Herring under a fur coat: what are the secrets of preparing this festive dish - chefs revealed the recipe
One of the most popular and beloved dishes for the New Year is herring under a fur coat.
The combination of spicy and bitter onions, sweet beets, tender carrots, eggs and the herring itself - salty, with a characteristic fishy taste - finds a response in the hearts of thousands of people.
However, this dish seems easy to prepare only at first glance.
There are many subtleties in the selection and arrangement of its ingredients.
Let's start with choosing the herring itself. The one that is already marinated is definitely not suitable: the taste of the marinade will distract attention, and the vegetables will seem bland against its background.
Spicy salted herring is also not the best choice, but regular herring, simply salted without any additional additives, is ideal. To accurately assess the quality of the fish, buy not its fillet, but the whole carcass.
If the store only has boneless fillets, already salted, in the form of whole slices or pieces, try to examine the product from all sides.
What is important is how thick the fillet slices/pieces are: the thinner they are, the more suspicions there are that the bones were not removed from the fillet, but the fish itself was exposed to special substances that dissolve the bones. Naturally, this does not have the best effect on the taste of the herring itself.
After buying a whole salted herring, you need to prepare it to create a festive dish. How? Excess salt can be removed by cutting and cleaning the herring from the insides, and then putting it in a bowl and pouring milk over it.
The fish should be soaked in milk for at least a day to acquire a more delicate and not overly salty taste.
By the way, herring fans can cook it under a fur coat, using either the regular salted version of the fish or the smoked one.
This will be especially interesting if you alternate pieces of salted and smoked herring when placing them on a plate or in a salad bowl.
The next point is the selection of ingredients for the "fur coat". Traditionally, boiled eggs, onions, carrots, beets and potatoes are used for it. However, there are other fur coat recipes.
So, for variety, you can use avocado or cheese instead of boiled potatoes, remove the carrots, and add an apple or pickles as one of the layers.
You can also experiment with the dressing: instead of fatty and unhealthy mayonnaise, it would be more appropriate to use Greek yogurt without fruit additives, mixing it with a small portion of mustard.
When preparing herring under a fur coat, it is better to choose potatoes that contain the least amount of starchy substances (there are special varieties for salads), and before cutting and placing the beets on the dish, do not boil them, but bake them: this will preserve the juiciness of the root vegetable and its color.
Point number three concerns the correct cutting and alternation of layers in a dish such as herring under a fur coat.
There are supporters of chopped vegetables for the fur coat, but in this case you need to cut the ingredients into small cubes, and it will be difficult to hook them on a fork, and the layers will crumble when stacked. Layers of vegetables and eggs that are grated beforehand look much better and "cling" to each other.
For beets, carrots and potatoes, use a larger grater, and grate eggs finely. The first layer in the dish is definitely herring, cut into thin slices, then put a layer of onions, potatoes on the onions and carrots on top of the potatoes.
Beetroot is added last, creating the desired color effect and giving the salad an appetizing and festive look. Don't forget to spread each layer of the dish with mayonnaise or yogurt/sour cream dressing.
Once the main ingredients are laid out and soaked in the sauce, garnish the salad with chopped dill or parsley leaves.
And the last point - when the herring under a fur coat is ready, do not put it on the table immediately, but put it in the refrigerator for a while.
All its components should be soaked in each other’s flavors, then the overall dish will turn out more impressive and appetizing.
Earlier we told you how to make cheese sauce .
