Fish Soup from Whole Fish

For this fish soup, you can use the fish you have available. You can prepare a tasty broth from small fish and the bones of larger fish, and this will form the base for the soup. Pike is the best fish for soup because of its solid texture. Remove the gills and guts from the small fish and rinse off the mucus and blood. Do the same for the bones and heads.

Base broth for the soup

 

2 l water

5–15 small ruffe or perch or other small fish

1–2 bones of large fish including fins and heads without gills

5 bay leaves

50 g sliced ​​fresh ginger

1 tablespoon whole black or white peppercorns

salt

Soup

800 g fish cut into pieces

1 onion

3 chopped potatoes

200 g diced celeriac

100 g diced carrots

100 g broccoli buds

200 ml cream or coconut cream

2 tablespoons potato flour mixed with a drop of water for thickening the broth

 

Place the fish, bones, spices and water into a large pot and simmer for at least an hour. Remove the largest pieces of fish from the bones and strain the broth into another pot. Squeeze all the tasty liquid from the small fish and bones into the soup. Add the onion and root vegetables and simmer for about 20 minutes until the vegetables are almost cooked. Add the potato flour mixture, broccoli buds and fish and simmer for another 5–10 minutes. Finish by adding the cream. Serve.

 

 

Ruffe (Gymnocephalus cernuus)

- Slimy demersal fish with spikes

- Optimal foodfish size 50–200 g

- Thrives in the sea and lakes

- Ruffe can be angled using a small hook with worm bait or by ice-fishing close to the bottom

Use

- Tasty and low-fat

- Larger ruffe can be filleted like perch

- For frying, soups and kalakukko (fish baked inside a loaf of bread)

- Do not eat raw – risk of worms.

- The roe is fine-grained and delicious, but requires freezing: 1 day at -20 ° C.

 

Underutilized, delicious and prized fish

All wild fish must be frozen at -20°C for +1 day before raw consumption.

 

Text and images: Sakke Yrjölä