Home-Canned Fish in Tomato Sauce
This is the second way to put up small river fish, and it differs from canning in oil by more than taste. Instead of plain fat there is a tomato sauce with carrot and onion, and along with it citric acid goes into the jar — and that is what makes the contents more acidic than in the oil version.
The difference is not cosmetic. Home canning is dangerous precisely because the environment inside is oxygen-free and low in acid; the acid weakens that second condition. It does not make the jar sterile — the rule about cold storage and about a bulging lid applies just the same — but the tomato version is a little calmer on that front than the oil one.
The fish has to be small: roach, crucian carp, silver bream, rudd, small bream. The very fish that is awkward to clean because of the bones and tedious to fry one by one. Five hours at 170–180 °C soften those bones completely.
The same catch can be put up in oil instead of tomato — that is Home-Canned River Fish in the Oven. And if the fish is large, it does not need canning at all: then it is Whole Baked Bream in the Oven.
Caloric content: 190kcal
Prepare and marinate the fish
Clean the fish, remove the innards along with the dark membrane, cut off the fins and heads. Rinse, cut into pieces, sprinkle with the salt, sugar and citric acid and leave for 15–20 minutes.
Fry the vegetables
Cut the carrot into thin strips and the onion into half-rings. Fry them in hot oil until soft but not browned — they will finish cooking on their own over five hours in the oven.
Make the sauce and sterilise the jars
Add the tomato paste and a little salt to the fried vegetables, mix well and taste. Meanwhile sterilise the half-litre jars and lids in whatever way you usually do.
Pack in layers
Put the peppercorns and coriander seeds in the bottom of each jar. Then layer it up: fish — vegetables in tomato — fish again, right to the top. Pour 50 ml of oil into each jar.
Cook 4–5 hours and seal
Cover the jars with lids, stand them in a large pot and pour in water up to the shoulders. Cook in the oven at 170–180 °C for four to five hours, then seal them tightly, turn them upside down and wrap them until cool.
Notes
- The sauce proportion is adjustable. The source says so directly: sugar, salt and acid are matched to your own tomato, because pastes differ in thickness and acidity. The quantities given are a working guide, worth tasting before the sauce goes into the jars.
- Salt, sugar and acid go onto the fish, not into the sauce. The fish is sprinkled with them and left for 15–20 minutes: in that time it takes up the marinade rather than merely being smeared with it.
- Fry the vegetables until soft, not brown. Browned carrot and onion turn dark and faintly bitter over five hours in the oven.
- Alternate the layers. Fish — vegetables — fish — vegetables: the sauce belongs between the pieces, not as a cap on top. Otherwise the fish at the bottom sits in oil alone.
- Jars in a pot of water up to the shoulders. The water evens out the heat and keeps the glass from cracking under the oven's direct heat — the same role the tray of water plays in the oil recipe.
Storage — the same as for the oil version
The source advises a dark, cool place. We insist on something stricter: the refrigerator, three to four months, and any jar with a bulging lid or an off smell goes in the bin untasted. An oven at 180 °C does not give industrial-grade sterilisation — that needs 120 °C under pressure, that is, a pressure canner. The acidic tomato helps here, but it does not replace cold.
Recipe and photos — kolizhanka.net.ua
