British · Appetizers

Soused Herring

Herring fillets rolled and baked slowly in spiced vinegar, then left to go cold. Sharp, soft-boned, and a week in the fridge does them nothing but good.

45 min prep and cooking plus 14 hr cooling in the souse and maturing overnight 14 hr 45 min start to finish Serves 6 servings Easy
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Soused Herring

Photograph credit: Soused herring, served with potato salad by AnnSophieQ · CC BY-SA 2.0 · Flickr · this resized copy is shared under the same licence

Make Ahead and Storage

Refrigerated in their liquor for 7 days and better after two. Do not freeze.

Soused Herring: The Method

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  1. Lay the fillets skin down and season them with the salt and pepper.

  2. Scatter a little sliced onion over each, then roll each fillet from the head end and secure with a cocktail stick.

  3. Pack the rolls upright in a shallow ovenproof dish and scatter the remaining onion around.

  4. Bring the vinegar, water, sugar, bay, peppercorns, mustard seeds, allspice, chillies and salt to a simmer for 5 minutes.

  5. Pour the hot souse over the herring rolls — it should just cover them.

  6. Cover with foil and bake at 130°C / 265°F fan / 150°C / 300°F / gas 2 for 20 minutes.

  7. Take them out and let them cool completely in the liquor, 2 hours.

  8. Refrigerate 12 hours before eating.

  9. Eat them cold, with a little of the onion and liquor spooned over.

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A Few Pointers

  • Low oven, not the hob. It is what softens the pin bones.
  • Half vinegar, half water. Neat vinegar is inedible cold.
  • Cool them in the liquor and give them a night.

Behind the Recipe

Low and slow, in the oven, not on the hob. At 150°C / 300°F the vinegar softens the fine pin bones until they disappear entirely, which is what makes a soused herring pleasant to eat rather than an obstacle course; boiled hard on the stove, the flesh shreds before the bones give. The vinegar is cut with water roughly half and half — neat vinegar cooks the fish to a rubbery grey and is unpleasantly sharp when cold, and you cannot correct it afterwards.

What to Put Next to It

Brown bread and butter · Boiled potatoes · A cold beer

Questions About Soused Herring

How long does Soused Herring take to make?

25 minutes of preparation and 20 minutes of cooking, plus 14 hours of cooling in the souse and maturing overnight, so allow 14 hours 45 minutes from start to finish. The recipe serves 6.

Soused Herring Nutrition

No nutrition figures are given for this recipe: they cannot be worked out reliably from its ingredient list (some ingredient lines cannot be read). Why some recipes have none.

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Compiled by Turab

Checked by script for timings, diet labels and nutrition arithmetic. How the recipes are checked. Found a mistake? Tell us.

First published ; last changed .