How to cook loach fish photo

Loach meat

The uniqueness of this fish fillet is that the meat is sweet! Considering that the loach belongs to the carp family, the meat is quite fatty and nutritious. This fish also has a whole range of vitamins and nutrients.

The latter fact is due to the fact that the “extreme” loach is adapted to survive in almost any situation when the water has left the reservoir, buries itself in the silt and waits for rains in order to continue living in the reservoir. Therefore, he simply needs a supply of nutrients and vitamins in the body to survive during the drought!

Therefore, one of the most delicious and nutritious dishes made from this fish is shish kebab! Catfish and loach are the salmon family fish from which it is generally possible to cook shish kebab! True, before cooking you need to be able to properly cut the loach.

Read: Grilled trout

Interesting facts about loach fish

Some features of the loach can be called unique:

• The Japanese call this fish a barometer, because when atmospheric pressure drops (before bad weather, a tsunami, an earthquake), the loach becomes very restless and often sticks its head out of the water.
• Due to its weather dependence, the loach is kept in aquariums to predict the weather.
• Fish can survive long-term fasting (from 3 to 5 months) without harm to the body.
• She is able to live for a long time without water because she can breathe through her skin and intestines.
• Large individuals migrate overland from one body of water to another without any problems, choosing dewy morning hours for this.

Cutting

• Wet your hand and sprinkle with salt, this will make it convenient to hold this fish.
• Clean the scales, then gut them. The sequence of actions is explained by the fact that the fish is quite small and when it has not yet been gutted it is easier to clean off the scales
• Rinse and soak in brine

The most interesting thing is that soaking in brine is recommended in any case, even if you don’t plan to barbecue. Only if prepared differently can it be soaked in milk to remove the smell of mud. When you plan to cook shish kebab, it is recommended to soak it in lemon juice.

How to deliciously fry breaded loaches

Since the fish, when the reservoir dries out, burrows into the silt to great depths in anticipation of better times, the meat can taste like mud. To eliminate this, the fish is kept for 40-50 minutes under cold running water. At the same time, the mucus will be removed. Then lightly scrape the carcasses with a knife, gut them if desired, and cut off the heads.

Preparation

To remove the swamp smell half an hour before cooking, you can do one of the following:

• soak the carcasses in milk for 30 minutes;
• marinate with spices in beer or lemon juice;
• Stir in salt and pepper and refrigerate for 50 minutes.

In these cases, pre-soaking the loach does not make sense.

Important. If the heads are not removed, the meat may taste bitter. Although not everyone agrees with this statement, there is absolutely no point in taking risks.

Carcasses prepared in one way or another can be breaded and fried in oil, like capelin. To do this you will need:

• loaches – 1 kg;
• flour – 1/2 cup;
• vegetable oil and salt.

Cooking method

If the fish was not salted during preparation, this should be done before breading. Then roll in flour and fry in well-heated oil on all sides. You can do the opposite - fry first, then salt.

For breading, in addition to flour, use:

• semolina;
• ground crackers;
• a mixture of breadcrumbs and flour.

Recommended reading: How to fry river perch

For larger loaches, you can use double or triple breading. First, the fish is rolled in a flour mixture, then in melange (scrambled egg) with salt, and in the second, a final dipping in breadcrumbs is added.

If you don’t want to bother with every carcass, then do the following:

• all fish are salted;
• after 15 minutes, drain the liquid;
• sprinkle with flour, mix;
• Place in a hot frying pan with oil, spread into one layer;
• when the first side is fried, cover with a flat plate, turn over so that the fish is on it, then carefully slide the raw side into the frying pan;
• fry until the loaches are browned on the bottom.

Note! All this beauty is poured with egg melange, 2 minutes after turning over and sprinkled with herbs.

Another cooking recipe is to fry the loach in the form of a kebab on skewers. To do this you will need a grill pan and the following ingredients:

• fish;
• sweet pepper – 1-2 pcs.;
• onions – 1-2 pcs.;
• tomatoes – 2 pcs.;
• table vinegar - 2 tbsp. l.;
• spices;
• oil – 2 tbsp. l.

First, put the coarsely chopped onion in a cup, remove the mucus, entrails, heads from the carcasses and divide into parts depending on the size of the fish. Send them to the bow. Add spices to taste, add vinegar, oil, stir and leave for 20 minutes.

Then coarsely chop the vegetables and assemble the kebabs, threading the products onto skewers in the following sequence:

• pepper;
• fish;
• onion;
• fish;
• tomato.

You can add more vegetables between fish pieces, combining 2-3 at once. Prepared kebabs should be fried in a dry grill pan on all sides or baked in the oven. Serve with remaining greens.

How to cook loach fish stewed with vegetables

This dish can be prepared not only on the stove, but also in the oven at a temperature of 200 °C.

• loaches – 15 pieces;
• vegetable oil – 50 ml;
• vinegar 9% - 5 ml;
• onions – 2 pcs.;
• carrots – 2 pcs.;
• bay leaf – 2 pcs.;
• currant leaf – 2 pcs.;
• parsley root – 1 pc.;
• ground allspice – 1 g;
• salt – 5 g;
• tomato sauce – 250 g.

1. Wash the parsley and carrots, peel and cut into thin strips.
2. Cut the peeled onion into half rings.
3. Take a thick-walled saucepan or frying pan with high sides and pour oil into it.
4. Place gutted and peeled loaches in oil, backs up, in two layers, alternating with vegetables and spices.
5. Pour tomato sauce over the fish carcasses, adding a little boiled water if necessary. The liquid should completely cover the fish.
6. Cover the pan with a lid and place on low heat.
7. In an hour the dish will be ready. Remove the fish, place it on a plate, when it has cooled, put it in the refrigerator.
8. Serve chilled, pour over the sauce in which the fish was stewed, and garnish with herbs. As a side dish you can prepare mashed potatoes and vegetable salad.

Loaches can be fried breaded or stewed with vegetables in tomato sauce. To prevent the smell of mud from being felt in the finished fish, it must be gutted, cleaned, and soaked in milk.

What to do with loach before cooking

First you need to cut off the head and tail of the fish; it is better to hold it near the gills so that it does not slip out onto the floor. Then the loach needs to be gutted and cleaned of mucus.

Then, to remove the smell of mud, the fish carcasses can be soaked in milk for half an hour and, sprinkled with salt and pepper, placed in the refrigerator for 30 minutes.

An extremely strange situation has developed around one of the most delicious fish from freshwater bodies, or rather loach, many simply do not know how to cook it! You can type a simple query into an Internet search engine in almost any browser and you will come across a maximum of 2-3 recipes and a bunch of questions about how to cook this fish.

How to cook loach fish stewed with vegetables

This dish can be prepared not only on the stove, but also in the oven at a temperature of 200 °C.

• loaches – 15 pieces;
• vegetable oil – 50 ml;
• vinegar 9% - 5 ml;
• onions – 2 pcs.;
• carrots – 2 pcs.;
• bay leaf – 2 pcs.;
• currant leaf – 2 pcs.;
• parsley root – 1 pc.;
• ground allspice – 1 g;
• salt – 5 g;
• tomato sauce – 250 g.

1. Wash the parsley and carrots, peel and cut into thin strips.
2. Cut the peeled onion into half rings.
3. Take a thick-walled saucepan or frying pan with high sides and pour oil into it.
4. Place gutted and peeled loaches in oil, backs up, in two layers, alternating with vegetables and spices.
5. Pour tomato sauce over the fish carcasses, adding a little boiled water if necessary. The liquid should completely cover the fish.
6. Cover the pan with a lid and place on low heat.
7. In an hour the dish will be ready. Remove the fish, place it on a plate, when it has cooled, put it in the refrigerator.
8. Serve chilled, pour over the sauce in which the fish was stewed, and garnish with herbs. As a side dish you can prepare mashed potatoes and vegetable salad.

Loaches can be fried breaded or stewed with vegetables in tomato sauce. To prevent the smell of mud from being felt in the finished fish, it must be gutted, cleaned, and soaked in milk.

Fried Loach

Recently, when I opened the door to Oleg, who had returned from the market, I saw a sly glint in his eyes and immediately realized that he had bought something very unusual. Something that you can use to make a delicious dish and share the recipe with you.

When we began to sort out the purchases we had brought, Oleg took out a bag with some small oblong fish and solemnly announced that he had bought snakes. I almost dropped a cassette of eggs on the floor)))) Of course, there were no snakes in the bag, it turned out to be the freshest loach fish, the recipe for which will be discussed.

After we ate all the fish, I decided to read about it on the Internet. Personally, I liked two facts about loaches that I want to tell you about. Firstly, they are called a living barometer for their high sensitivity to bad weather - when bad weather approaches, the fish begins to fuss and constantly poke its head out of the water. Secondly, in hot, dry weather, when rivers or lakes completely dry up, loaches burrow into them to a depth of 1-2 meters and hibernate, waiting for better times.

We decided not to bother and fry the catch brought by Oleg the way we usually cook capelin - roll in flour and fry in hot oil. If you find large loaches, you can cut off the heads and gut the carcasses. If the fish is small, like ours, then you can fry it whole. By the way, when you put loaches in hot oil, some of the fish curl up into a ring very coolly and then look original on a shared plate.

As you can see, there is nothing complicated in the recipe for fried loaches. The most labor-intensive part of the cooking process is to thoroughly rinse the fish and get rid of mucus on the skin.

Although our dish looks similar to fried capelin, the taste is completely different. Loach meat is incredibly tasty; it somehow reminded us of tuna or mackerel. Due to its dense structure, fish does not absorb much oil when fried, so it is not too greasy.

If you come across loaches at the market, then buy them without hesitation - you will use them to prepare an incredibly tasty dinner in a hurry. Fried loaches will please your whole family.

• Loach fish – 700 gr.;
• Flour for dredging;
• Salt to taste;
• Vegetable oil for frying.

It rinses the fish very well with running water, getting rid of mucus on the skin of the loaches. If desired, the carcasses can be beheaded and gutted.

Pour the flour into a plate and salt it to taste. Heat vegetable oil in a frying pan.

Wash the cherry tomatoes and cut them into halves.

Dip the fish in flour and fry in hot oil on both sides until beautifully golden brown.

Sometimes, in order to treat myself to a delicious dish made from fish, I catch a fish called loach. It is rare to find, among our fellow fisherman, those who like to catch loaches, and to be honest, it is in vain. This fish, if skillfully prepared, can give a head start to many other types of fish in terms of taste.

Catching a loach is quite simple. The main thing in this matter is to know where to catch this fish, and you should look for it in small rivers with a slow flow, shallow lakes with a muddy bottom and even swamps. I catch loach in the Black River, which flows through the forest, within the boundaries of my city of Dubna. Previously, about fifty years ago, one could see her carrying her waters into the Volga River. Now, starting from the place where it flows into the Volga River and a kilometer upstream, it is hidden in a huge underground reinforced concrete pipe. Therefore, I go even higher upstream of this small river, where it flows through the forest, at times forming small bays, similar to small swamps. This is where I begin a quiet hunt for this very beautiful and tasty fish.

The gear for fishing is very simple: a fishing rod up to six meters long is enough, a hook size No. 2.5 is light, a pellet sinker is up to one gram, a needle-shaped float is light up to three grams in load capacity, a fishing line with a diameter of 0.12 mm, a leash - 0, 1mm. Bloodworms are used as bait.

The bait of red ant eggs attracts special attention. I prepare them in advance, the day before fishing. I put one bloodworm or two ant larvae on the hook, and sometimes both at the same time, that is, a sandwich. As a rule, if you have chosen a good place, the loach begins to peck very quickly. The bite can be very successful in the morning and in the evening, sometimes this fish bites throughout the day. It is very useful, during fishing, to throw one or two pinches of food bloodworms into the place where the float is located, provided that there is no current in this place of the reservoir. I would like to emphasize that do not be lazy to look for loach, catching more and more new areas of the reservoir, provided that its bite is rare in this place. The bites of this interesting fish can be very diverse, namely: the float is slightly submerged and then goes under the water, and sometimes the bite is barely noticeable (the fish sometimes bites a very small size), but in both cases, an immediate hooking follows.

True, closer to lunch it stopped completely. But I was very pleased with the fishing. The fish tank was three-quarters full, and this was quite enough to prepare an excellent dish and enjoy its taste.

Having safely finished fishing, it’s time to head back to civilization. The way home is not difficult, because the fishing spot is only about one and a half kilometers from my favorite city. When I get home, the first thing I do is put the fish tank in the sink and turn on the water. I do this in order to wash the caught fish and remove the smell of mud from it. My father taught me this (he was also an avid fisherman). The catch should be kept under running water for about forty minutes. This time ensures that the smell of the loach is removed. Now how to cook the fish: take a large frying pan and pour in vegetable and butter (melt the butter first), then gut the fish, cut off the heads (this is necessary, otherwise the dish will taste bitter), rub each fish with salt and pepper and put in the refrigerator for fifteen minutes . When the fish has steeped, place them in rows on the prepared frying pan, then pour in the beaten egg so that the fish is hidden from view. Preheat the oven in a gas stove to 180 degrees and put a frying pan in it, simmer for twenty minutes and the magnificent dish is ready. Bon appetit, Victor, city of Dubna.

Loaches have quite dense and tasty meat, a bit like mackerel or tuna. The fish itself is small, but when falling asleep it secretes a lot of mucus. Preparing loach fish is not difficult, but you have to start by thoroughly washing the slippery carcasses. Small fish can be fried whole without gutting; for large specimens, you need to cut off the head and remove the entrails.