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Silver carp balyk at home

Homemade Silver Carp Balyk

A tasty, fragrant, appetizing, tender fish appetizer! Silver carp balyk is fairly easy to make at home - you just need to follow a simple method. This balyk doesn't just match the store-bought product in flavor; it far surpasses it.

Snezhana

Recipe author

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Composition / ingredients

Servings:

Silver carp

Allspice

Peppercorns

Bay leaf

Ground coriander

0.5

Sugar

Salt

Translation table of volumetric measures

Nutrients and energy value of the composition of the recipe

By weight of the composition:

Proteins 74 % 14 g

Fats 5 % 1 g

Carbohydrates 21 % 4 g

77 kcal

GI: 25 / 0 / 75

Cooking method

Step 1:

How do you make silver carp balyk at home? Gather the ingredients. For balyk, it's better to use large silver carp carcasses, which have more flesh and large bones that come out easily. My fish wasn't large, but even so it made a perfectly worthy balyk.
Step 2:

Gut, clean, and rinse the fish carcass. Cut off the head, tail, and fins. Cut the carcass into two halves and remove the backbone.
Step 3:

Put salt and sugar in a bowl, add bay leaf (broken into small pieces), peppercorns, allspice, and coriander; if you like, you can use other spices too. To bring out the aroma of the spices, you can crush the coriander seeds and peppercorns with a knife. Mix the spices.
Step 4:

Silver carp has a strong, distinctive fishy smell, so the seasoning is needed not only to make the appetizer fragrant but also to tone that smell down a bit. Rub the pieces of fish on all sides with the prepared spices.
Step 5:

Put the fish in the bowl with the remaining spices. Make sure all the flesh is coated with salt. For salting fish, you can use a deep plastic, glass, or enamel dish. If the full-length pieces don't fit, you can cut them into a few more pieces.
Step 6:

Put a weight on top of the fish. This can be a plate with a jar of water set on it. Put the bowl of fish in the fridge for 5 days. By then, the salt will have dissolved into a brine, which the fish absorbs. Rinse the fish with clean cold water, cover it in a bowl with cooled boiled water, and leave it for 5 hours in a cool place.
Step 7:

Then drain the water and hang the fish pieces on wire or another holder over the sink so all the liquid drains off. After that, move the carp to a cool place to air-dry for a couple of days. In fall and spring, balyk dries well on a balcony or enclosed porch. The air temperature should be low and the space well ventilated. Don't dry the fish any longer - the balyk should stay soft and juicy.
Step 8:

The appetizer is ready. Serve the balyk. Enjoy!

For this recipe it's better to use fresh rather than frozen fish, or the finished fish risks coming out dry.
How do you properly fillet a whole fish? Remove the tail, head, and fins. Cut along the spine down to the backbone. Turn the fish on its side. With a sharp knife, slice the flesh off the backbone. Turn the fish over and slice off the fillet on the other side. Clean the inside, removing the black membrane, since it's bitter and would spoil the taste. Rinse and be sure to dry well.
Since everyone's tolerance for salt, sweetness, bitterness, heat, acidity, and spice is different, always add spices and seasonings to your own taste! If you're using a seasoning for the first time, keep in mind that some are especially easy to overdo (chili pepper, for example).