Anyone have any experience with it or any recipes? I have a lake in Michigan that I think is overrun with small pike. From what I've read the y bones disolve.
Anyone have any experience with it or any recipes? I have a lake in Michigan that I think is overrun with small pike. From what I've read the y bones disolve.
The Y-bones do disappear, at least if you use smaller pike (say, 5 pounds or under).
Assuming that you don't read Swedish :-) I found a couple of good recipes in English.
Freeze the pike for 2 days to a week (kills an intestinal parasite that you could otherwise get). I understand this is pretty much standard with any raw fish including sushi.
The resulting fish has no Y-bones (at least for small pike), no strong "fishy" taste, and is firm and white -- good for appetizers or just about anything I guess. Pike ceviche!
On really big pike, I fillet out the Y-bones but pickling will let you use any fish from "hammer handle size" up to 5 pounders.
I used this recipe from Youtube and user "5 year plan"
I used regular pan fish (crappie, bluegill, perch) that had been filleted so didn't have any bones to deal with. The first brine and salt treatment seems to be pretty standard on most of the recipe's, it's the canning brine that shows the variation. I liked the idea of less sugar, I also added 2 Tbls of red pepper flake and a few more whole peppercorns to add a bit more zing. Other than that, I went with pretty much what he calls out. I liked it much better than my first batch I tried years ago of a different recipe and would use this one again the next time I get a hankering for pickled fish. Almost went with the 330 Maniac recipe but chose the less sugar option.
Edit to add: for my jar and my amount of fish fillets, I only used 1/2 of the canning recipe, used 8-10 whole peppercorns and the 2 Tbls. of red pepper flake and some onion slices.
I had a good recipe from my baby sister’s mother in law up in SD. I went and caught a bunch of hammer handles through the ice and got my jars ready. Being from further south I decided I needed to add a little heat to the recipe and I put a jalapeño in each jar sliced into strips. Good Gawd was it ever hot. Ended up throwing the whole batch out, stuff would have your teeth aching after about the second bite.
