Homemade salted anchovies

A typical Ligurian recipe handed down over time. And one of the techniques of food preservation oldest and perhaps the one that offers the highest satisfaction.
Salted anchovies are a delicacy that you can use in your appetizers, or give more flavor to your dishes.
Just prepare once a year to have it available.

Method

First you must thoroughly clean the anchovies. Proceed to raise their heads and entrails in this way: broke the fish with hands detaching the head and pulling. This way you will see that will come away the entrails. Remember the fish should not be neither washed nor wet for any reason. Place them for a couple of hours in a colander mixed with 2-3 tablespoons of salt so as to remove the blood. Spread a layer of salt of about 1 cm. inside the jar, you’ll use to keep them, which must be clean and dry. Over the layer of salt created a compact layer of anchovies attached to one another, in this way: Place one anchovy at a time in the order with a head on one side and the second with the head where the first one has tail, to optimize space and not leave any holes between them.

Done the layer of fish, cover them with a generous layer of salt, always avoiding to leave holes to fill with salt.

Repeat the layers, one anchovy and one of salt in the same manner previously done almost down to the top of the jar, leaving about 2 – 3 cm from the end of the edge. The last layer must be salt that covers all without leaving holes. Place at this point above the last layer of salt a retina, a perforated cap or in any case a film that covers the content but which leave it to ventilate. Above this you need to put a weight, in ancient times and is the most widely used today, it used a heavy stone taken from the sea, otherwise you can safely put a bottle and a half liters of water. The jar with the salted anchovies must be kept on a plate, in a cool, dark, dry place for two months.

During this time you’ll have to go check every now and anchovies paying attention to a few tricks:

– Squashed fishes lose liquid that will overflow from the jar and leak into the dish under the pot. You will need to clean your plate and put it back in the pot.

– The brine produced could create air bubbles. In this case, you just shake the pot a bit to pick up the bubbles and then put the business as usual.

Salted anchovies, passed two months, will be ready and you can store up to two to three years. If the brine evaporates never leave the fish dry and add a brine made by you (water and salt in a saturated solution). Past two months served salted anchovies at your leisure.

 

With a fork, remove one by one the anchovies (what you need), open them in half, remove the central bone and rinse under tap water to remove the salt of the preserve.

When desalting and cleaning the fish care that fresh water (not a drop) does not go in the jar where they will remain preserved other otherwise anchovies may become moldy.