Herring Salad with Potatoes, Apple and Capers

Name: Herring Salad with Potatoes, Apple and Capers
Prep time: 30 min
Cook time: 15 min
Total time: 45 min
Cuisine: European
Ingredients: Herring 1; Carrot 1; Green onion 1-2 sprigs; Garlic 1-2 cloves; Olive oil 50 ml (1 tbsp for frying the carrot, the rest for the dressing); Capers 1 tbsp (10 g); Apple 1; Potatoes 3-4; Parsley 3-4 sprigs; Spices: salt, pepper, curry to taste; Lemon juice 1 tsp

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45 mins

For some reason I remember a line from Bulgakov’s novel, spoken by the character Lariosik, and the reply of Lieutenant Myshlaevsky:

“I don’t actually drink vodka.”
“Excuse me, but how are you going to eat herring without vodka? I absolutely don’t understand!”

For “our people,” herring is appetizer number one with strong drinks, an undeniable postulate. A zakuska is food served at the start of a meal, before the main dish, and usually eaten along with spirits. In fact, the peculiarity of our national feast is that the whole meal very often consists of nothing but appetizers. They come in all kinds: cold, hot and even iced. In the past we served salted and pickled mushrooms, vegetables, caviar, and of course salted fish, as well as various cold cuts and sliced fish. Even earlier, pies served as appetizers: the famous rastegai, and kulebyaka with kasha and mushrooms or sturgeon.

Now everything is much simpler: stock sandwiches, squash caviar or the regular kind, sliced sausage of unknown origin, and processed cheese. But anyone will tell you that herring is the most important appetizer of all.

At feasts we also like to follow drinks with salads. The variety of salads is simply astonishing. A salad is a mix of various foods: vegetables, meat, mushrooms, herbs. All the ingredients are cut fairly small and the salad is dressed. The dressing is most often vegetable oil or mayonnaise. A salad has to be made right before serving, so you can’t prepare it ahead.

Since childhood I’ve remembered that herring can be eaten any way you like. You can simply peel off the skin, cut it up, sprinkle with green onion and pour over some vegetable oil. And if you add a few potatoes boiled in their skins – you get a great supper. Herring can be made into the famous forshmak or into herring under a fur coat: cover the cut fish with onion, boiled potato and carrot, add eggs and an apple (many people leave out the apple, which is a mistake), then beets on top and a thick layer of mayonnaise.

But if you let your imagination run, you can make many tasty cold salads from perfectly available vegetables, herring and simple vegetable-oil dressings. Salads in southern Italy are made roughly this way, with salted fish, more often anchovies, though a salad with herring is not rare either.

More with herring

Herring Under a Fur Coat Salad

1 h 30 min

Vinegret with Herring (Beet and Potato Salad)

1 h

Chopped Herring Forshmak with Butter

30 min

Herring Appetizer on Toasted Bread

30 min

Herring Appetizer with Onion

20 min

More herring recipes

Ingredients

2 servings

Herring 1
Carrot 1
Green onion 1-2 sprigs
Garlic 1-2 cloves
Olive oil 50 ml (1 tbsp for frying the carrot, the rest for the dressing)
Capers 1 tbsp (10 g)
Apple 1
Potatoes 3-4
Parsley 3-4 sprigs
Spices: salt, pepper, curry to taste
Lemon juice 1 tsp

Step-by-step recipe

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Herring

Choosing herring is a whole art. Try not to buy herring sold on the street from a bucket. It’s better to buy it at the same trusted place. The fish should be undamaged, glossy and free of dents. The back of a good herring is dark blue-black. The belly and sides are silvery. No reddish liquid should ooze from the fish. And of course it should smell spicy and “herringy,” not like stinking fresh fish. When they weigh your herring, don’t be shy about pinching off a little piece from the back right behind the head and tasting it. Or pull off a side fin. With time you’ll get the knack.
Clean the herring and cut it into boneless fillets. I clean herring on an ordinary newspaper, which absorbs the moisture. With a sharp knife I make a shallow lengthwise cut from head to tail along the back. Then I peel off all the skin with my fingers, starting at the head, and cut off and discard the head and the tip of the tail. With the same knife I cut off the belly, no more than 5 mm from the very bottom. I pull out the innards and scrape out the dark membrane lining the cavity with the knife. If there’s a lot of liquid and “extra” inside, you can wipe it with an ordinary napkin.
Then I grab the sticking-out backbone where the head was with my left hand and tear the fillet off the backbone with the fingers of my right. All that’s left is to pick out the bones. You get two boneless herring fillets. The whole procedure takes 5 minutes at most.
Cut the herring fillets crosswise into pieces 6-8 mm wide.

Vegetables

Fry the carrot until soft. Peel the carrot, cut it into small cubes and fry in 1 tbsp of olive oil over medium heat, stirring, until soft. Set the carrot aside to cool.
Finely chop the green onion and parsley. Use only the green part of the onion. You can also chop the white part into the salad, but the green looks nicer, so it’s up to you.
Bake the potatoes and cut them into slices. For herring salad the potatoes need to be baked or boiled in their skins until soft. Cool and peel them. Cut each potato in half lengthwise and slice thinly, in fairly large slices, about the same size as the herring pieces.
Slice the apple and sprinkle with lemon juice. Peel the apple, cut it into thin slices, sprinkle with 1 tsp of lemon juice and toss. This keeps the apple from darkening through oxidation.

Dressing and assembly

Mix the salad. In a large bowl, combine the potatoes, herring, carrot and capers. Add salt and stir.
Add the sliced apple, parsley and green onion. Season with ground black pepper.
Make the dressing and dress the salad. Crush the garlic cloves in a mortar, add a pinch of curry powder, a knife tip’s worth. Pour the remaining olive oil into the mortar and grind to a smooth paste. Pour the dressing over the herring salad and toss.

Serving

Serve the salad right away or let it stand. The first option is to start eating immediately. But I recommend putting the herring salad in the fridge for a couple of hours so it soaks up the dressing.
And then you can begin. You’ll like this herring salad.

Calories and macros

685 kcal

Serving ≈ 480 g

Protein18 g11% of kcal
Fat40 g54% of kcal
Carbs57 g35% of kcal

100 g143 kcalProtein 3.9 gFat 8.3 gCarbs 11.9 g

Calculated from the recipe ingredients, excluding salt and spices. Data: USDA and Matvaretabellen.

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