Caviar has always had a hold on me. It is a mysterious ingredient, almost otherworldy; the individual eggs look like jewels from an alien planet. Caviar tastes briny and vaguely floral, and the textural surprise of the pop in your mouth has led more than one writer to liken it to Pop Rocks for adults.
I’ve eaten all sorts of caviar, from spendy Osetra sturgeon caviar to our own California white sturgeon eggs, to Paddlefish roe (also known as “lumpfish”) to salmon ikura, to the wonderful little eggs from flying fish (tobiko), capelin and whitefish, which is a golden yellow. I’ve also eaten caviar from trout and salmon.
So when I caught a nice hen steelhead the other day and saw it was full of eggs, I knew I needed to make caviar. The eggs were just so pretty!
I’d read about a general method of making caviar in a book called The Philosopher Fish, which involves gently removing the eggs from the skein — the membrane holding them together — rinsing them, salting them and drying them. It seemed pretty easy, which alarmed me: How could something so mysterious be so easy to create? It didn’t seem fair.
I delved into some more research, and it is indeed that easy. The art comes in the details: How do you get the eggs out of the skein? How much salt? How long to brine or rub the eggs? What temperature do you store them at?
So I used an amalgam of the methods I’d read about. I brined the eggs for a half hour in the fridge. Then I ran the skein under hot tap water, which shrunk the membrane and let the eggs drop into a colander. I then returned the eggs to the brine for another 30 minutes. I rinsed them off and let them drain in the colander for 15 minutes. Then I packaged them into a clean glass jar in the fridge. Done!
I’ve since separated the eggs in an easier way: Run them over a cooling rack, membrane side up. Either method results in some egg loss, and the hot water trick can sometimes cook the eggs, which is no bueno.
Aren’t they the coolest things ever? I have a hard time not taking them out of the fridge just to look at them. The steelhead caviar is supposed to hold for 2 weeks in the fridge, but I doubt it’ll make it that long — we’ll eat it long before then.
I prefer my caviar straight, served in a special spoon, so you can linger over the qualities of this caviar versus that one; this is what the Russians do when they serve the three classic sturgeon caviars: Beluga, Sevruga and Osetra. In case anyone cares, I am particularly fond of Osetra, which is pretty close to our caviar made from California white sturgeon.
Remove from your mind the notion that the only good caviar comes from sturgeon.
The tobiko and masago you see in sushi restaurants is caviar from the flying fish and the capelin, a kind of herring. It really is like pop rocks. Whitefish caviar is even better, and is a beautiful canary color. Lumpfish is like a larger sturgeon caviar, but trout and salmon caviar is its own thing: large, luxurious, and slightly fatty — I saw thousands of minute fat droplets floating on the top of the brine when I made it.
When combined with a larger dish, caviar can become an accent that makes a good dish great.
I made a pasta dish with flaked steelhead meat last night, mixed with toasted pine nuts, parsley, shallots, olive oil, Meyer lemon juice — and a spoonful of steelhead caviar. The caviar’s color and pop really made the dish.
It also served well as a garnish for a simple Japanese dish I made two days ago, where I wrapped the steelhead in buttered foil with some rehydrated matsutake mushrooms, sake and lemon slices, then baked it for 20 minutes (Click for the full Japanese baked steelhead recipe).
Will this method work for other fish roes? I don’t see why not. I imagine the salting times and care you will need to dislodge the eggs will change, but the basic technique shouldn’t change. Do any of you make your own caviar? How do you do it? And how do you eat it?
- 1 full skein of steelhead, trout or salmon roe
- 1/2 cup kosher salt
- Mix the salt and 1 quart ice-cold water until the salt is all dissolved.
- Make sure the roe skeins are split, so you have an opening that the eggs can come out. Set up a cooling rack or something else with a wide mesh (chicken wire works, too) over a bowl. Take a roe skein and, with the membrane facing up work the eggs out through the rack. Perfectly ripe eggs will come off easily, unripe ones will require some force. Either way, you will pop some eggs in the process.
- ALTERNATE METHOD: Get the faucet running with warm water roughly 105°F to 115°F, or heat cool tap water to this temperature -- some people fear that hot tap water can add harsh minerals to their food. Either way works. Fill a metal or glass bowl with the warm water. Dunk a few skeins of roe at a time in the warm water. Gently massage the eggs out of the skeins with your fingers under the surface of the warm water. They will float away and sink. Discard the skeins.
- Have a fine-meshed sieve ready. Pour the strained eggs into the strainer to rinse them well with cold water. Pick out clumps or stray bits of membrane.
- Dunk the eggs in the brine for 5 minutes. Taste them and if they are salty enough for you, drain them again. You can brine for up to 30 minutes, but they will be very salty. My preferred brine time is 10 minutes. Spoon carefully into a clean glass jar and refrigerate for up to 2 weeks, but try to eat them within a week or they will start to get fishy.
This recipe works with both small and large-egged roes, such as those from herring and shad, trout, salmon or steelhead.
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I thought I had my caviar recipe down pat: Chum best, then coho, chinook, steelhead, sockeye and pinks in that order; mix one part salt to 4 parts cold water, brine for 10-15 minutes depending on taste, wash off the brine in a colander and jar the caviar. But the last time I made some coho caviar the taste was fine but the eggs seemed too dry, a lot stuck together and there didn’t seem to be enough oil in the mix. Did I wash the eggs too much or what else did I do wrong?
I thought I had my salmon caviar recipe down pat — brine in one part salt and four parts water for 10-20 minutes depending on how salty you like it, wash off the brine in cold water and jar — but the last time I made a batch of coho caviar it turned out to be somewhat dry. The taste was OK but some of the eggs stuck together and seemed to be less oily than they should have been. Did i wash them too much or did I make some other mistake?
Holger: Could just be the eggs themselves. I’ve had tacky eggs like that before.