Crucian Carp in Sour Cream
Ingredients
2 servings
- Crucian carp (120–150 g each) 6
- Full-fat homemade sour cream 1.5 cups (300 g)
- Butter 50 g
- Rock salt ½ tsp (3 g)
- Black (or mixed) peppercorns 8–10
- Wheat flour for dredging
Step-by-step recipe
Preparing the fish
I don’t like this dish made with large fish. Of course, the fish will bake and cook through, but the flavor the sour cream gives during baking will just “spread” over the surface of the fish instead of soaking in. That’s why it’s better to use small crucian carp, the “palm-sized” or “just over palm-sized” ones, as they say.
Scale the crucian carp thoroughly, without missing any spots. Whether to trim the fins is up to you; by and large, they don’t get in the way.
Slit open the bellies, remove the guts and carefully remove the gills. Rinse the fish under running water.
Pat the fish completely dry with paper towels. This is important, otherwise there will be too much batter on the dish, and the fish should have a thin baked crust. In a mortar, combine ½ tsp of rock salt (3 g) and 8–10 black (or mixed) peppercorns. Grind the spices. Sprinkle the fish with the salt and pepper mixture, literally rubbing it into them, including the heads, the belly cavity and where the gills were. Put the fish on a plate and let them sit for 15–20 mins.
Frying
Dredge the fish thoroughly in wheat flour. Since the fish have been wiped dry, not much flour will stick to them, but they will turn almost white, and that’s how it should be.
Melt the butter in a large frying pan. Note: real butter, not a “spread” or the trendy “light” butters based on vegetable fats. Set aside ½ tsp of butter and use it to grease the bottom and sides of the baking dish for the fish. Fry all the crucian carp one by one on both sides until they have a beautiful, ruddy golden crust. If the fish aren’t fully cooked through, don’t worry: frying is only the start of the cooking. The fried crust is very important; in the end it largely defines the main flavor of the dish.
Unlike vegetable oil, butter tends to “burn”, so fry the fish in it carefully, without rushing things by turning up the heat under the pan. If you fry the fish in several batches, it’s worth using fresh butter for each new batch.
Baking in sour cream
Place the fried crucian carp in the buttered baking dish. The fish should be laid in a single layer, not piled up. It’s fine if the tail of one fish covers part of another in places.
In very old cookbooks, the recipe for crucian carp in sour cream is very simple, with no extra ingredients. Modern recipes usually add fried onions, fried or baked potatoes, butter, a sprinkling of breadcrumbs or even cheese, and herbs. To my taste, all of that is completely superfluous. If you like, just make fried potatoes and plenty of fried onions as a side dish. But use them for serving, without adding them to the dish itself.
Next comes the climax. Take the very best rich, fresh homemade sour cream. I’ll say right away: don’t add too much. For this many crucian carp, 1–1.5 cups of good thick sour cream (200–300 g) is enough.
Using a spoon, carefully spread all the sour cream over the fried fish, trying not to miss any spots. Let the fish sit in the sour cream for 10–15 mins so that it “spreads” a little between them. No spices are needed. The most you can add is a very little melted butter, or just a few pieces of butter on top of the fish and sour cream. And even that only if the sour cream isn’t rich enough.
Preheat the oven to 230–240 °C. Put the dish with the fish into the oven. Since there is quite a lot of fish and sour cream, it will take a good while for the sour cream to come to a boil. From the moment it starts to bubble, the fish bakes for about 30 mins. During this time the sour cream loses moisture and the crucian carp get a beautiful, delicious crust. If the sour cream is rich enough, a little fat will collect at the bottom of the dish, and it makes a perfectly good sauce.
If your oven bakes unevenly, go by your own experience and lower or raise the temperature and adjust the time. It’s hard to give specific advice here. I remember that in my childhood the baking tray with the fish was simply put into the wood-fired stove and pulled out every 5 mins to check.
Serving
Transfer the finished fish to a large plate. If you decided to add a side dish (baked potatoes, fried onions, herbs), just arrange it around the fish.
If you like, drizzle with a little of the liquid from the baking dish. You can sprinkle the fish with a pinch of finely chopped parsley.
Serve the dish only hot, don’t let it cool down. And one more thing: don’t forget that crucian carp is, after all, a fish with small bones, so be careful. As a side dish, I recommend baked potatoes with rosemary.
Calories and macros
965 kcal
Serving ≈ 300 g
- Protein43 g18% of kcal
- Fat85 g80% of kcal
- Carbs5 g2% of kcal
100 g322 kcalProtein 14.3 gFat 28.5 gCarbs 1.5 g
Calculated from the recipe ingredients, excluding salt and spices. Data: USDA and Matvaretabellen.
How did you like this recipe?
To Get It Right
Which crucian carp to buy
Fresh small fish, 120–150 g each, “palm-sized”. You don’t have to catch them yourself: chilled crucian carp is sold in almost any big supermarket. In large fish, the sour cream flavor won’t soak into the flesh.
Which sour cream you need
Rich, thick, fresh homemade sour cream, easy to find at a local market. Store-bought sour cream, especially the “modern” kind, only ruins the dish. If your sour cream isn’t rich enough, add a little melted butter.
Why pat the fish dry
So that very little flour sticks to the fish and, after frying and baking, you get a thin crust rather than a layer of batter. The salt and pepper are rubbed into the fish once it’s dry.
No extra spices
Apart from salt and pepper before frying, no spices are needed, neither in the sour cream nor on top. One reader cooked two fish with spices and two without to check: the spices turned out to be superfluous.
Have your own trick for this recipe?
Questions and answers
How long to bake crucian carp in sour cream in the oven?
About 30 minutes at 230–240 °C, counted from the moment the sour cream starts to boil. The sour cream takes a while to come to a boil, so the dish spends longer in the oven overall.
How to cook crucian carp in sour cream in a frying pan?
Fry the fish as in the recipe, pour the sour cream over them right in the pan, cover with a lid and simmer over low heat for 15–20 minutes. You won’t get an oven-baked crust, but the flavor will be close.
What is the classic (old-fashioned) recipe for crucian carp in sour cream?
In very old cookbooks it’s just crucian carp, sour cream, salt, pepper and fat for frying. Onions, potatoes, breadcrumbs and cheese don’t go into the dish itself: if you like, serve fried onions and potatoes on the side.
Can you bake crucian carp in sour cream without frying?
Better not. The fried crust largely defines the main flavor of the dish, and the fish don’t have to be cooked through in the pan: they finish in the oven.
How to cook crucian carp so there are no bones?
You can’t get rid of the small bones of crucian carp completely, so eat carefully. If you like, before salting, make frequent shallow cuts along the sides every 3–5 mm: the small bones will soften during frying.