Inside Angles: Pickle Patrol 2.0

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Pickling remains a nice change-of-pace for dealing with some of the fish we take home. We’ve published a couple recipes over the years, which have been popular. An update is appropriate given Food and Drug Administration and Canadian Food Inspection Agency suggested changes to the pickling process.

My most recent pickle patrol was for whitefish on an ice fishing trip to Green Bay. They’re beautiful fish with delicate flesh—brining firmed them up nicely. They’re also mild tasting and have a distinctively long line of epiplural bones (pin bones) that disappear during the pickling process. I cleaned and trimmed 17 fish that produced 7.25 pounds of fillets.

Among In-Fisherman readers pike remain the gold standard for pickling as the process can dissolve the Y-bones (epiplurals). I’ve always removed those bones before pickling, but it isn’t necessary on most fish.

I’ve also pickled bluegills and perch, which turned out nicely. Redhorse species also work well with their firm white flesh. Trim the red flesh on the outside of the fillet, though, just as I did with my whitefish. I haven’t worked with crappies, white bass, largemouths, or rock bass, although I’m sure they’d be great. I would like to give freshwater drum a shot. I bet yellow bass would be a delight. And I’m sure the beautifully white-flesh silver carp would also work well.

One of “our” recipes is from the late Chef John Bisson from Vermont. His recipe calls for a half cup of brown sugar instead of a half cup of white wine, which is the distinctive ingredient in our other recipe. I’ve never taste-tested the two recipes side-by-side. Seemingly, though, the recipe with wine is by far the most popular of the two. But if you don’t want to deal with wine, substitute brown sugar.

It’s impossible to say, given that no comparative testing has ever been done, if our wine recipe is the best one out there. If you dive into an online search, you see recipes that are almost identical to ours, which, as I said, has white wine as a distinctive ingredient. Whether those other recipes were influenced by ours or those other recipes and ours all are descendent from a common original source dating back who knows how long, I also can’t say.

We can say that our recipe has stood the test of at least 50 years. I brought a version of it with me to In-Fisherman from my days in the Iowa Great Lakes Fishing club in the 1970s. Our most important update along the way was our recognition in the 1980s that fish needs to be frozen to kill potential parasites, most specifically broadfish tapeworm, although a genus of round worms called Anasakis is also prevalent in coastal fish including wild salmon, various cod species, rockfish, and halibut.

Our original directive to freeze fish at 0°F for at least 48 hours was based on advice from Minnesota Sea Grant and Jeffrey Gunderson’s book Fixin’ Fish, a publication that helped revolutionize the way we care for the catch. We’ve been offering that instruction for all this time and so far as we know no one has been infected from following those instructions. Most home freezers can produce temperatures just below the 0°F mark, perhaps down to about -10°F. But you should use a freezer thermometer to be sure.

Digging online one sees a host of suggestions about eliminating parasites. Some sources simply ignore the topic. Others recommend that fish just needs to be frozen, without any temperature instruction. And many parrot our instruction by saying to freeze fish for at least 48 hours, but without mention of temperatures.

The final arbiters on the topic are the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and the Canadian Food Inspection Agency. They suggest a more stringent regime than the original Sea Grant instruction, saying fish should be frozen at -4°F for at least 7 days, or for 15 hours at a blast-freezer temperature of -31°F. An alternative is to simmer fish in water (or a pickling solution) to an internal temperature of 145°F and hold it there for at least 15 seconds. Or just simmer fish for 5 to 8 to 10 minutes until you can pierce it with a fork.

It’s best to consider the best science presently available when you pickle fish.

In-Fisherman Pickled Fish with White Wine

Ingredients:

• 1.5 pounds filleted fish
• 1 cup of salt per 1 quart of water
• 3 or 4 cups of white vinegar, divided
• 1 or 2 red onions sliced thin (optional sliced bell peppers)
• 1 cup of sugar
• 1/2 cup of sweet white wine like Moscato
• 1/4 lemon
• 1.5 to 2 tablespoons of pickling spices (McCormick)

Instructions:

• Cut the filleted fish (about 1.5 pounds) into 1-inch pieces.
• In a glass jar, mix 1 quart of water with 1 cup of pickling salt to make a salt brine to cover the fish for 48 hours (refrigerated).
• Drain and rinse the brined fish in cold water, pat dry and place back into a glass jar. Pour in enough white vinegar (5 percent acidity) to cover the fish for another 48 hours (refrigerated).
• Drain and loosely pack fish in pickling jars, one layer of fish followed by a layer of sliced onion, alternating until the jar is almost full.
• Make a pickling brine by boiling for 5 minutes the combination of 1 cup of sugar in 2 cups of vinegar plus 1/2 cup of white wine and 1.5 to 2 tablespoons of pickling spices along with a squeeze of lemon (and add the lemon). Refrigerate the brine until cool and pour enough in each pickling jar to cover the fish.
• Refrigerate for 7 days, although one can start sneaking a sample at day 3 or 4.

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