Few decide to bake pike in the oven, preferring prosaic cutlets. The reason for this is lean, dry meat of fish.
Don't know how to cook a pike delicious? We offer two versions of pike in the oven with step-by-step recipes: bake stuffed fish or stew in slices in sour cream.
The first option is more time-consuming to perform, but the result is a luxurious dish, traditionally served at the festive table. The second is not so painstaking, the pike turns out to be no less tasty, and, like a stuffed fish, it will be appropriate not only on the everyday table.
General principles for cooking pike dishes in the oven according to step-by-step recipes
• If you decide to cook stuffed pike, take only fresh fish. A frozen product is also suitable for baking slices.
• When choosing a fresh fish, first of all pay attention to its integument - on the scales should be transparent, not sticky to the fingers mucus. The second criterion for assessing quality is a bright, rich pinkish shade 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 from such a pike that it will be easier to remove the skin and the dish itself will turn out tastier.
• Frozen fish to keep juiciness, the dishes must be thawed correctly. Do not dip frozen carcasses into water, or use a microwave to thaw. It is advisable to place the fish until completely thawed on the bottom shelf of the refrigerator or simply leave it to defrost at room temperature.
• The scales of pikes are large and it will not be difficult to clean them, but this should be done carefully so as not to damage the skin. If you bake the pike in pieces, be sure to cut off all the fins.
• If confused with the characteristic smell of mud, after cleaning, soak the fish in water with spices and a little vinegar or fresh lemon juice.
Stuffed pike in the oven: a step-by-step recipe for a festive dish
Stuffed pike - one of the options for preparing a festive dish. The skin is removed from the fish in the form of a "stocking", which is filled with minced fish fillet. Guided by a step-by-step recipe for pike in the oven, you can cook another large river fish with dry meat, for example, pikeperch. Cream cheese and lard added to the minced meat add tenderness to the fish dish and make it fatter.
Ingredients:
• fish weighing up to one and a half kilograms;
• crumb of a white loaf;
• one processed cheese;
• a small onion head;
• perfect egg - 1 pc.;
• 200 grams of fresh lard;
• a teaspoon of oregano.
For registration
• fresh herbs, vegetables;
• fatty mayonnaise;
• one large lemon.
Cooking method:
1. We have a scaled pike. Now you need to properly remove the skin from it. To do this, put the fish on a cutting board with the abdomen down and carefully cut off the head. The main thing is not to rush, cut so that together with the head it was possible to extract the insides, without violating their integrity.
2. Separating the insides from the head, we extract the gills. Rinse thoroughly and put in a bag, put it in the refrigerator. We will bake the fish with the head.
3. We wash the abdomen of pike with cool water, separate the black film lining it from the inside. Dry the carcass with paper towels and lay it sideways on a cutting board.
4. Now we need a long sharp knife with a pointed end. We introduce the edge of the knife under the skin by five millimeters, and carefully separate it from the meat. We move in a circle slowly, literally in a millimeter - we start from the back. Taking broader steps can violate the integrity of the stocking.
5. When you can grab the skin with your hands, grab it with your left hand and try to slowly pull it towards the tail, while at the same time, carefully use your fingers to separate it from the pike meat. If the skin does not separate freely, we continue to act with a knife. Removing the "stocking" in the area of the fins, you should act with extreme caution. We do not remove fins - in these places it is better to leave a little meat on the skin than to cut it through.
6. Having reached the tail, we turn the skin and chop the ridge slightly above the caudal fin. The skin is temporarily removed in the refrigerator to the head. Do not forget to put the "stocking" in the bag so as not to wind off.
7. Hands separate pike meat from the ridge. We are not in a hurry, we are trying to leave large bones on the ridge. First, remove the fillet on one side, and then on the other. The meat remaining on the spine is conveniently removed with a teaspoon. To do this, turn the device over with the convex side up and spend the side of the spoon along the ridge from the head to the tail.
8. From the separated meat, select all visible bones. This is a rather painstaking and time-consuming procedure, but if you take ordinary tweezers, things will go much faster. A small magnifier can also become an assistant - even the smallest bones can be found with it.
9. We leave the plate with pike meat aside, and we ourselves begin to prepare products for the filling. We get the processed cheese from the refrigerator. We wash the peeled onion and cut it into four parts. Coarsely chop the dried lard after washing. The flesh of the loaf is poured with water.
10. We adjust the meat grinder to the maximum grinding - we establish a grid with small openings.
11. Twist the pike fillet three times to probably get rid of bones that you might not have noticed.
12. In a bowl with minced fish, first we twist the processed cheese with the same meat grinder, then we pass the onion, and then the crumb is squeezed from the liquid.
13. Break the egg into a bowl with minced meat, add a little chopped pepper, oregano and slightly add.
14. Thoroughly mix everything with a large spoon, achieving uniformity.
15. Cover the baking sheet with parchment paper. Apply a thin layer of refined oil to it.
16. We take out the head of the pike and the skin from the refrigerator. We fill the stocking with prepared meat, we do not fix the edge. Do not stuff tightly and to the eyeballs; during baking, the filling may come out. The remaining fish mass can be used for fish cakes, and if supplemented with rice, you can cook meatballs.
17. Lubricate the filled “stocking” with mayonnaise and carefully transfer it to a baking sheet.
18. Next we attach the head - we also pre-coat it with mayonnaise.
19. We cover the baking sheet with foil, for tightness we squeeze it well on the sides. Place the roasting pan in a hot oven. Bake a pike at 200 degrees. After half an hour, remove the foil from the baking sheet, and put the fish for about seven minutes back into the oven - bake until golden brown.
20. We keep the prepared stuffed pike on a baking sheet until it cools completely. After that, carefully transfer the whole to a large dish and put in the refrigerator for an hour.
21. We cut the chilled pike into portioned pieces, which we shift as a whole fish and substitute the head in place. If desired, the dish can be heated in the microwave before serving.
22. We decorate the stuffed pike: scalded with boiling water, washed and wiped dry with lemon, cut into thin circles and spread around the fish. We lay vegetables nearby: slices of tomatoes and half rings of sweet onion, chopped greens.
23. With a mayonnaise on the pike we make a drawing - we apply a thin grid or arbitrary patterns.
24. Lemon slices can be placed between the slices, but this must be done before you apply the mayonnaise drawing and only after warming up.
Pike in the oven: a step-by-step recipe for the daily menu of a juicy dish
A step-by-step recipe for pike in the oven for those who do not, and do not want to waste time on the time-consuming procedure of separating the skin from the fillet. To remove persistent river odor, 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;
• bay leaf of a small size;
• 4 peppercorns;
• a glass of drinking water;
• a quarter of medium-sized lemon.
Cooking method:
1. Having cleaned the pike from the scales, we cut off all the fins and wash them. Cut the abdomen, remove the insides, rinse again.
2. Dry the pike with towels, lay on a cutting board. Having departed from the gill covers by half a centimeter, we chop off the head. Cut the carcass into pieces of 3 cm wide. We shift the fish into a bowl, salt.
3. From the head we remove the gills and thoroughly rinse it. We lower our pike head into a small pan, pour 500 ml of cool water, prepare the broth.
4. We take out the fish from the bowl and loosely lay out the pieces along the bottom of the mold.
5. We clear two large onions. Cut into thin rings, spread in 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. Butter is cut into cubes and spread evenly over the onion layer.
8. Fill everything with slightly salted sour cream.
9. Put the fish in a hot oven (190 degrees). We cook for half an hour, pouring sauce from the mold every 10 minutes.
10. Grind cheese on a coarse grater. Sprinkle them with fish and put it in the oven again. We turn off the heating.
11. After waiting a quarter of an hour, we take out the form, carefully pour out the whole sauce from it and filter it through a sieve.
12. Squeeze the lemon. Filter the juice through cheesecloth or, like sour cream sauce, through a sieve.
13. We filter the broth, cooked from a pike head.
14. Combine sour cream sauce, broth and lemon juice. Mix well and, if necessary, add salt.
15. Carefully remove the pieces of pike from the mold and arrange them on a serving platter. Pour the fish with cooked sauce.
16. For a ceremonial serving, 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 make the fish meat perfectly salted inside, dip its pieces for a quarter of an hour in brine. Do not keep the fish in the liquid for longer, it will collect excess moisture.
• Dry pike meat, regardless of the components of the dish, requires the use of butter. When cooking stuffed fish, it is replaced with lard.
• If the pike carcass is slightly beaten off with a rolling pin, the “stocking” from the skin will be removed more easily. It is not worthwhile to make great efforts so as not to damage the integrity of the skin. If the skin is torn, bake the pike, cutting it into pieces.
• You can stuff not only pike, any river fish with dry meat will be no less tasty. Take advantage of the detailed step-by-step recipe for stuffed pike in the oven and try cooking zander.
