Thread: another kind of cooking

Sounds like a pikled pike recipie that I once used tastes great. Dave

Any pictures of the bottles of pickled fish?

Not right now, sorry.

Those look good!

I have read where pickling does not always kill parasites.

Originally Posted by CTom

The pickling cooks the fish. No processing needed. I salt the fish for 24 hours and then run it thru about 6 cold water rinses, allowing the fish to soak a half hour during each rinse. This gets excess salt out. Then the fish gets a bath in white vinegar for 24 hours. When the fish goes in the white vinegar I make the brine for packing. Three cups of sugar, 1 1/2 cup of cider vinegar, 2 tbls of pickling spices. I heat/simmer this until the sugar is completely dissolved and the mixture is syrupy. Then it gets set aside to cool until the next day. One the third day I slice a couple of white onions into thin rings and mix with the fish as it comes out of the white vinegar soak. Then I pack jars with the fish/onions. I add 1 1/2 cups of sweet white wine to the syrup, mix well and then pour the syrup over the fish, cover the jars and toss in the fridge. Ready in three days.

In recent years I have cheated and do a 5 quart ice cream pail full of the pickled fish and just leave the pail on the top shelf of the fridge. Its usually not there very long.

There are studies that have shown that picking fish can leave certain parasites still viable in the meat even though the acid is supposed to cook the meat. The only fish I have heard of this to be true is Northern Pike. I don't eat northern regardless of how its prepared.

I generally have to catch my crappies over a period of time and they get frozen as I catch them, the fillets laid flat and one layer in the freezer. They thaw nice and cut nice when thawed when done this way. As I lay the fillets out on the cookie sheet for freezing I hold each one up to a strong light and check for worm cysts in the meat. If there are any [and this happens very darned seldom] those fillets take a trip to the garden. I am fussy about what I am cooking, smoking or pickling.

I don't spend much time on slow or water that's not moving or is cold enough even in the summer to prevent black spot. I fish some top-water bass in run-off retention ponds and every fish in these structures has black spot and it goes well into the meat. They'll also have worm cysts in the meat. All a person has to do is lift a gill cover and check the gills for the small yellow sacs attached to the red filament of the gill. If the gills have these, you can bet your bippie that the meat does too. Waters up in this region that have a current moving thru them have a lesser incidence of worms and black spot so I simply fish moving water for food fish. I still check the fillets on every fish I keep for food. Crappies, incidentally, are the least likely of the fishes to become afflicted with black spot or the worms and the works are actually a fluke, not a true worm. The worms are killed by cooking heat but I don't need the extra protein so bad that I am eating any of them.

2 batches of garlic and pepper and 1 batch of terryaki. Ah the joy of deer season. -David

That's how I like my jerky. I call it "private stock". The kids like the pressed product. When they've chewed all of their's away I am smiling with a big old slice of the real jerky and saying "too bad".