Smoked Herring Recipe

Learn how to make this wonderful red herring dish for breakfast, lunch or dinner. Smoked red herring that is lightly seasoned and cooked up with herbs and spices. Definitely a must try for seafood lovers!

Course Dinner

Cuisine Caribbean

Prep Time 30

Cook Time 20

Total Time 50

Servings people

Calories 311kcal

Author Charla

Equipment

medium sized bowl
Spatula
frying pan/skillet

Ingredients

2 lb smoked red herring (907g)
3 tablespoon olive oil
1 medium onion chopped
4 garlic cloves minced
½ red bell pepper chopped
½ yellow bell pepper chopped
1 large tomato chopped
1 tablespoon tomato puree
1 tablespoon seafood seasoning
½ tablespoon fresh thyme stems removed
½ tablespoon chadon beni
1 teaspoon smoked paprika
1 teaspoon black pepper
½ scotch bonnet chopped
pink salt to taste, if needed

Instructions

Place the red herring in a large bowl and cover with boiling water.
Leave to soak for 1-2 hours or overnight to rid the salt content and to make the herring softer. During the given time, you can change the water a few times (use boiling water each time) to rid the excess salt to your desire.
When you are ready to use the herring, drain off and rinse with cold water.
Place the herring in a medium sized sauce and de-bone and break into small pieces, if you are using whole fish make sure to get remove the skin too.
Heat the olive oil in a medium sized frying pan/skillet on medium heat.
Saute the onion and garlic until soft and translucent.
Add the bell peppers and proceed to cook until they are soft (this will take a few minutes).
Add the tomato, tomato puree, chadon beni, thyme, seafood seasoning, smoked paprika, black pepper and scotch bonnet then stir and cook for a few minutes.
Fold in the red herring and continue to cook for 5 minutes until it is heated through.
After the given time, do a taste test and add pink salt, if needed.

Video

Notes

It is very important to use boiled water and not cold as this will remove the excess salt content quicker and soften the fish at the same time.

Keep an eye on the saltiness of the herring, change the way as frequent as needed. You can even boil the herring for 10-15 minutes after soaking it.

It is virtually impossible to find smoked herring that isn't salted and I don't have a alternative solution (just yet).

Any leftovers should be refrigerated for up to 2 days.

This recipe should be consumed in moderation and not daily.

Half a scotch bonnet gives the dish a slight kick to it, if you don't care for any heat simply omit it.

If you cannot get hold of chadon beni (culantro/spirit weed) then use cilantro/coriander instead.

Remember to do a taste test of the herring, just incase you need to add pink salt.

Nutrition