Bream Baked in Salt with Scales On, with Roasted Lemon

Two kilograms of salt for a kilogram-and-a-half fish looks like a mistake in the list. It isn't: the salt here isn't a seasoning, it's a casing. It bakes into a crust, inside which the bream cooks in its own steam at an even temperature from all sides — roughly the way it would in a clay oven.

The scales aren't removed, and that's the main thing people skip out of habit. The scales, together with the skin, are exactly the barrier that keeps the salt from reaching the meat: the fish comes out not salty, just fish. Clean it, and the crust will salt the carcass all the way through.

Bream wasn't chosen by accident. It's bony and a bit dry, which is why it usually loses to carp and pike-perch on a baking tray in the oven. In salt, it wins: it's almost impossible to dry it out here.

Bream dries out fast in the oven, and a salt crust is only one fix for that: bream baked in layers with vegetables keeps it moist with a vegetable bed, while bream in a roasting bag with vegetables simply traps the steam inside.

Caloric content: 105kcal

Notes

• Don't touch the scales. This isn't a shortcut — it's a condition of the recipe. Without the scales, the salt will get into the meat and the fish can't be saved.
• Always remove the gills. They give off bitterness, and once the carcass is baked inside the crust there's no way to rinse it out.
• The salt needs to be coarse. Fine "Extra" salt fuses into a glassy shell that salts the fish through the skin and, instead of cracking under a hammer, shatters into shards.
• Lightly moisten the salt. A handful of water per kilogram and the crust holds its shape. Dry salt crumbles off the sides even before the oven.
• The bones in the salt crust don't go anywhere. The salt crust solves dryness, not the bream's boniness — those are two different problems, and it only solves the first.
• Roast the lemons alongside. Whole, right on the same tray. After the oven, cut them open, sprinkle with a pinch of sugar, and mash — that's the sauce, and nothing else is needed.

Questions and Answers

How much salt does the fish need?

About a kilogram of salt for every 750 grams of fish: a kilogram-and-a-half carcass takes two kilograms. The crust should cover the fish completely, with no gaps.

Won't the fish be over-salted?

No, as long as you don't remove the scales or cut into the skin. The salt stops at the scales; only heat passes through them into the meat.

How long to bake bream in salt?

An hour at 200 °C for a kilogram-and-a-half carcass. Add ten minutes for every additional half kilogram.

How do you crack the crust without a hammer?

With the blunt side of a heavy knife or a rolling pin. Strike once, hard, along the back — the crust splits off in one whole piece rather than crumbling.

Recipe and step-by-step photos — kolizhanka.net.ua.