How to Use Pike Caviar for Gourmet Appetizers

What is usually done with pike caviar?

The usual method of preparing pike caviar is salting or pasteurization. Salting is a very simple and affordable way of processing. To do this, just add salt to the caviar in a proportion of 2-3% of the amount of caviar, and let it sit for a couple of days. If you serve this product in a beautiful special bowl, add chopped onion and season it all with sour cream, then pike caviar will be an excellent appetizer at any feast.

Salted caviar, method No. 1

Pike caviar, salted and served, is respected by many gourmets. There are many ways of salting, they depend on how long you will store the caviar, whether you are going to preserve it or eat it right away? The most delicious caviar is the one that is prepared “for now”, which is to be eaten within a maximum of a couple of days. To prepare it we will need:

• pike caviar - 1 kilogram,
• drinking water - 3.5-4 liters,
• salt,
• green onions and butter for serving.

We take the caviar out of the fish and place it in a deep bowl. At the same time, put a full kettle of water on the stove - we will need boiling water. Pike caviar is usually sealed in durable and difficult-to-clean films. They need to be removed, and the easiest way to do this is with boiling water: pour it in a thin stream onto the films, trying to pour it over each egg. Then we transfer all the caviar into a bowl of cold water and with our hands we select the curled films, veins and other scraps. The water in the caviar needs to be changed several times until it is completely clean. If during the process of scalding and soaking the caviar has acquired an amber hue, this is good; it no longer needs to be thermally treated. If not, you can pour boiling water over it again, and then drain it in a colander lined with gauze. We collect all the caviar in gauze, tie the ends in a knot and hang it for an hour to drain the water.

The next step in the recipe for how to cook pike caviar and make it simply breathtakingly tasty is salting. To do this, put the caviar in a glass jar and sprinkle with salt: for lightly salted caviar, a good pinch per liter jar is quite enough. Close the jar and shake slightly to distribute the salt. Let it stand for an hour or two, and then put it in a deep bowl, add a tablespoon of soft butter, and beat lightly with a fork. Sprinkle the finished caviar with chopped green onions and pour a glass - take a sample of the most delicious snack with vodka!

How to extract caviar from pike?

The fish is first washed well and freed from entrails. The bags filled with caviar, called yastyki, are carefully removed. Before salting, caviar is freed from the eggs, cleaned of film, blood and anything that is not caviar. You can carry out the cleaning procedure using several simple procedures:

• The yastyki can be scrolled in a meat grinder. But this method has its pitfalls. The film from the yokes is sometimes simply wound around the screw of the meat grinder; it will have to be disassembled and cleaned. It may happen that the film is crushed into small pieces, which will subsequently need to be removed for a long time.
• Connoisseurs sometimes use a mixer to quickly extract caviar. With this method, the film remains on the blade of the device, from where it cannot be removed.
• You can use a grater to extract eggs. The yastiki are rubbed on the largest holes of the grater, the films themselves remain in the hands and are thrown away.
• Rubbing the bags through a sieve gives the same result.
• There is another fairly simple but effective method. For it you need to prepare a fork, a colander and a lot of water. All available bags are placed in a basin, the volume of which is three times larger than the caviar placed in it. Then the basin is filled with boiling water. Gently stir the contents of the bowl with a fork for about 5 minutes. During this time, the films will dissolve and rise to the top. Remove any floating films with a spoon and drain the boiling water. The bowl with caviar is then filled with cold water, mixed and the water is drained again. This manipulation is repeated many times, sometimes up to 15, until all the films are washed and the water becomes clearer.

Then, after cleaning the caviar, it should be passed through cheesecloth. The gauze is laid in several layers and placed at the bottom of a colander. The piece of gauze should be large enough to accommodate the entire caviar. Next, pour in water with caviar and wait until the water flows out. The gauze with caviar is wrapped and carefully squeezed out. After this, the caviar is ready for further processing. It is very important that there are no side inclusions left in it.

Pike caviar casserole

If your catch was rich in pike, but you don’t know how to cook pike caviar other than salting it, prepare this simple but very tasty casserole. Take:

• fresh pike caviar - ½ kilogram,
• white bread - 200 grams,
• milk - ½ cup,
• onions - 2 pieces,
• sunflower or olive oil - 2 tablespoons,
• tomato paste - 1 tablespoon,
• salt, black pepper, nutmeg - to your taste,
• breadcrumbs - 1 tablespoon.

Making caviar casserole is more than simple: we clean the caviar from films, remove even the smallest veins, unsightly eggs, and mucus. By the way, this is very easy to do: pass the caviar through a manual meat grinder. The caviar will come out unharmed, and the films will be wrapped around the knives. Place pike caviar in a sieve, rinse with cold water and transfer to a bowl. Peel the bread from crusts and soak in milk for 10 minutes. Peel the onion, lightly fry it in oil and pass it through a meat grinder together with the bread, and then add it to the caviar. Salt, pepper, add a little nutmeg and a tablespoon of tomato. Mix everything thoroughly.

Preheat the oven to 190 degrees. Grease a refractory dish with vegetable oil and sprinkle with breadcrumbs so that the casserole does not stick to the walls. We put the caviar “dough” in the mold, level it so that the surface is even, and put it in the oven for half an hour. I just had time to look at the “Fishing for Everyone!” website. We check the readiness of the casserole using a skewer or toothpick: if, when the top of the casserole is pierced, there are no traces of “dough” left on the skewer, it is ready! The result is a hearty, protein-packed pike roe dish that can be served with mashed potatoes or fried potatoes.

Recipes for preparing pike caviar at home

1. Salting method. Remove caviar from films and other inclusions and add salt to it. You should take 10 g of salt per glass of product. Then the salted product is transferred to a separate container and a small amount of vegetable oil is added. The container is placed in a cool place overnight, but not in a refrigerator. The product can be consumed in the morning.
2. A quick way to pickle sandwiches. The caviar bags are washed. Fill the pan with water with added salt and heat it to boiling water. Then the container is removed from the heat and the bags are lowered into it. The contents are stirred without interruption. The films will dissolve after a certain period of time, the caviar is passed through a sieve and placed in a jar into which a small amount of vegetable oil is poured. Do not seal the jar, the caviar may “suffocate”. The product processed in this way is stored in the refrigerator.
3. Drying. The dried product is a good addition to beer. The caviar in the yastyk is rolled in salt, placed in an enamel bowl, and a weight is placed on top. The vessel with caviar is placed in the refrigerator compartment. After 3-5 days, the bags are washed and then dried for about 5-7 days. Dried caviar is ready.
4. Fried caviar. The yastyki are washed, rolled in salted flour and fried in a frying pan with sunflower oil. Fry the bag on each side for about 5 minutes. The dish turns out appetizing and very tasty.

How to remove caviar film

How to remove the film and prepare small caviar of crucian carp, carp, and pike for further cooking? There are many ways this can be done, ranging from long manual processing to various exotic methods, which are accompanied by photographs. Very often they use the well-known screen.

The simplest and most popular methods of film separation using ordinary available means are offered.

Method 1. Prepare a saline solution. Add a tablespoon of salt to the pan in 90 C water per 1 kg of product. Beat with a fork, tearing the egg. Next, beat with a whisk, collecting the films. Strain through a fine-mesh colander and remove any lumps. This is also a yastyk. The liquid should drain completely. Transfer the cleaned product into a suitable container.

Method 2. Remove from film using a coarse grater. With this method, only fiber remains in your hands at the end. You just need to carefully move the caviar along the grater, pressing lightly. It does not turn into “porridge”.

Method 3. To get out of the caviar bag quickly at home, if you don’t have a special mesh screen, you can take a sieve and boiling water. Place the sieve with the caviar in a deep bowl and pour boiling water over it to scald the caviar. Lightly beat and remove films. No need to add salt or sugar.

Washing method

It is necessary to wash the eggs several times to completely clean them. To do this, you need to transfer the product into a suitable container and add water in a 1:2 ratio of caviar and water. After this, the water must be drained very carefully so as not to spill the eggs. Rinse for about half a minute each time.

You can also rinse directly in a colander until the foam completely disappears.

Another method of washing is to mix the eggs with salt, then rinse with clean cold water several times.

Useful properties of caviar

• Caviar is a product that is very useful for women. Women persistently struggle with excess weight throughout their lives, undertaking all kinds of restrictions and diets. This causes the body to lack many nutrients. Pike caviar, being a low-calorie product, will enrich the body with useful substances and will not increase weight during a diet.
• Pike caviar contains omega 3 acid. It has the ability to block the development of cancer cells, so caviar is a good preventative against cancer. In addition, omega 3 is included in many cosmetic creams that are recommended against skin aging and for its rejuvenation.
• Like any other, pike caviar is rich in iodine. It is necessary for the normal functioning of the thyroid gland. Caviar is a few of the foods that can bring iodine into our body.
• Another component contained in pike caviar is vitamin A. It helps maintain human immunity at a high level. In addition, vitamin A is good for the eyes.
• Pike caviar, due to the fact that it contains vitamin E, helps remove toxins from the body at the cellular level.
• The human body can obtain vitamin D only through sunlight or fish products. Caviar is rich in this vitamin, which strengthens bones and skin cells. Since childhood, we remember the taste of fish oil, which saturated the body with vitamin D. It can be replaced with pike caviar, even for a small child.
• The benefits of pike caviar are undeniable for those people who suffer from low hemoglobin. It improves blood quality.

Preparing for salting. Caviar cleaning

Carefully clean and gut the pike, being careful not to touch the gall bladder or damage the shell of the caviar. We leave the caviar bags to prepare for cooking, and wash the pike and send it for filleting for minced meat for making fish cutlets.

It is very important to clean the shell of pike caviar without damaging the caviar itself, but this is not so easy to do. The film of the sacs is very thin and breaks easily, and the eggs are quite small. Nevertheless, this must be done as carefully as possible - the appearance of the finished caviar, its consistency and taste depend on this.

If from the description it is not entirely clear to you how to clean pike caviar or how to salt it, do not worry, all the described processes and recipes are demonstrated in the videos that accompany this material.

There are many ways to clean pike caviar using various devices. Here are some of them:

• Using a kitchen knife, squeeze out of the shell in small portions;
• Pike caviar is broken using a fork with tines bent in different directions;
• Using a whisk by hand or with a mixer, the film remains on the whisk;
• Pike caviar is rubbed through a grater or a sieve with a large mesh, the film remains in the hands;
• Passed through a meat grinder with dull knives - the film is wound around the knives.

After pike caviar is cleaned using one of the described methods, it must be washed and filled with water, the remaining traces of the shell must be removed - the film floats up, and the caviar remains at the bottom. Moreover, depending on the recipe, cold or hot water is used.

After cleaning and washing the caviar, you need to get rid of the water - the caviar is placed in a strainer and left for a while. Now it should look perfect and you can already pickle the pike caviar.

Use in cooking

The delicacy is not used as an independent dish, but is included in other dishes. What can you make from the delicacy? Lots of healthy and tasty things. For example:

1. Various snacks

. Pike caviar goes well with the following ingredients:

• Quail eggs. • Fresh tomatoes, cucumbers. • Parsley, onions. • Soft cheese. • Creamy sauces, sour cream. • Cow, vegetable, olive oil. • Potatoes. • Lemons. • Seafood. • Toasted white and black bread.

2. Fish stuffed with caviar

- an exquisite dish with a pleasant, balanced taste.

3. The ingredient is used as an addition to egg dishes

. An example is an omelette with pike caviar in butter - a delicious dish with a piquant taste.

4. Product lovers don’t need to be told how great sandwiches

with a delicacy. The delicacy is served with fried bread, butter, lemon, fresh vegetables, and herbs.

To summarize, we can say that the product gives scope for the culinary imagination. The delicacy can be added to any dish based on the compatibility of the ingredients. Its presence in the diet will certainly be highly appreciated by household members.

Pike caviar is a popular dietary delicacy, tasty and very healthy. The components that make up pike caviar improve brain activity and help strengthen vision.

This product is also useful for anyone who suffers from frequent allergic attacks or low immunity. We’ll talk about the benefits and harms of pike caviar in our article.