Few decide to bake a pike in the oven, preferring prosaic cutlets. The reason for this is lean, dry fish meat.
You do not know how to cook a pike? We offer two options for pike in the oven with step-by-step recipes: bake a stuffed fish or stew them in sour cream.
The first option is more time consuming in execution, but the result is a luxurious dish, traditionally served to the festive table. The second is not so painstaking, the pike is no less tasty, and, like the stuffed fish, it will be appropriate not only on the daily table.
General principles of cooking pike dishes in the oven using step-by-step recipes
• If you decide to cook stuffed pike, take only fresh fish. Frozen food is suitable for baking.
• When choosing a fresh fish, first of all, pay attention to its covers - on the scales should be clear, not sticky to your fingers mucus. The second criterion for assessing the quality is a bright, rich-pinkish tinge of meat under the gills.
• For stuffing, it is better to take small carcasses of fish weighing from one and a half to two kilograms, up to 50 cm long. It is easier to remove the skin from such a pike and the dish itself will turn out more tasty.
• Frozen fish, to preserve juiciness, the dishes need to be thawed properly. Do not immerse frozen carcasses in water, or use a microwave oven for thawing. It is advisable to place the fish before complete thawing on the bottom shelf of the refrigerator, or simply leave it to thaw at room temperature.
• Pike scales are large and clean it will not be difficult, but this should be done carefully so as not to damage the skin. If you bake a pike with pieces, be sure to cut off all the fins.
• If you are confused by the characteristic smell of mud, after cleaning, soak the fish in water with spices and a small amount of vinegar or fresh lemon juice.
Stuffed pike in the oven: a step-by-step recipe for a festive dish
Stuffed pike is one of the options for cooking a festive dish. The fish is removed from the skin in the form of "stocking", which is filled with minced fish fillet. Guided by the step-by-step recipe for pike in the oven, you can cook another large river fish with dry meat, such as pikeperch. Processed cheese and lard, added to the stuffing, add tenderness to the fish dish and make it fatter. Ingredients:
• fish weighing up to one and a half kilograms;
• white loaf crumb;
• one processed cheese;
• small onion head;
• selected egg - 1 pc .;
• 200 grams of fresh lard;
• teaspoon oregano.
For design
• fresh greens, vegetables;
• fatty mayonnaise;
• one large lemon.
Preparation:
1. We have a scaled pike. Now you need to properly remove her skin. To do this, put the fish on the chopping board belly down and gently cut off the head. The main thing is not to hurry, we cut it so that the insides can be removed with the head, without violating their integrity.
2. Separating the insides from the head, extract the gills. Carefully wash and put in the bag, put in the fridge. Fish will bake with the head.
3. We flush the abdomen of the pike with cool water, separate the black film lining it from the inside. With paper towels we dry the carcass and place it sideways on a chopping board.
4. Now we need a long, sharp knife with a pointed end. Enter the knife's edge under the skin of five millimeters, and gently separate it from the meat. We are moving in a circle slowly, literally in millimeter - starting from the back. By taking broader steps, you can break the integrity of the “stocking.
5. When you can grab hold of the skin, grab it with your left hand and try to slowly pull in the direction of the tail, and at this time gently separate it from the pike meat with the fingers of your right hand. If the skin is not separated freely, we continue to operate with a knife. Taking off the "stockings" in the fins area, you should act with extreme caution. We do not remove the fins - in these places it is better to leave some meat on the skin than to cut it through.
6. Reaching the tail, we twist the skin and cut the ridge slightly above the tail fin. The skin is temporarily removed in the refrigerator to the head. Do not forget to put the "stocking" in the package, so as not to become chapped.
7. With our hands we separate the pike meat from the ridge. We do not rush, we try to leave large bones on the ridge. First, remove the fillet on one side, and then on the other. It is convenient to remove the meat remaining on the spinal bone with a teaspoon. To do this, turn the device upside down with a convex side and hold the side of the spoon along the ridge from the head to the tail section. 8. From the separated meat choose all visible bones. This is a rather painstaking and time-consuming procedure, but if you take ordinary tweezers, it will go much faster. A small magnifying glass can also become an assistant - even the smallest bones can be found with it.
9. The plate with pike meat is set aside to one side, while we ourselves begin to prepare products for the filling. We take out melted cheese from the refrigerator. Wash the peeled onion and cut it into four parts. Coarsely chop dried lard after washing. Pulp loaf pour water.
10. Adjust the grinder to the maximum grinding - set the grid with small holes.
11. Twist the pike fillet three times to get rid of the bones, which could not have been noticed by chance.
12. In the bowl with minced fish, first we twist the melted cheese with the same meat grinder, after it skip the onion, and then the crumb pressed from the liquid.
13. We break an egg into a bowl with minced meat, add a little chopped pepper, oregano and slightly add salt.
14. Thoroughly mix everything with a large spoon, achieving homogeneity.
15. Cover the baking sheet with parchment paper. Apply a thin layer of refined oil.
16. We get out of the refrigerator head pike and skin. We fill the stocking with prepared stuffing, we do not fix the edge. Do not stuff tightly and to the string, in the process of baking the filling can go out. The remaining fish mass can be used for fish cutlets, and if you add rice, you can cook meatballs.
17. Lubricate the filled “stocking” with mayonnaise and carefully transfer it to the baking sheet.
18. Next we attach the head - we also pre-coat it with mayonnaise.
19. Cover the baking sheet with foil, for tightness, compress it well on the sides. Put the roaster in the hot oven. Bake pike at 200 degrees. After half an hour, remove the foil from the pan, and put the fish for about seven minutes back into the oven - bake until golden brown.
20. Finished stuffed pike stand on a baking sheet until completely cooled. After that, gently transfer the entire large dish and put in the fridge for an hour.
21. Chilled pike is cut into portions, which we shift in the form of whole fish and substitute the head in place. If desired, the dish before registration can be heated in a microwave. 22. Decorate stuffed pike: scalded with boiling water, washed and wiped lemon dry and cut into thin circles and spread around the fish. Vegetables are laid nearby: slices of tomatoes and half rings of sweet onions, chopped greens.
23. Mayonnaise on a pike make a drawing - we put a thin mesh or arbitrary patterns.
24. Lemon circles can be laid between the pieces, but this should be done even before you apply mayonnaise pattern and only after warming up.
Pike in the oven: a step-by-step recipe for a daily menu of juicy dishes
Step-by-step recipe for pike in the oven for those who can not, and do not want to spend time on the time-consuming procedure of separation of the skins from the fillets. To remove a persistent river smell, it is advisable to use the recommendations given above.
Ingredients:
• one kilogram of fish (pike);
• two large onions;
• 50 gr. sweet cream butter;
• a glass of 20% sour cream;
• 70 gr. “Russian” cheese;
• small bay leaves;
• 4 peppercorns;
• a glass of drinking water;
• a quarter of a medium-large lemon.
Preparation:
1. Having cleared the pike from scales, we cut off all fins, we wash. Cut the belly, remove the insides, wash again.
2. Drain pike with towels, put on a chopping board. Stepping back from the gill covers half a centimeter, we chop off the head. Cut the carcass into 3 cm wide pieces. We shift the fish in a bowl, salt.
3. Remove the gills from the head and thoroughly wash it. We lower the head with a pike in a small saucepan, pour 500 ml of cool water, prepare the broth.
4. Remove the fish from the bowl and loosely lay out the pieces on the bottom of the form.
5. We clear two large onions. Cut into thin rings, lay out a uniform layer on top of the fish.
6. Between the onion rings, approximately in the center of the form, lay a bay leaf.
7. Cut butter into sticks and evenly spread on the onion layer.
8. Fill all with lightly salted sour cream.
9. Put the fish in a hot oven (190 degrees). Cooking for half an hour, pouring the sauce out of the mold every 10 minutes.
10. Grind cheese on a large grater. Sprinkle the fish over them and put them in the oven again. Heating off.
11. After waiting a quarter of an hour, we take out the form, carefully pour all the sauce out of it and filter it through a sieve. 12. Squeeze the lemon. We filter the juice through cheesecloth or, like sour cream sauce, through a sieve.
13. Strain the broth brewed from a pike head.
14. Combine sour cream sauce, broth and lemon juice. Mix well and, if required, add some salt.
15. Carefully remove the pieces of pike from the mold and lay them on a serving dish. Pour fish with cooked sauce.
16. For the solemn serving of the dish can be decorated with lemon slices.
Features of cooking pike in the oven, step-by-step recipes, useful tips and little tricks
• To ensure that the meat of the fish is perfectly salted inside, lower the fish pieces into the brine for a quarter of an hour. Do not keep the fish in the liquid longer, it will pick up excess moisture.
• Dry pike meat, regardless of the ingredients of the dish, requires the use of butter. Cooking stuffed fish, it is replaced with lard.
• If the pike carcass is slightly beaten off with a rolling pin, the “stocking” of the skin will be removed more easily. It is not necessary to make great efforts in order not to damage the integrity of the skin. If the skin is torn, bake the pike and cut it into pieces.
• You can stuff not only pike, any river fish with dry meat will be no less tasty. Use the detailed step-by-step recipe of stuffed pike in the oven and try to cook pikeperch.
