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Classic marinated herrings

No Christmas party is complete without traditional matured herrings. Get started well in advance, and your herrings will be ready by December.
In this recipe, the brine is the classic version, but you can vary the seasoning to suit the season. It’s exciting to experiment with everything from flavourful vegetables to fresh herbs and whole dried spices throughout the different seasons.

The process for making traditional matured herring begins by rinsing the freshly caught herring thoroughly in water. The heads are then cut off, but the fish are not gutted. The headless herring are then layered with salt in a barrel, and the maturing process begins. The herring’s juices dissolve the salt, so that the herring eventually lies in what is known as a brine. Here, the herring must mature for at least 6 months and up to 2 years, provided they are stored at 2–5 degrees. The matured herring are now ready to be soaked and marinated, unless you’re a hardy soul with robust taste buds and fancy eating the herring straight from the barrel.

Most of the old-fashioned matured herring we buy in Denmark is not Danish, but either Norwegian or Icelandic. These herring belong to a larger, meatier and fattier variety (20% fat compared to the Danish variety, which is 12–15%). The fatty, meaty fillets from the Icelandic and Norwegian herring strains absorb the flavours of the brine well whilst offering a delicious texture, and it is precisely these qualities that many of us appreciate when eating marinated herring.

Ingredients

Herring
12 large herring fillets (6 whole herrings)
Preserving liquid
300 ml white vinegar (or apple cider vinegar)
200 ml water
250 g sugar
1 tsp black peppercorns
2 tsp mustard seeds
2 tsp coriander seeds
12 whole cloves
3 bay leaves
1 small chilli
2 small onions
1 2.5-litre preserving jar

See video guides here

Instructions

Rinsing the herring filter

You can skin and fillet the mature herring yourself or ask your fishmonger to do it for you. Then soak the fillets in a large bowl of ice-cold water. Start by rinsing the fillets in the cold water and then leave them to stand for about an hour. You can do this whilst the brine for the herrings is coming to the boil and is left to cool. The brine will draw further salt out of the fillets, so it is not necessary to soak them for longer than about an hour.

Preserving liquid

Place all the ingredients for the pickling brine, except the onions and chilli, in a saucepan and simmer gently for 15 minutes. When you take the saucepan off the heat, add the thick onion rings and the chilli. Then leave the brine to cool.

Place the herrings in a sterilised preserving jar, pour the cooled brine over them, place in the fridge, and leave the herrings to marinate in the brine for around 2 weeks before serving.
It will keep for at least 3–4 weeks, covered with this brine, in the fridge.