Herring in oil is one of my favourite dishes and I serve it not only in Christmas time but throughout the whole year. Anyway, I love all kinds of fish since I was a child :) Generally, it’s hard to convince children to eat fish. They eat it only in fish fingers, and they prefer those in funny shapes ;) However, when I was a child, I loved sprats and herring, especially in tomato sauce ;) Not to mention my favourite pastes with fish, such as egg paste with tuna or egg paste with mackerel. When I was a teenager I loved herring by Seko, which my mum used to buy for every Christmas. Therefore, I decided to reproduce this taste in my home kitchen. You will find the recipe here: Fish lecho a’la Seko
I recommend also: Roasted herring in vinegar pickle.
Anyway, enough already about all the fish, let’s get into the point :)) Below, the recipe for delicious herring fillets in oil with onion!
Ingredients:
- 6-7 Matias (salty herring fillets)
- 500 ml milk
- 3 medium onions
- 2 tablespoons lemon juice (you can use 1 tablespoon of vinegar instead, but it tastes better with lemon)
- 250-300 ml rapeseed oil (it should cover up all the herring)
- ½ teaspoon sugar
- 6 grains black pepper
- pinch of salt
- 3 grains allspice
- 3 bay leaves
- ½ teaspoon Herbes de Provence
Preparation:
- Pour the herring fillets with milk and leave for 2-3 hours so that they lose most of the salty flavour (if they are still too salty, do it again). Drain the herring from milk, dry them with a paper towel, and then pour them with the lemon juice.
- Cut the herring fillets into about 2-3 cm chunks.
- Cut the onions in feathers, pour with boiling water and cool them down. Add sugar and salt.
- Add black pepper grains and Herbes de Provence to the oil, mix up. It’s best to take a jar and feel it with the ingredients in layers: first some herring chunks, then drained onions, bay leaf, allspice, pour it with some of the spiced oil, again put herring, onions etc. When all the ingredients are used, screw the jar and leave it in a fridge for about 24 hours ( or even more), so that the tastes got melted into each other. Bon appétit!
