugar and add black pepper. Mix everything thoroughly until smooth.
In the center of the skin spread out on the table, you need to put all the minced meat obtained. After that, the abdomen must be sewn up with either culinary or ordinary thick thread. The stuffed carcass should be wrapped either in cheesecloth or in parchment paper, so that during cooking there is no break in the skin and the fish does not lose its shape.
If there is more minced meat, you can make meatballs, boil them with the stuffed fish and use them for aspic.
Fins, tail, head and ridge should be placed on the bottom of the pan. Pure onion peel is poured on top, onion cut into 4 parts, bay leaf, black peppercorns are placed. There you also need to put carrots, some of which should be cut into circles - in the future they will be used for decoration. In addition, you need to pour 100 grams of ghee into a saucepan and add about 3 incomplete teaspoons of salt (this depends on your taste). On top you need to lay the prepared pike perch, seam down.
Pour cold water into the pan so that it just covers the fish and put the container on fire. Bring the water to a boil, make a minimum heat and leave the stuffed pike perch to cook for 1, 5-2 hours.
After that, the fish must be removed from the broth, remove the gauze from it, remove the threads and let it cool completely. Strain the broth through cheesecloth folded 2-3 times. Add to it either 1 tablespoon of instant gelatin, or gelatin, previously soaked in cold water (1 tablespoon for 1 glass of water).
You can stuff pike perch and not only whole. The fish can be cut into portions, meat cut out of each, leaving the bones and ridge attached to the skin. In the holes obtained, you need to put the minced meat.
The cooled fish must be cut into portions and put in a deep, preferably transparent dish, in which the aspic will be served on the table. You can decorate pike perch with slices of boiled carrots, lemon, parsley leaves. Pour all this with broth and let it harden.
A beautifully decorated jellied stuffed pike perch will become a real decoration of the festive table!
