Jellied fish: recipes. Jellied fish is not a relic of the past

Cherry tomatoes differ from their large counterparts not only in the small size of the berries. Many varieties of cherry are characterized by a unique sweet taste, which is very different from the classic tomato. Anyone who has never tasted such cherry tomatoes with their eyes closed may well decide that they are tasting some unusual exotic fruits. In this article, I will talk about five different cherry tomatoes that have the sweetest fruits of unusual colors.

I started growing annual flowers in the garden and on the balcony more than 20 years ago, but I will never forget my first petunia, which I planted in the country along the path. Only a couple of decades have passed, but one wonders how different petunias of the past are from today's many-sided hybrids! In this article, I propose to trace the history of the transformation of this flower from a simpleton into a real queen of annuals, as well as consider modern varieties of unusual colors.

Salad with spicy chicken, mushrooms, cheese and grapes - fragrant and satisfying. This dish can be served as a main dish if you are preparing a cold dinner. Cheese, nuts, mayonnaise are high-calorie foods, combined with spicy fried chicken and mushrooms, you get a very nutritious snack that is refreshed by sweet and sour grapes. The chicken fillet in this recipe is marinated in a spicy mixture of ground cinnamon, turmeric and chili powder. If you like food with a spark, use hot chili.

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The quality of the broth, its aroma, saturation will affect the final dish. After all, if you go the simple way and dissolve gelling agents only in water, fish aspic from catfish or chicken is unlikely to please. There are concentrates in which gelatin is already mixed with seasonings, all kinds of flavor and color enhancers. My recipe is for supporters of natural products.

Therefore, we are not lazy, especially since a large catfish is worthy of a festive decoration. First, we cook the rich broth-ear according to the usual procedure. Then we separate the tender meat, lay it out in a beautiful dish, cover it with a deliciously smelling strained jelly composition. We spend an hour and a half waiting and, finally, we serve homemade fish aspic with gelatin to the table.

Prep time: 180 minutes / Serves: 8-10

Ingredients

• som 2000 kg
• instant gelatin 15 g
• onion 1 pc.
• carrots 1-2 pcs.
• garlic 1/2 pc.
• celery 2-3 stalks
• parsley 5-6 branches
• peppercorns, coriander, bay leaf, salt to taste

How to cook fish aspic with gelatin

I repeat, the secret of a delicious aspic (both meat and fish) is in a rich and aromatic broth. Even a simple fish or a lean piece of chicken becomes a worthy snack if the gelled layer has a pleasant texture - it does not melt and does not look like rubber, it is soaked in spices, roots and root vegetables, moderately seasoned with salt and transparent. And when the catch is notable, the fish is fleshy, fat and good in any form, cooking becomes a pleasure.

It is difficult to spoil a catfish, especially a large one. In fact, for boiled or baked catfish, apart from salt and hot pepper, nothing is needed, even a drop of oil is optional here. Catfish meat is not only tender, without the sharp aroma of freshwater fish, but also juicy, quite fatty. An additional bonus is that there are no small bones, and the fish itself is scaleless.

First of all, we cut the carcass, wash it in cold water, remove the gills. To put in a pan, you can cut into steaks. The tail and head must be used.

We dip the chopped fish carcass, celery stalks, one or two carrots, onions in the husks (to enhance the golden color of the broth, throw additional onion husks), garlic, herbs, and selected spices into boiling water. Often salted immediately, I prefer - at the end of cooking. It is important that you need to salt more than in the usual broth - after gelling, the salt noticeably “recedes” and sometimes there is undersalting. In my case, the whole catfish weighed 3 kg, for aspic, I took 2 kg with the head.

There should be plenty of water, but since gelatin is present, the goal is easier to achieve. The layer will gel at any concentration of the broth. Cover all ingredients, bring back to a boil and cook uncovered for 2-3 hours until the liquid has evaporated twice. Maintain moderate heat while bubbling constantly.

After the allotted time, the amount of liquid decreased, the color darkened, the appetizing aroma beckons. If you haven't salted yet, add salt. Taste, adjust for yourself, but with oversalting. It is clear that after such a long cooking, the white meat of the catfish separates from the bone on its own, there is no doubt about its readiness. If, while trying, you decide that this or that spice is not enough, season now. Then finally boil and immediately remove from heat.

For the purest jelly, strain the rich fish broth two or three times, preferably through several layers of gauze. In addition to large vegetables-bones, small fragments come across in a large number, scrupulous people need to get rid of them. Usually there is too much broth. You can, of course, pour a miserable fish with a large amount of jelly broth. There are options for aspic with fish or meat at the bottom of the plate under a high transparent jelly or jelly interspersed with vegetables, herbs, and other decorations. I measure between 400-600 ml of strained broth, pour the rest into food containers and silicone muffin molds and freeze. I use this semi-finished product for fish soup or some kind of gravy, sauces.

We sort the boiled catfish meat into fibers, separating it from the bone. Leave as is or mix with crushed fresh garlic, pepper if necessary.

Dissolve instant gelatin in hot strained catfish broth. Read the instructions and follow the dosage instructions. We lay out the meat on plates first, supplement with bright accents: carrot and lemon circles, parsley leaves.

Pour the jelly composition so as to completely cover the fish and decorative inclusions. After cooling to room temperature, we send it to the shelf of the refrigerator until it solidifies. After an hour, we check, as a rule, the saturated broth has time to completely seize.

As a result, among our food stocks are frozen semi-finished fish broth and fish aspic from catfish.

Before serving, leave the aspic of catfish or other fish with gelatin in the refrigerator, serve among appetizers and salads. Bon appetit!

Even 15–20 years ago, aspic was a regular dish on every holiday table. However, now some consider it a relic of the past. But that's not the case at all. Jellied fish, if served aesthetically, will become a bright decoration of the feast. Our aspic recipes with a photo will help make your aspic not at all “disgusting”, as the hero of the famous film said.

Classic recipe: jellied fish "like grandma's"

If you look at various recipes, the aspic for almost all of them turns out to be the same. We will give you a traditional recipe. The filling is very easy to prepare. Although the list of components that make up the dish is quite large. However, the main component here is fish.
Fish for aspic should be large enough and contain few bones. Otherwise, during cooking, small bones will fall into the broth and it will be very difficult to drain them. The most suitable varieties for this dish are pelengas, pike perch, pink salmon or trout. If you can’t find a whole fresh fish, take pieces from the store, but away from the tail, which again is justified by the presence of small bones there. It’s just that the head will also become a good auxiliary component - it will give fat. When you have decided on the fish, you can start cooking.

How to make aspic: ingredients and cooking process

First, prepare all the ingredients. We give small proportions:

• 0.5 kg of selected fish;
• 1.5 liters of water;
• 1 onion;
• 1 carrot;
• 1 package gelatin (25-30 g);
• Bay leaf;
• salt;
• allspice;
• cloves (3 pcs.);
• greenery

So let's get started.

To start cooking aspic, the fish must be thoroughly rinsed under running cold water.

The fillet must be separated from the bones and the ridge. The bones must be taken out as carefully as possible, it is advisable to select all. Cut the fillet thick enough and evenly. While doing other parts, put it in the cold.

Now you need to do the head. Remove gills and fins, wash well.

Pour the processed head, ridge, abdomen and other parts that do not touch the fillet with water. Put onions and carrots in this liquid. Cook over low heat for half an hour. Periodically it is necessary to remove the resulting foam.

After that, you need to catch all the fish parts from the cooked broth.

Salt the pure broth, add a couple of bay leaves and spices. Slowly and carefully place the fillet into the pan. Put on a slow fire and cook until the fillet is ready. On average, it's about 10 minutes.

The liquid must be filtered so that there is no sediment and possible small parts and bones. During cooking, you can get a liter of pure broth. Try for salt. If necessary, add salt. If the fish is chosen correctly, the aspic will be transparent and fragrant.

Next, we form aspic fish. This requires gelatin. Whatever the fat was in the fish, the broth itself will not harden. It is necessary to dilute a package of instant gelatin in 100 grams of hot water until completely dissolved. Pour this liquid into the broth. Bring it to a boil and immediately remove from heat.

Pour liquid over fish and slices of carrots, onions. Send to freeze in the refrigerator.

Aspic with fish: variations

Before pouring the broth, you can add greens to the molds. When the dish hardens, everything that is under the clear broth will look impressive and appetizing. Some add boiled eggs, cut into figures, someone lemon, carrot or peas.
Options can be with the main component. So, recently there have been recipes for cooking dishes with salmon or salmon, as well as sea platter: shrimp and other seafood are added. It all depends on your imagination.

Free up some space in the fridge ahead of time. Prepare a dish, two stainless steel pots, a baking sheet or a heat-resistant glass dish, a bowl, a sieve, cheesecloth, two boards, cling film for wrapping fish, parchment, two knives, a slotted spoon and a ladle.
When buying fish, be guided by the size of the dish for aspic.

For pike perch weighing 500 g -1 small onion, 1 small carrot, 3 black peppercorns, bay leaf, ground white pepper, salt and 30 g of granulated domestic gelatin per liter of water.

For decoration: 1 medium lemon, 2 medium-sized pickles, a handful of green peas, 5 quail eggs, half a sweet red pepper, a sprig of parsley, 30 g of red caviar. This composition of ingredients is designed for 4 servings of 100-150g.

COOKING:

1. Clean off the scales, starting from the tail. Cut open the belly and clean out the insides. Remove gills. Cut out the dorsal fin. It is permissible to do the opposite - cut off the fins, and then clean off the scales. But then you can accidentally damage the skin of pike perch, thereby spoiling the future appearance of the aspic.

2. Separate the head. Carefully cut out the ridge with costal bones. If this does not work right away, cut off the costal bones separately or remove them with tweezers. Thus, separately prepare the fish bones and two pieces of pike perch fillet.

3. In 1.5 liters of cold water, lay the fish bones and head. Peel the carrots and onions, also lower them into the pan. Put the pot on the fire, bring to a boil. Add pepper and bay leaf. Reduce the heat and simmer the broth without a lid for 1 hour. Remove the foam that forms on the surface with a slotted spoon. During the cooking process, the amount of liquid should decrease to 1 liter.

4. At this time, pour gelatin with a glass of cold boiled water. You can put a piece of ice. While the broth is cooking, the gelatin granules will increase 3-4 times. Gelatin should not be poured with warm water, otherwise it will immediately stick together and cannot be diluted.

5. When the broth is ready, carefully strain it through a sieve and four layers of cheesecloth into a saucepan (never aluminum!). Add the swollen gelatin to the hot strained broth. Mix thoroughly. You can strain again. So it turns out lanspic - hot jelly.

6. Add about 1 tsp. salt, stir. Pour 0.25 liters of lanspic into a bowl and refrigerate. Cool the rest to room temperature, 16°C. To speed up the process, you can put the pan on ice. If the lanspic, on the contrary, is too cold and has begun to solidify, put the pan in a water bath.

7. Put the fillet on a dish, on cling film, skin down. Slightly salt, season with white ground pepper. Cover with cling film on top. Put the dish in a preheated oven, stew the fish fillet in its own juice at 100 ° C for 1 hour. Fish can simply be boiled in water, but then its taste is significantly lost.

8. Pour the first layer of lanspeak, about 5 mm, into the bottom of the aspic dish. Remove the dish from the refrigerator. Ready fillet, still in the film, cool after the oven. Put in the refrigerator for a long time, best of all - at night, so that the fish survives and does not crumble when cut. After that, carefully remove the film from the fillet. Cut the fillet into portions.

9. Put the fish from the knife on a dish with already frozen jelly. In this position, fix the fish by watering the fillet pieces on top with three ladles of lanspic. Put the dish with fish in the refrigerator to fix until decorating.

10. Using a knife, make indentations on the skin of a lemon, cut it into thin half rings, remove the seeds. Using pastry cutters, cut out figures from sweet peppers. Pieces of pickled cucumbers are used as a pedestal for halves of boiled quail eggs. First, dip each detail of the drawing into a lanspeak, then lay it on a dish with fish.

11. Fill everything with lanspic. It should cover the fish with a thin layer. Put the dish in the refrigerator. Finely chop the frozen jelly from the bowl. Make a bag of parchment paper, put chopped jelly inside. Wrap the bag and cut off the sharp end. Get a dish with frozen aspic. Put red caviar on quail eggs, decorate with jelly slides.

ADVICE:

If you are going to serve aspic to the New Year's table, take care of it two days before the celebration.
You will need fish and gelatin. Moreover, it is better to take gelatin granulated, and not lamellar, imported, which is more suitable for holiday desserts. You can pour sturgeon, stellate sturgeon, sterlet, carp, pike, catfish, cod. But best of all - freshwater and not necessarily frozen fish, such as pike perch. A sign of fish freshness is red gills. But, it happens that cunning sellers tint them. Therefore, the most accurate indicator of freshness is the eyes. The pupil should be with a “deep light”, not cloudy, and the eyes should not be sunken. The fish should be tight. After pressing the fish, the skin should recover. If a fingerprint remains, the fish is stale. Having bought the fish, select the ingredients for the decoration of the aspic. Each time you can use different products. The bare minimum is carrots and parsley, the rest is a matter of taste: olives, pickled or fresh cucumber, tomato, sweet pepper, etc.

A holiday is a very troublesome culinary event. But these chores are very pleasant! And their results please the eye and stomach for several days. One of the dishes that is sure to be present on the ceremonial table is jelly or its variety - fish aspic. Let it take a long time to prepare, but as a result, it can become a worthy decoration of the table.

Bouillon Secrets

Before you cook jellied fish, you need to make a quality basis for it. That is, the broth should be as transparent as possible so that both pieces of fish and decorating elements can be clearly seen through the jelly obtained from it. To achieve an ideal result, you must follow the basic rule: the fish must be washed very carefully, put in cold water and brought to a boil several times. The foam is carefully removed.

However, a completely transparent broth will still not work. Therefore, we use folk trick. For her, egg white is taken and whipped into a lush elastic foam. It is poured into a slightly cooled broth and stirred. When the base boils, it will become cloudy. But! The main thing here is to wait until it cools down and boil again. After straining, you will get a crystal clear broth, with which fish aspic looks very artistic and appetizing.

Filler without chemical additives

In the old days, when jellied fish was prepared, the recipe did not at all contain gelatin, agar-agar, or other achievements of civilization in cooking. It was supposed to contain only fish, broth and vegetables. It is impossible to obtain a particularly dense jelly from fish, so fish aspic should by no means be cut with a knife. Traditionally, this dish is prepared as follows.

Large fish is taken, washed and gutted. The scales are not removed. The head, as the largest part of the carcass, is chopped into several parts, the rest is put in the whole pan. Cold water is poured (one liter for each kilogram). The broth is boiled for an hour and a half (do not forget to remove the foam!), After which vegetables are placed (usually onions, root parsley and carrots) and spices - laurel and pepper. Cooking continues for another half an hour.

Before the very end, the dish is salted. When the contents of the pot have cooled, the broth is filtered, the onions and seasonings are thrown away, and the fish is carefully disassembled, laid out in shapes and poured with broth. Carrot slices are also added there. Some, for beauty, lay out halves or rings of boiled eggs. You can also flavor with garlic - both crushed and cloves. When the broth hardens, fish aspic is served to hungry family members with mustard, vinegar, horseradish - as you like.

Gelatin, but not too much

Not everyone likes jittery jelly. As already mentioned, dense fish alone will not work. So, you have to resort to artificial "fixers". And so that the aspic fish with gelatin is not vague, and not so elastic that it does not lend itself to a fork, it is necessary to correctly calculate the amount of thickener. The optimal mass is 50 g of gelatin per liter of water (but only pure). Since fish is already boiled in the broth, it also participates in gelling, so this amount will be too much. Therefore, if you take a liter of water per kilo of fish, add 30 g of gelatin, if one and a half - 40 g.

Jellied pike perch

The more convenient the jellied fish with gelatin is the fact that you can cook it from the fillet and not subsequently fool your head with picking out the bones. However, if you buy not a whole fish, but a ready-made fillet, you will have to additionally buy small fish for the broth. The calculation is as follows: pike perch fillet - half a kilo, its trimmings or junk fish - a kilogram. If you still took a whole fish, then you must first prepare it: remove the scales, gut, cut off the head and fins, pull the gills out of the head and cut off the fillet itself. Rinse everything thoroughly, put the parts of the carcass, except for the fillet, in a saucepan along with the onion and carrot. When it boils, reduce the fire, throw in the parsley and peppercorns. It takes an hour to cook. Then strain, discard the offal and onion, and boil the fillet in the broth.

Pour 30 g of gelatin with a glass of cold water to swell and make the broth transparent, as described above. For the indicated amount of fish, you will need the proteins of two eggs. When the broth becomes transparent, add gelatin and stir. Only after that, the resulting lanspic is salted and a little vinegar is poured in.

Beautiful presentation

Aspic fish can, of course, simply be poured into molds, spread out pieces of pike perch and put in the refrigerator. However, this is a festive dish! Therefore, everything must be beautiful. A little broth is poured into the selected vessel, and it is removed in the cold. When the layer hardens, pieces of fish are artistically laid out on it and another portion of lanspic is poured, but so that the pike perch is not completely covered. And back in the fridge. While it hardens, they make decorations: cut grooves in the lemon skin, after which they cut it into thin circles; cut boiled carrots into asterisks, and Bulgarian multi-colored peppers into figures. In general, what is enough for your imagination. All decorations are laid out on top of the already frozen jelly, and the aspic of the fish is complemented by another layer of lanspic. Now pike perch and beautiful additions should be completely hidden under it. When the jelly hardens, you can invite guests to the table.

Alternative preparation of fish for aspic

Some people avoid fish jelly just because they don't like the main ingredient boiled. So we can advise you to cook fish aspic with the help of ... an oven. That is, the broth for pouring is prepared in the same way as in the previous recipe, and salt the pike perch fillet, put it in a baking sleeve and place it in the oven for an hour. Set the temperature to 100 degrees. A quarter of an hour before the “X” time, it is necessary to open the seam so that excess moisture leaves and a golden crust appears. When it cools down a bit, put it in the refrigerator without removing the package. So the pike perch will not crumble when they start cutting it for aspic.

Unusual jelly

A very interesting method tells how to cook aspic from red fish. For him, for a kilogram of, say, the same pike perch, in addition to onions and carrots, 200 grams of beets are taken. The broth is cooked according to the same rules, but with the addition of beetroot. To keep the color bright and saturated, at the end of cooking, add a spoonful of vinegar. As a result, the broth will be almost scarlet, and the fish will be pale pink. In order not to stain the carrot at the same time, it is better to cook it separately. And as a decoration, egg circles look especially impressive. Just put them right before you put the dish in the refrigerator so that they remain white.

Multicooker fantasies

Some inexperienced users doubt that this most valuable device will help in the preparation of jelly. However, they are wrong! Jellied fish in a slow cooker turns out just fine. You just need to follow a certain sequence of actions. First, a pound of pike perch is cut coarsely and with two carrots and one onion (also coarsely chopped) is placed in a bowl. Half a liter of water is added and the baking mode is turned on. The time depends on the model of your multicooker. When the water becomes hot, the mode switches to "Extinguishing" and the time is set to 2 hours. At the end spices and salt are added. When the fish is ready and cools down, it is disassembled, laid out on the bottom of a transparent deep plate, along with circles of carrots and lemon. The broth is strained, 150 g of it is poured into a glass, where two tablespoons (without a slide) of gelatin are diluted. When it swells, it is added to the rest of the broth and heated to 70 degrees. You can’t boil! Ready-made lanspic is poured with fish and removed in the cold. As you can see, nothing complicated.

tomato aspic

Unlike all previous recipes, this dish does not apply to jelly and jelly. You can eat it both cold and hot, and the cooking process is fundamentally different from all of the above.

So, a pound of fish is bought, it can be frozen. Pollock, hake or saury are perfect. If the carcasses are not yet prepared, they must be cleaned, gutted, washed and cut. Flour is poured onto a plate, salted, fish collapses in it. While it will be fried (in lean, naturally, oil), the filling is being prepared. For her, one piece of onion and carrot is cleaned, washed, the onion is finely chopped, and the carrot is rubbed. Both that, and another together are reddened all on the same vegetable oil. Then pepper, sugar (if desired), parsley, salt and tomato juice (2 cups) or paste (two spoons diluted in water) are added. When everything is stewed, the fried pieces put in a saucepan are poured with sauce and sent to the refrigerator. Note that fish aspic in tomato will be much tastier when infused and soaked.