Red caviar is a delicacy that is a laborious and costly process. Fresh, high-quality caviar cannot be cheap. When choosing red caviar, pay attention to the price too. Before getting to our table from the sea, salmon caviar goes through many processing stages.
To begin with, the extraction of caviar is carried out directly, i.e., salmon fishing. The main salmon fishing areas are the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans, Okhotsk's Sea, and the Bering Sea. Most processing enterprises are located in Kamchatka, Sakhalin, Khabarovsk Territory, and Alaska. The most popular is the red caviar of the Vostochny Bereg brand (Bering Seafood) due to its excellent taste and the highest quality. When the fish leave for spawning (approximately from May to October, depending on the type of fish), catching is carried out using trawls, set nets, nets, and other gear that can equip with salmon boats.
The catch is often carried out in the coastal zone, where fish accumulate, swimming in rivers for spawning. Thanks to this, the process of extracting caviar is greatly facilitated. Nevertheless, there are specific difficulties - it is necessary to get caviar within 2-3 hours so that it does not have time to deteriorate. Freshly caught fish is immediately gutted, separating the caviar and other entrails (waste) from the carcass itself. Gutted fish is washed, sorted by size, then frozen and packed in containers.
With caviar, it is much more difficult. First, it also needs to be washed - this is done in seawater - and then sorted by salmon species. Caviar from different fish should not be mixed. Sorting occurs directly in the ovaries - natural film shells that do not allow the eggs to move freely inside the fish. Then the ovaries, as well as connective tissue and low-quality grain, are disposed of. To do this, use special devices - screens. These are unique gratings through which caviar is sieved with the help of vibration. As a rule, caviar passes through two looms (called butars), and then it is poured along with an inclined gauze, where residual impurities are removed.
The salting process begins now that the caviar has been separated and cleaned. It is poured with brine - a concentrated saline solution; the ratio is approximately 1: 3 (caviar/brine). In this solution, the final purification of the grains also takes place.
The salting process takes from 10 to 20 minutes, depending on the salt content in the brine itself. After salting, caviar is packed in small baskets and placed in a centrifuge. This allows you to extract excess liquid from the final product. After that, quality control is carried out: the caviar is placed on the packing table, which is illuminated from below, which allows you to see the entire thickness of the caviar and notice the remaining pieces of blood, film, etc. At this stage, vegetable oil and preservatives can be added to the caviar if the manufacturer uses them. But the most delicious and healthy is caviar without the use of additional chemicals. Such is the salmon caviar "Vostochny Bereg" (Bering Seafood); no flavorings, dyes, or preservatives are used in its production.
After quality control, the finished product is packaged in small plastic containers, sealed, and labeled to be shipped to the packaging plant. Later, ready-made red caviar is packed in branded jars at the factory and goes on sale.
The more you know about salmon roe and the rules for its production, the better product you can choose for yourself. To enjoy the taste of first-class caviar, you need high-quality raw materials, strict adherence to technology, and the hard work of many people.