Capelin Recipes

By Cherie Hickey - St. Phillips, Newfoundland

Dried Capelin

Ingredients: • 1 gallon of water • 1 cup of salt • Capelin

Procedure: **NOTE: Weather will affect the drying process. Ideal capelin drying weather is sunny and windy; rain will prolong the drying process and sometimes ruin the fish.

Dissolve salt in warm water.
Add the dissolved salt solution to the gallon of water.
Fill container about halfway with capelin. They can be cleaned, or whole.
Cover capelin with the salt solution, and let sit for at least twenty minutes. If you desire a saltier taste, leave capelin in solution for up to an hour.
After the desired amount of time has past, remove capelin from salt solution and rinse with cold, fresh water.
Prepare a flat surface outdoors to lay capelin out for drying. Recycled chicken wire, chain link fence, or other wire mesh surface will work best; however, any dry flat surface will do.
Turn the capelin every four to six hours to allow the sun to dry both sides. The whole drying process will take two or three days, depending on weather.
Capelin should be stored in a cool, dry place, or refrigerated overnight to prevent condensation from forming. This also prevents wildlife from stealing your fish.
Once dried, your capelin can be stored in a refrigerator, or freezer for future consumption

Fried Capelin

Ingredients: • 12 Capelin • ½ cup of flour • Butter • Salt (to taste) • Pepper (to taste)

Procedure:

In a bowl, mix the flour, salt, and pepper together with a fork until blended.
Coat each capelin in the flour mixture and place on a flat surface. Be careful not to allow them to touch, which may cause the flour coating to rub off.
Place cast iron or non-stick pan on stove set to medium heat. Once heated, add butter and swirl until the bottom of the pan is coated.
Add a few capelin to heated pan, taking care not to overfill the pan, and cook each side until golden brown.
Remove the fish from heat and serve.

Backstory and Sustainability

Since I was old enough to walk, my mother and father would take my sister and I down the road to the beach in St. Phillips when the capelin started rolling in. We would go down with buckets in hand, hoping to catch the little fish with our hands and fill our buckets. There were times when my sister and I were up to our waist in the cold Atlantic water, surrounded by the swarming fish. We would throw them towards the shore for our mother to fill the buckets; sometimes we would just throw them at each other, as siblings tend to do. Once we took the capelin home, we cleaned them, gutted them and let them sit in cold fresh water. When we were ready to cook them, my father rolled them lightly in the flour mixture and fried them in butter. We would always leave a heaping plate of them in the centre of the table and mom would usually cook up root vegetables to have with them. I don’t remember a time that we had any left over for the next day because we ate them all. Capelin season was always one of my family’s favourite time of year and now that my sister and I have grown, we have shared the experience with children of our own. My mother, who is over 60 years old now, still gets so excited to throw on her rubber boots and head to the beach with her grandchildren, especially when the capelin are rolling ashore.

Capelin season is usually from mid to late June months here in Newfoundland and “capelin weather” tends to be mostly rain, drizzle and fog. Capelin are migratory fish that show up on the beaches of Newfoundland annually to spawn. Spawning beaches tend to consist of smaller sediments like small pebbles, or sand. This helps the eggs to attach to the shoreline substrate so they can be inseminated. Once insemination occurs, the fertilized eggs are pulled back into the ocean waters where they will hatch. In Newfoundland grocery stores you can purchase dried, salted or smoked capelin; however, the rest of Canada would most likely only find it in specialty stores. Most people around coastal Newfoundland tend to gather their own capelin when they roll in on the beaches. Many will preserve stores of them to enjoy throughout the year. Capelin literally beach themselves to spawn, so no equipment is needed to collect them except a bucket; however, some people tend to bring casting nets and kids enjoy using butterfly nets. Because mature fish are able to spawn and many capelin do not survive spawning, they can harvested with minimal impact.

There is also a commercial capelin fishery, which is more controversial. Commercial fisheries rely on purse and tuck seine, midwater and pelagic trawls, and trap nets. Organizations like Ocean Wise have recommendations for more sustainable options; however, other organizations like WWF are concerned about the stocks of forage fish like capelin. Capelin are a small fish species and feed many other marine species. Environmental factors can cause large fluctuations to capelin populations, which increases their vulnerability to overfishing. Additionally, due to capelins' shoaling behaviour, commercial fisheries can continue to remove considerable biomass even when stocks are low. In the 1990's the capelin population crashed and remained relatively low until an upward trend in 2012. The commercial fishery exports primarily to the Asian market which values mature egg-bearing female capelin for roe.

Additional Resources:

Page updated

Google Sites

Report abuse