Herring is easier to cook with than it looks. Here's how to choose, use, and store it, what to substitute, and 24 recipes to get you started.

What is herring?

Herring is a small, oily, silver-skinned fish from the cold waters of the North Atlantic and the Baltic. For centuries it fed Northern Europe through the winter, because it cures and pickles so well that a fresh catch could be made to last for months.

You rarely meet it fresh outside a fishing port. Most cooks buy it cured: pickled in vinegar and onion, salted in brine, or cold-smoked into kippers and bloaters.

The flesh is soft and rich, far oilier than a mild white fish, closer to mackerel or sardine. That oiliness is the whole point. It carries the brine and the dill and the sour cream that herring almost always shows up alongside.

Cooking With Herring

Most herring on a home table never sees heat. Pickled or marinated fillets go straight from the jar into a salad or onto rye bread.

The classic Scandinavian move is to fold them into something creamy and sharp. That is exactly what Sillsallad (Herring Salad in Sour Cream Sauce) does, binding herring with beets and apple into a pink, tangy chop.

Across the Baltic and into Russia, the same fish leans saltier. Selyodka Marinovannaya layers salt herring under rings of raw onion and oil, eaten with boiled potatoes and black bread. The Dutch take theirs barely cured in Haring Salade (Marinated Herring Salad), and Danes turn it into the curried Karrysalat.

Fresh herring, when you can get it, wants quick high heat. Dredge whole butterflied fish in oatmeal and pan-fry them in butter until the skin crisps, three to four minutes a side. Grilling and broiling work too, since the fat keeps the flesh from drying out.

Pairing and Common Mistakes

Herring needs acid and sharpness to balance its richness. Onion, vinegar, dill, mustard, capers, and beets are its permanent companions, and a cap of sour cream rounds the whole thing out.

Boiled potatoes and dark rye turn it into a meal, especially with a hard-boiled egg alongside, as in the long-loved Pickled Herring, Hard Boild Egg, & Egg Salad.

The first mistake is treating cured herring like fresh fish and trying to cook it. Heat turns pickled fillets to mush, so use them cold and let them stay that way.

The second is salt. Salt-cured and matjes herring can be intensely salty straight from the package. Soak it in cold water or milk for an hour or two, changing the liquid once, before you build a dish around it. Skip that step and the salt swamps everything else.

Substitutes

For pickled herring in a salad, sardines packed in oil are the closest stand-in. Same oily fish, similar size, though milder and softer. Drain them well, since they bring less of the vinegar bite.

Brisling or sprats, often sold as small canned "sardines," sit even closer in size and flavor. For a smoked-herring dish, smoked mackerel is the natural swap, oilier and a touch sweeter but at home in the same creamy salads and spreads.

If you only need the briny, oily accent and not the fish itself, anchovy gives you the salt and umami in a smaller dose. Use a fraction of the amount, since anchovy is far more concentrated.

Buying and Storing Herring

Fresh herring should smell clean and of the sea, with bright eyes and firm, shiny flesh. It spoils fast because of its oil, so cook it the day you buy it or freeze it right away. Frozen, it keeps two to three months before the fat starts to turn.

Most shoppers buy it in jars or vacuum packs instead. You will find it pickled in wine or cream sauce, matjes, rolled into rollmops around onion, or rolled and smoked.

An unopened jar keeps for months in the refrigerator; check the date. Once opened, use pickled herring within a week and keep it submerged in its brine so the exposed fish doesn't dry out.

One last thing: herring is full of small pin bones.

The thin ones in pickled fillets soften enough in the brine to eat, which is partly why curing suits this fish so well.

For fresh herring, run a thumb down the fillet and pull any bones you feel with tweezers, or butterfly the fish and lift the spine out in one piece.

Quick facts

In Chinese

鲱鱼

British (UK) term

Herring

en français

hareng

en español

arenque

Recipes using herring

There are 24 recipes that contain this ingredient.

All 24 recipes