Polish herring salad in sour cream with apple, pickle and onion
The Christmas Eve herring salad you make the day before: matjes herring soaked in milk to give up excess salt, a tart apple, brined pickled cucumber, scalded onion and a dressing of sour cream with a little mayonnaise, mustard and lemon. Two hours in the fridge is the minimum, overnight the ideal: the herring takes on the dressing, the onion mellows, the flavours settle.
Your own work in that: 20 min.
- Herring soaking 60 min
- Chopping and dressing 20 min
- Resting 120 min
Step by step
0 / 6 doneSoak the herring
Lift the fillets out of the oil or brine, rinse and cover with cold milk. Soak matjes from oil for 60 minutes, brined or barrel herring about 2 hours. Taste a piece: it should be salty like a snack, not like salt. If still too salty, change the milk and soak another half hour.
Ingredients: 400 g matjes herring fillets · 500 ml milk · 2 pcs apples · 3 pcs brined pickled cucumbers · 1 pcs onion · ½ bunch dill
TipSoaking in milk is the traditional way: it softens the saltiness and the fishy edge. Cold water works too, changed every half hour. Matjes in oil are usually mild; barrel matjes need longer soaking.
An hour in cold milkCut the herring
Pat the soaked fillets dry with paper towel and cut into 2 cm pieces. Run your fingers over them for bones; matjes sometimes keep fine ones along the belly line.
Dried, pieces of two centimetresScald the onion
Slice the onion into thin half-rings, put in a sieve and pour boiling water from the kettle over it. Drain and cool. Scalded, it loses its bite, won't dominate the salad and stays crisp.
TipRed onion needs no scalding: it is milder and gives colour. Ordinary yellow onion, unscalded, overwhelms the herring.
Half-rings, boiling water, drainApples and pickles
Peel the apples and cut into 1 cm dice, splashing with lemon juice at once. Squeeze the pickles and dice the same. Even dice: herring, apple and pickle should fit together on one fork.
Centimetre dice, apple in lemonMake the dressing
Mix the sour cream with the mayonnaise, mustard, the rest of the lemon juice, sugar and pepper. Salt is rarely needed: the herring and pickles bring enough. Taste the dressing before combining.
Ingredients: 200 g sour cream, 18 % · 2 tbsp mayonnaise · 1 tsp mustard · ½ pcs lemon, juice · 1 tsp sugar · ½ tsp black pepper
Sour cream, mayonnaise, mustard, lemon, sugarMix and chill
Combine the herring, apples, pickles and onion with the dressing and the chopped dill. Cover and refrigerate 2 hours, ideally overnight. Serve with dark rye bread or hot potatoes. Keeps 3 days in the fridge.
Two hours in the fridge, dill, bread
Before you start
In oil instead of cream
A dressing of 4 spoons of oil, a spoon of vinegar, a teaspoon of sugar and a teaspoon of mustard, onion in rings, no apple. The classic herring in oil; it keeps up to a week in the fridge.
With beetroot
2 cooked diced beetroots and a teaspoon of horseradish in the salad: a pink, sweeter version, the layered 'herring under a blanket' in mixed form.
With egg and peas
2 diced hard-boiled eggs and half a cup of tinned peas turn the salad from a starter into a meal.
