How to clean the sterlet?

Few people are not familiar with the technology of cutting and cleaning most types of sea or river fish. But how to clean the sterlet, not everyone knows, since it belongs to the sturgeon, which differs from other fish in the structure of the body. And this implies that the methods for its preparation will also be slightly different. In fact, the sterlet is butchered in the same way as the cleaning of its closest relatives, which include sturgeon, bester, stellate stellate and beluga. What is the essence of this procedure and how do these fish differ from the rest?

Features of sturgeon fish that affect the way they are cooked

Unlike other fish species, sturgeons do not have scales all over their bodies. But they have skin covered with a layer of mucus, as well as several spiky keratinous formations located along the body on the back and sides. People call them “bugs”. Another feature of this species of fish is their lack of bones inside the body. Through their spine, consisting of cartilage, a kind of vein is stretched, called a screech, which must be removed during cutting.

Sterlet is a fish, which is a delicacy. It is used to prepare the most delicious dishes. How such a food turns out to be healthy and tasty depends on compliance with certain rules of cleaning and butchering technology. When buying a sterlet, it is usually still alive, so you need to put it in the freezer for a while. In this way, she can be killed, and her entrails in a frozen state will be easier to gut. Before cleaning, fish should be removed from the freezer and put in water to partially defrost.

To sterlet can be used to prepare any dish, you must perform the following steps.

Use a sharp knife to cut hard plates ("bugs") on the body of the fish along with a strip of skin.
Putting it on your back, cut the abdomen from the base of the head to the tail.
To get all the insides and remove blood clots from the spine, washing the cavity in which it was all with water.
Make two incisions in the spine near the head and tail and through the holes formed, remove the screech by gently pulling it at one end.
After processing the carcass of the fish with boiling water, remove the skin from it.
Remove the gills and rinse the peeled sterlet in cold water.

Tip
Using a knife, cut it away from you and so that the path of the blade does not pass through the places where your hands are.

Some nuances of sturgeon cleansing

Although the above sequence of work does not seem complicated, still before you clean the sturgeon or sterlet, you should consider a number of important points regarding the cutting of this type of fish.

Depending on the dish you are going to cook, the head is either separated or left.
The skin also does not have to be removed, as it will lag behind the body during the heat treatment.
If the fish are going to be fried, it is advisable to remove the vertebral cartilage from it.
When you take out the insides, make sure that the gall bladder does not burst, since the liquid leaking from it, spilling on the meat, can ruin its taste.
Do not rush to throw away everything that was separated during the cleaning of the fish, as some of this can be used to prepare other dishes.

Indeed, the last recommendation is well founded. For example, caviar may be inside the sterlet you have purchased. You, of course, will take it from there, but you hardly want to throw it away. It just needs to be removed from the shell and salted, and after a while it can be used to prepare pastes, casseroles or mincemeats. Similarly, milk can also be used if they are in some kind of fish.

Tip
Use milk as quickly as possible, because if they lie for a while in the open air, they will get an unpleasant taste. This is due to the oxidation of fat, which is rich in this product.

If you removed the cartilage from it during the process of cutting the sterlet, then they can also be involved in the preparation of some dishes. But before that they are boiled until they become soft. In cases where there is a lot of fat inside, be sure to separate it and rinse. This useful product is used as one of the ingredients for fish cakes. Even cut strips of skin with bugs can be useful in culinary work. A good broth is made from them, which is used to prepare aspic fish or fish soup.

Separately, it is worth talking about the benefits of vizigi extracted from the spine of fish. This rope-like sturgeon internal organ also found its place in culinary art. But the natural question arises: why did you have to pull it out when cutting fish? The fact is that only the outer shell is edible in vizig. And what it is filled with inside cannot be eaten at all, since this substance can be poisoned, so it’s very dangerous to cook any dish from sterlet or other fish of the sturgeon family without removing it. But when the viziga is cleared of its internal contents and washed with water, then it can be made into a filling for pies. It is also well stored in dried form, which allows you to use it much later, when you already forget what the sterlet from which you extracted it tasted.

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