hi everybody is captain paul Peluso here lately we've been having a lot of herring around on the island on the north shore on the south shore and a lot of people asking me how we make that pickled herring my wife's going to show us later how we do what we do with a vinegar type of herring not that cream sauce that you buy in the store it's very good put our little special ingredients in there and today I got about another 10 herring this morning and I'm going to show you how to clean them descale them cut them into pieces we're going to make the salt brine soak them in a salt brine take them out get the pickling juices all ready and then put them in the jar so here we go I've just got a couple herring in his pocket here I kept them in salt water so when I come home they're nice and fresh and they're not hard so when I cut them it's easier to cut them and I'm going to just dump the water we've got a couple of big ones a couple small ones today what I like to do is just run the cold water on them keep them nice see they're still still a little pliable they were in there for a while so what I like to do is I take take the Harry you want to want to set it up one and I just take the knife and you go with the reverse on the scales the reverse way like up and the scales just come off I use cold water so that the fish does not you know start to cook itself inside and you want to take off all these little tiny colored scales this way you don't eat them in your pickling jar you do both sides see this little silver right here to see the colors on it is that neat you just make sure you get all and walk just like this real easy comes right off any knife will do not to be any special type of knife and you just want to get them all off on each fish okay so now I descaled all the fish I took off all the little tiny scales and now I'm going to fillet them I'm just going to basically take my knife which is over I'm going to make a cut right by the gills I'm just going to go right down the backbone of the fish you want to follow the backbone all the way down to the tail and just I just do this and cut that piece off then I flip it over do the same thing the other way there we go two filets real nice it's also good to have the garbage pail right in the F I take the guts goodbye now I'll show you what I like to do I just like to clean them up just a little bit this little part right here just cut off the junk nobody wants to eat that just put it in the garbage I'll get a little piece of the fin up here oops okay I'll just clean it up cut this little piece off over here now this part right here has a little bit of bones on it but it's okay the vinegar will dissolve them so it'll have that little crunch to it but it will be fine now all you really want to do here is make like like 1-inch pieces like I said like right there that's one that's too nice a little bite-sized pieces you can make them bigger whatever whatever you like if you like bigger pieces use bigger pieces and then I just put them in a ball and I do all the fish cut them all up pop them all in there and I'll rinse them off with cold water again in a strainer and then I'll be ready to put the salt into the water and we'll let them soak for a while that's it gets a little messy a good idea is to put some paper underneath your little cutting board here so that the blood doesn't go on the table and your wife gets mad at you and then you got to clean it all up so I do that I just fold it up when I'm done throw it right into garbage no fuss no muss I don't have to deal with it I don't get in trouble okay now I just like to rinse off the herring before we put them into this salt brine the more rinsing you can do on them the better off you are here's the bowl here's my bowl of chopped herring and I'm just going to put it in here and just rinse it off with cold water you always want to use cold water and just rinse them around get off all the impurities you know everything that's on the fish the extra blood and I'll mix it up a little bit get it off no big deal just rinse the fish make it so that each going be tasty fill it up with some water I put a little salt in there a lot of salt and ashes they're just regular sauce you know sea salt ha you want to make it really salty what this does is it it takes the impurities out of the fish it pulls it out and you let it sit overnight like in the refrigerator and I add a little more water in here mix it up you want to be like frosty you know like see how it's like cloudy and you just let it sit put the lid on it put it in the refrigerator okay here's my pairing from the other day now these guys have been sitting in the salt brine for over 24 hours which is good and I do the same thing I just put them in the in the colander and just rinse them off get all the salt out of them you know try to get as much as you can mix them up a little bit you get a little they get a little stiffer which makes it good when you eat it you want to you want a little crunch to it you know you want it to taste not soft and cushy but not too hard not firm so I just keep rinsing it rinse it really good and then what you're going to do is we're going to dry them off on a paper towel and then my wife is going to make the vinegar and the pickling spices and add them together cook them on the stove and then we will put them in the jar once the pickling spices cool you don't want to put it in hot otherwise you'll just cook the fish it'll be ruined we're just going to Pat these down dry them off try to soak up as much water as you can out of them you don't want the water to dilute the vinegar pickling spices so you take a couple paper towels put them onto paper towels and just Pat them down get them nice and dry so they absorb all the pickling juices and not the water that they were just rinsed in that's it just two just like that and then soon you're ready for the pickling