Pickled Salt Cured Sardines

Hi.

I've been reading and enjoying Instructables for quite some time, but never tried to create any ible before, despite doing some projects and recipes here and there. So for my first one I choose a recipe that my family like to make since I don't know when, my mom always make them for my grandpa's birthday, he loves them.

I'm not sure if that's the right title or the name for this recipe, if I'm not mistaken those are the kind of sardines used in rollmops.

Anyway, they are delicious and easy to make, it just requires some time. You ought to try them with some Schwarzbrot and beer!

Ingredients

• 14 sardines, of course. Try to get them fresh, but the frozen ones are just fine too. Since I live more than 3.000 Km away from the sea and I'm super lazy I bought them frozen and cleaned.
• Some unrefined sea salt
• 2 1/2 cup alcohol vinegar
• 2 1/2 cup water
• 2 onions (medium size)
• some pepper
• bay leaves
• optionally you can add any other kind of seasoning that you like

Utensils

• Large plastic bowl
• Pan
• a good knife
• Cutting board

A good music playlist \o

That's probably the most boring part, and that's why I bought them cleaned.

You'll have to remove the head, the underside, the entrails and all the scales.

At this point they should look like the one in the first picture, now we need to cut them open to remove the spine.

You can remove it by using your finger to get under the spine (starting from the head side) and then pulling it out, it's easy. Removing the tail is optional, sometimes I like to leave it there just for the looks, we won't eat them anyway, but it's up to you.

Get your bowl, then start layering the sardines, salting each one generously (I should have added a little bit more salt to mine), just try to not over salt them, unless you like soime really salty stuff!

With all of them nicely salted, close the bowl and put it on the fridge for at least 24 hours.

After 24 hours we can make our vinegar pickle.

Clean and slice the onions. You can use red onions too, but then your pickle will have a somewhat purple tone.

Put the water, the vinegar an onions on the pan, heat it up, when it starts to boil add the bay leaves, the pepper and any other seasonings. Stir as needed and let it boil for 5 minutes.

After that just turn off the heat and let it cool to room temperature, this might take some time.

Now you can also clean the sardines, just take each one and use a bit of running water to remove the excess of salt. So when the pickle is at room temperature you can put it on the bowl with the sardines and back on the fridge for a few more hours.

I try to wait 24 hours to grab one, but sometimes I just can't. Usually I like to eat them at dinner with a thick slice of brown bread and a glass of beer.

I hope that the steps are clear enough, if you have any questions let me know.