If you've never tried pickling fish at home, you will be pleasantly surprised  at how easy it is--and what a delight a freshly pickled fish is to eat.

The size, fat content, and flesh of herring make them especially well-suited for pickling, and they are the most common kind of pickled fish sold commercially. Other commercially pickled seafood include salmon, haddock, oysters, sardines, eels, shrimp, and clams--but such products are usually sold only as specialty items in small local or ethnic markets.

While the kind of fish pickled commercially are limited, any fish can be pickled. Northern pike is perhaps one of the best game fish for pickling. Suckers are very good, and even carp are tasty when pickled. The type of fish you use matters only in chunk-style pickling, in which case you should use only thin-skinned, small-boned varieties of fish.

If you try to make a herring-type pickled product with other kinds of fish, various characteristics of the product will be different. Home-pickled fish may not have the same taste or "mouth feel" as that sold commercially. It may be firmer, drier, or have a different color or taste. You may like it more or less than commercially pickled fish--the point is that you shouldn't expect it to be exactly the same.

A Note of Caution

Some people think that pickled fish can be preserved for longer periods of time if they heat-process the jars in a boiling water bath or use a pressure canner. But boiling water bath or pressure canning of a high-acid and high-sugar product like pickled fish will result in a caramelized, soft-textured and potentially bitter final product. Heat-processing pickled fish is not recommended.

Main Ingredients

Fish
It is best to use high-quality frozen fish to ensure that any parasites in the fish are destroyed. If you freeze it yourself, keep it frozen for at least four days. Commercially frozen fish may be thawed and used right away.

Also, the type of fish used will affect the texture and color of the final pickled product. Fish species differ in bone size and skeletal structure, flesh color or pigmentation, fat content, the location of  fat in the tissues, muscle size, length of muscle, and the quantity of muscle.

Water
Good quality drinking water should be used to make all brine and spice mixtures. Avoid using "hard" water--especially water high in iron, calcium, or magnesium. The presence of these metals in the pickling solution may cause bitter flavors in the pickled fish. If you must use hard water, treat your brine by boiling, cooling, and then filtering it through several layers of filter paper, such as coffee filters, to remove any precipitate that forms before using it for pickling.

Vinegar
Use distilled (white) vinegar that is clear, without foreign odors or flavor, and has a guaranteed acetic acid content of at least five percent. The use of vinegar (acetic acid) at the recommended levels will help prevent bacterial growth in the final product. Cider or other fruit vinegars may be used to pickle fish, but the acid content of fruit vinegars is more variable than white vinegar, and fruit flavors and pigments in these vinegars may give the final pickled fish product an off-flavor and color.

Salt
Use only pure, high-grade granulated pickling or canning salt. The salt used in pickling fish should have low concentrations of calcium, iron, and magnesium because, as mentioned above, the presence of these ions may cause bitter flavors as well as undesirable color changes in the pickled fish. For similar reasons, do not use sea salt, iodized salt, or regular table salt.

Sugar
Table (cane or beet) sugar is recommended as the sweetening agent in the pickling solution. You may substitute corn syrup for some of the sugar, but be aware that it might add a slight corn flavor and that the sweetness level is more difficult to control. If corn syrup is used, you will have to experiment with the quantity necessary to achieve the desired effect and flavor.

--Excerpted from "Home Pickling of Fish," by David A. Stuiber and Mary Mennes. For a free copy of the printed brochure, email your mailing address to Linda Campbell at    linda@seagrant.wisc.edu