Ikura

Caveat, I am no ikura master. I’ve only made it twice, and found this one yesterday on the internet, but I like it. Turned out really well. If you have other methods or recipes, please let us know!

http://easyrecipesbyajapanesemom.com/ikura/

If you’ve made roe before, you know that the most challenging part is separating the roe from the skien (all the sinewy connective tissue).

I followed the method in this recipe w slight modifications. I made the salt water w kosher salt b/c it’s without additives. I also added more than a tablespoon. I just guessed the salinity of sea water using taste.  I also did 3 iterations of 140 degree salt water to wash out the skien, so I needed more salt water than it calls for.

I warmed the water on a pan using a thermometer. At 140 degrees F, I transferred the warm water to my tupperware holding the row and used my fingers to separate. Initial round was just getting the row out   Round 2 and 3 were fingers and mixer and successively removing finer pieces. I used the hand held cake batter whisker type and this worked surprisingly well!

Final modification, for the overnight soak in shoyu, mirin, sake, I added a small piece of wakame kombu for dashi flavor.

Edit: 2T shoyu might be too salty for me. Next batch I might try 1.5T.

Very nice! Did something similar the other day, albeit without the kombu. What is the texture like? This was the first time I've made Ikura and it seems kinda creamy, not like the kind I have had in restaurants. Not sure if I did something wrong.

Very nice. Looks fantastic

Very nice! Did something similar the other day, albeit without the kombu. What is the texture like? This was the first time I've made Ikura and it seems kinda creamy, not like the kind I have had in restaurants. Not sure if I did something wrong.

Definitely not creamy. Did you use salt water for all the washes and cleaning? Any fresh water and the eggs will be mushy vis osmosis...

Very nice! Did something similar the other day, albeit without the kombu. What is the texture like? This was the first time I've made Ikura and it seems kinda creamy, not like the kind I have had in restaurants. Not sure if I did something wrong.

Definitely not creamy. Did you use salt water for all the washes and cleaning? Any fresh water and the eggs will be mushy vis osmosis...

That was probably my problem. I will try saltwater next time

Ikura is so good! Here's a post with the recipe I've used: http://www.norcalkayakanglers.com/index.php?topic=89547.0

We use a similar recipe but add a raw chicken egg yoke right before serving. Also, the tennis racket trick works great for removing the eggs. We actually use a mesh bread drying rack. Just gently rub the eggs over the mesh add they will drop through. Something I tried with a large trout was to squeeze the belly before cleaning and about 80% of the eggs came out. I will give that a try with a salmon next time.   

I used the wire mesh last time and it was messy. This time I tried a whisk after the initial removal from the main sac. It worked really well! Just stir and stir. Pause, remove skien. Rinse and repeat (w salt water).