How to make the WORLD's BEST Pickled Fish! (You have got to try this)!

Hey everybody , Hunter Fisher , trapper trader , guide , scout , and interpreter and country cook here , Steve Hall saying , welcome back aboard the Miss Sheila yacht where we're cooking and cruising today .

We do a lot of wild game recipes and I know you guys love to hunt and I know you love to fish .

So I'm going to give you a recipe today that you can use Bass Croppie Blue Gill .

And this recipe comes from a , I guess a lot of folks up in northern Minnesota , Michigan , Wisconsin area that love pickled fish .

And in fact , they love pickled northern is their favorite .

So , what I did is I found a fish that has the same texture and about the same flavor as northern pike , which is tilapia .

And I've cut up a bunch of tilapia and a bowl here about a half a gallon .

I'm gonna make this in a gallon jar and this recipe takes about eight days to make .

So I know when you're thinking pickled fish , you're thinking , oh man , I wouldn't eat pickled fish , but you try it one time and you're gonna absolutely love it .

It's not like that slimy pickled herring stuff .

You get in a , in a deli , this stuff is out , it stands , it's got sugar and wine and , and vinegar and , and pickling spice and a lot of goodies .

And I'll show you exactly how it's made .

First we cut up about a half a gallon .

What I like to do with tilapia to cut this up is I like to cut off that little teeny brown streak or a little what I call a mud line .

I know it really shouldn't have one in tilapia because they are farm raised in tanks .

But I'm gonna cut these up in little pieces .

Now , you can buy them at either Walmart or Kroger's or your grocery store in bigger bags where you get several of them .

And I like to get the ones that are in the vac bags that come vacuum packed like this .

They're so much more fresh than the ones that are just kind of like flash frozen .

I'll do one more for you here .

Cut that little strip out and cut these in bite size pieces and what we're gonna do .

So we're gonna put this fish layered with salt and vinegar in a one gallon jar .

Now , you can take a pickle jar or plastic jar glass .

It doesn't matter that doesn't affect the taste of the fish at all .

So , what I'm gonna do here as I got my fish and I got my plastic jug .

It had some fish fry mix in it .

I use pickle jars .

I use all kinds of stuff .

We're gonna put a layer of fish and a layer of salt and we need one and one third cups of salt for this particular recipe because I'm gonna do a half a gallon of fish and a half a gallon of onions because this is actually gonna be fish and onions .

And I need my salt .

Salt , guys .

Where is my salt ?

I need my salt .

Oh , here we go .

Or salt ?

Thank you .

Thank you very much .

OK .

All right .

Well , we got one and one thirds cup of salt .

Now use canning salt or you can just use salt .

That doesn't have iodine in it .

That's what you want to use .

Put a little bit of fish all cubed up in here .

Then a little bit of salt and just do layers of fish and salt in there .

I might not have quite enough fish here to make a half a gallon .

But that's all right because we can go ahead and fill it the rest of the way up with onions because a lot of people like the onions better than they do the fish .

It has a delicious flavor .

All right , get the rest of our fish in there , then put the rest of our salt in there .

Now , we're gonna cover this entire mixture with vinegar , just regular white vinegar until it's only about two or three inches over the top of the fish .

Get this mixed in here .

And what we're doing is we're pickling this fish .

This is raw fish .

This is not cooked , it's pickled and it is so delicious .

It is absolutely unbelievable .

Now , this is all what you need for five days .

What you're gonna do is you're going to put this in the refrigerator just like this .

Keep it nice and cold in the fridge for five days .

Once a day , you take it out and just kind of slash it around like that because the salt will settle to the bottom .

Mix the salt back in the vinegar , let it set and put it back in the refrigerator for another day .

Don't touch it and don't get in a hurry .

It's got to be in there five days because it just turns it white and very firm .

Give it a little shake the next day , put it back in the refrigerator after five days .

It'll look something like this .

Now , here's one that's been in there about five days , like I said , and you can tell that the fish is very white and very firm .

What we're gonna do is we're gonna rinse this in the sink and we're gonna put it in an ice bath of water , put some water in there and a bunch of ice cubes and we're gonna let it sit for about an hour .

We'll do that right now .

All right , we got our fish rinsed and we threw away all that vinegar and salt that we soaked it in for five days .

That's no longer in here .

All we have is this white firm fish .

Now , we're gonna make this sweet and delicious and I'll show you how we're gonna do it .

First of all , we're gonna fill it with water or at least cover it with water and then we're gonna put some ice in there and then chill this down and we got it all packed in ice water and we're going to leave it in there for an hour .

It really firms the meat up good .

Why ?

That's getting cold .

Now , we're gonna make our mixture .

This is the good stuff .

I need some vinegar .

What we're gonna use here is about eight cups .

This is that same white vinegar that you cooked your or let your stuff cure in for about five days there for six .

And hey , this is such an easy recipe and it's worth waiting on .

It takes about eight days like I said to make it .

Ok , we got eight cups of vinegar in here and I measured out seven cups of sugar .

Just remember , eight and seven .

That's really easy .

We're gonna pour our sugar in there .

All this stuff is so good .

Then we need one third of a cup of pickling spice or one third of a box .

I should say this pickling spice has got all kinds of goodies in there , but we're going to take about a third of this box and put it down in there .

Now , we're gonna take this over to the stove .

Oh , wait , one more thing .

I gotta go get my little wine bottle .

I'll be right back here we go .

I almost forgot .

I like this white Ziff and Dale just about a , about a third of a cup in there .

Oh , and the flavors and the aromas that come up off this pot are absolutely delicious .

We're gonna put this on the stove and we're going to bring it to a boil .

Then we're going to reduce it to a simmer for about five minutes .

Then we're going to cool this mixture down in the refrigerator .

So it's completely cold .

Be right back .

All right .

Let me bring you back up to speed one more time .

We took this fish , raw fish and like I said , you can use Croppie tilapia , Northern Pike , Bluegill .

We cubed it up .

So we had a half a gallon save room for our onions .

We put it in a brine of salt and vinegar for five days , drained it , put it in ice water for an hour and now it is so firm .

It has the most delicious texture .

You just want to eat it right now .

Trust me , we're gonna put layers in here now of fish and then onions .

Once we get that filled up in here , we had our eight cups of vinegar , our seven cups of sugar , a little bit of that wine white ziff dale .

And about a third of box of pickling spice .

We brought it to a boil , we cooled it down , put it back in the refrigerator .

Now let's make our pickled fish in our jar .

We put layers of onions on top of fish .

Just kind of punch him right out there .

Put them on there .

Oh , this is so good .

I'm telling you once you make a batch of this , you will absolutely adore it .

And you talk about take this to the hunting camp and have the guys snack on it during a football game .

You just have your pickled fish .

You have your crackers alongside of that cold drink , whatever you're drinking again , just layers of onions and layers of fish for some reason , the onions go quicker than the fish because they're so sweet .

And again , I use sweet onions like sweet or any onions that are sweet that you can buy in the store .

All right , almost done here .

Pack them right down in there .

You don't have to load that bowl in loose .

You can load it in there .

Nice and packed in .

Perfect .

Seems like two big onions are about perfect .

Two full size onions sliced up and a half a jar of fish .

Now for the magic ingredient .

Mm Excuse me .

That is so sweet and delicious .

You have no idea .

See if I can make a mess here , but I I'm gonna get it in there either way .

There we go .

Oops , this is not working out .

There we go .

I got a mess , but that's all right .

OK .

All right .

Now we got our fish onions , fish onions all the way up .

We got our vinegar sugar spice all that in here .

We're gonna cap this off and you'll notice when you first put this together that in a little while this will all float to the top .

Come up about two inches off the bottom .

You'll have a tendency to want to uncap it and push it down .

You don't have to shake this up .

Just let it sit in the refrigerator .

The next day , you'll already be nibbling on some onions within about 2 to 3 days .

Stuff will start sinking .

When you see fish and onions sink , it's ready .

Pickled fish , try it .

You'll love it .

Is it the best pickled fish recipe in the world ?

If it ain't , it ought to be .

This is Steve Hall saying ?

Thanks a lot .

We'll see you next time .

Can't wait for this to be done .

I'm gonna pop it in the refrigerator .

Hey , everybody .

Thanks for watching .

Cooking with shotgun red .

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This is shotgun red saying thanks a lot .