The only herring I care about is the pickled herring in sour cream. I just have it plain as a snack. It probably would be good on a piece of pumpernickel.

Jim

You talking about pickled herring?
I take the pieces out of the jar and put them in another container....add fresh sliced onions and sour cream....just enough to coat all nicely....then add a little sugar....not much, less than 1/2 teaspoon for an 8 oz jar of pickles.....
Makes all the difference in the workd!
Wish I had some for a bed time snack.....
Linda

MMMM. I love pickled herring in sour cream. And another completely safe and healthy fish is the sardine. Try those.

The jarred herring, one of my favorite foods in any of its incarnations, I consider an acquired taste and I applaud you for keeping at it.

I can't find my friend's exact recipe for Herring Apple Onion salad - I could eat a whole bowl of it - but Judy Ziedler's is pretty close. I don't think mine has the hard boiled egg, oil and vinegar, but I do know that it had the apple, onion and bread crumbs. You can play with this. Good luck, I hope you find something that works!

Grandma's Chopped Herring - Judy Zeidler

1 pound schmaltz herring fillets or 1 jar (1 pound) pickled herring fillets in wine sauce
2 slices challah or egg bread
1 medium onion, cut into quarters
1 green apple, peeled, cored, and sliced
2 hard-boiled eggs
4 teaspoons vinegar
2 or 3 tablespoons safflower or vegetable oil
Soak the herring in cold water overnight. Drain well. Bone and skin the herring and cut it into pieces. Soak the challah in cold water for a few minutes and squeeze out the water.

Place the herring, challah, onion, and apple in a food grinder and grind. Chop the hard-boiled egg whites and combine with 3 teaspoons of the vinegar. Mix the whites into the herring mixture. Spread the chopped herring on a platter. Mash the egg yolks with the remaining 1 teaspoon vinegar and spread over the top of the chopped herring.

Cover with plastic wrap and chill. Just before serving, pour 2 or 3 tablespoons of the oil over the top. Serve with toasted bagels.

When we were living in Holland, we saw the Dutch eat whole raw herring filets dipped in chopped raw onion - they would hold it by the tail and gobble it down. We called it Dutch sashimi lol. I never developed a taste for that.

I love pickled herring, and I love it in sour cream the way LindaC describes. Some sugar does help. It would always be offered at breakfast when we were in Norway - I only liked it when it was sweet. So maybe that's the key.

seagrass

DM used to add chopped pickled beets and onions to the herring and mix with sour cream. Turns it a pretty pink color and adds a little sweetness. Delicious on rye or pumpernickel.

My father liked herring, and sardines, Scandinavian style. I'd buy it for him, but I never ate it myself (though I tasted it) and never felt the need to eat it, and I don't recall my mother, also Scandinavian, eating them either.

Some foods are an acquired taste, like lutefisk and tofu, and herring and sardines are also tastes I never want to acquire.

I like the herring in jars, with or without the sour cream. Maybe I should eat more of it!

Sorry I don't have anything contructive to add, but all this talk of herring reminds me of the conversation in Some Like it Hot...

Sugar: [admiring a large fish trophy] What is it?
Junior: It's a member of the herring family.
Sugar: A herring? Isn't it amazing how they get those big fish into those little glass jars?
Junior: They shrink when they're marinated.

This question isn't meant to sound rude,I'm just wondering why you feel the need to develop a taste for something that you obviously don't like? There are lots of things that my husband likes that I don't care for. I don't mind preparing them for him, but I never feel the need to have to eat it myself.

Pickle herring is something that I won't eat and thankfully it isn't a favourite of Moe's either.

Ann

Fish stocks are in trouble across the globe. So many of us hungry people on the planet we are gobbling up everything in sight. We belong to some of the last people to see plentiful food supplies. Eating herring is a good way to help stretch out the available fish stocks. I guess I'm sensitive because of the huge catches of yellow perch we made when I was a kid. Some of the best times of my childhood were spent in a rowboat chasing perch. My parents didn't much care and I'd row for miles on Lake Huron/Saginaw Bay fishing along side cabin crusiers and power boaters. Adults sometimes yelled at me to return to shore but a boy catching fish is rather deaf... a legacy feature sometimes noted in husbands. These days the perch are much smaller and fewer. A couple generations ago all the pickerl were eaten out of the Great Lakes and are now extinct. Many of the available fish in the Great Lakes are no longer native but were stocked to replace those people ate or caused to die off.

I love smoked herring! I keep canned fish in my lunch bag for days when I'm extra hungry... either tuna or kippered herring. Probably not as healthy as creamed herring as they are salty and packed in an oily brine. Excellent with a bitter beer!

I've never seen fresh herring for sale.

: )
lyra

I've never seen fresh herring either and I've never eaten the pickled herring or the stuff in cream sauce but somehow I bet I'd love it.

Lyra, I regularly have a can of sardines with crackers for lunch, my secretaries aren't too happy with me when I do that but I love sardines, especially the ones in mustard sauce. Since I have a secretary who is always reheating pizza I've explained that when I no longer have to smell her pizza, she will no longer have to smell my fish. LOL

As for food supplies, I don't think we're the last generation to see plentiful food supplies if we change the way we consume. We eat far too many animal products and not enough plant based foods, and that's coming from a beef farmer.

If a serving of beef is 4 ounces, I know people who will eat an entire family's portion of beef in one sitting. (Or fish, chicken or pork) We are over-consumers and we leave such a big footprint.....

Annie

Lindac's method is pretty much how my family -- and everyone else I know -- does it, except sometimes we add some lemon juice, too. Takes only a minute, and it's wonderful.

But I like the herring in wine sauce just out of the jar (I discard the onions). Mmmmmm. Great for a snack on crackers or for breakfast.

My son is the only person I ever knew who loved herring even as a child.

Thanks everyone for the inspiration and the recipe, jessy! I think beets may be the key. I do love beets. And, what's not to love about sour cream? I also hard boiled some eggs tonight to chop up with the herring, salad style.

As for my "why?" it's really about eating healthier and more responsibly. We used to eat fish a couple times a week. Now I just about never buy it and when I do, it's horribly expensive. Doesn't hurt that the giant jar of herring from Costco is about five bucks.

Try the Vita brand if you can find it. It's our favorite. They also make a WONDERFUL smoked salmon spread. It's addictive!

Here's some rambling thoughts:

I LOVE seafood. Almost every kind (although I have some problems with raw oysters and sea urchin roe).

My grandfather was a commercial fisherman and we ate seafood at least 4-5 times a week. Pretty much everything that came out of the ocean. My grandmother (who now seems to me that she was ahead of her time) pretty much told me this was the way to eat:

1) seafood is good for you [part of that Mediterranean diet, we've all heard about in the last few years].

2] the key to getting the most balanced nutrition in the long run is to vary what we eat. No one fish was perfect for the table and fishing one fish was bad for the commercial fisherman.

When someone some time ago said salmon and the omega-3 oil thingy was good for you, we overfished salmon and started relying on not-so-great farm-raised salmon.

I thought herring was on the safe list until I recently read this (Montery Bay Seafood Watch):

"In the Northwest Atlantic, herring is one of the most important prey items for marine mammals, seabirds and predatory fishes, such as bluefin tuna. There is also a large commercial fishery for herring, with the fish being canned for human consumption or sold for bait.

With herring in such high demand, recent studies have suggested that current catch levels could be having a profound impact on the health of the ecosystem. Simply put, it is possible that too many Atlantic herring are being fished out of the ocean to support whales, dolphins, seals, seabirds, tunas, and other predatory fishes that rely on them as an important food source.

The extent of accidental catch (bycatch) in the herring fishery is largely unknown as a result of inadequate observer coverage, however bycatch of protected fish species has been observed.

Atlantic herring are caught with midwater trawls, which can catch huge amounts of fish and are not selective in their catch. Some management steps have been taken in recent years to address some of these issues, including some fishing areas closures to decrease bycatch of protected species. However, it will be some time before the effectiveness of these new management measures will be realized."

[by the way, lake herring from Lake Superior, is a good alternative.]

From a health standpoint, eat a bunch of different fish. From an environmental standpoint (and for a truly sustainable commercial fishing industry), eat a bunch of different fish.

Eat it fresh -- think twice about the jarred stuff with oils, salt and creams. Except for the occasional indulgence.

And yes, annie1992, eat more plants. 3/4 of the food on one's plate should be plant.

Joe