Kokanee Caviar Recipe; How to Cure Kokanee Salmon Eggs

Making your own caviar takes some time, and some might even call it tedious. But, if you enjoy caviar, and enjoy processing and working with your own fish, making your own caviar from your kokanee eggs can be a really fun, rewarding, and delicious experience. I especially like the idea of trying to make use of every part of the fish that you possibly can. Keeping the kokanee salmon eggs out of the trash is another way that I feel I can be a responsible fisherman. Also, after trying these for the first time, it was a shock that some people throw these tasty little morsels away.

How to Prepare Your Eggs In the Field Before Making Kokanee Salmon Caviar

The first priority when processing the eggs for making kokanee caviar is that you want clean eggs. It really helps if you have a clean Ziplock bag or other clean container on hand that you can put the eggs directly into when harvesting. It also helps if you have a clean surface to work on when processing the fish. You want to avoid getting any sand or debris into the caviar. If the salmon is mature enough, you can often squeeze the eggs out of the fish. This is the simplest method of harvesting eggs, and reduces time down the road. Often times though, the salmon aren’t that mature, and the eggs don’t squeeze out so nicely. If this is the case, when gutting the fish, you can remove the egg sacks from the fish and put those into your container or bag.

Processing Kokanee Salmon Eggs

Once you get home, you want to rinse the eggs thoroughly in cold water. Then you want to meticulously pick through it to remove any blood, tissue, guts, or anything else. Then its time to deal with the eggs that are still attached to the membrane or egg sack. You don’t want that membrane to be part of your caviar so you’ll want to remove it.

The first step is to separate the loose eggs from those that are connected to a membrane or egg sack. Once you have the eggs that are in a membrane separated, put them in a bowl, and then cover them with warm to hot water. This might seem counter intuitive for preserving food, but it needs to be hot or warm water to really be able to loosen the membrane and allow the eggs to come free. Cold water just doesn’t work.

Once you have the eggs in the warm water, you want to slowly massage the eggs in the water until they come free from the membrane. You need to be patient when doing this. The eggs are fragile, the membrane is fragile, and you want to damage either. If you’re able to keep the membrane all in one piece, it makes it a lot easier to remove. It can take 5-15 minutes to fully massage the eggs from the membrane.
Some of the eggs might turn white during this process. Don’t worry about that. It’s normal. They will go back to the bright orange after you add the salt.

When you’re finished with that, if there are a lot of little pieces of egg clumps stuck together, you didn’t do a great job and you’ll want to go slower next time. You’ll also want to remove the connective membrane pieces from the little clumps as well. That’s why its a lot easier to leave the membrane all in one piece.

After you’ve gotten all the eggs separated from the membrane, you’ll want to rinse them again. You can then combine them back with the other eggs you had that were loose and already separated from the membrane when rinsing. You’ll notice there is a lot of rinsing. Having a good fine mesh strainer is a must for this process. I really like the one from KitchenAid that can go directly on the sink. It’s a game changer, and works perfectly for kokanee caviar. In fact, the person that taught me to make caviar bought this strainer just for making caviar.

KitchenAid Expandable Over Sink Strainer

Once again, at this point you want to go through it extremely carefully to remove any sand, blood, or membrane pieces. You’ll want to continuously be looking for this, and you’re just about to the end.

Adding Salt to Cure The Eggs

Now it is time for the brine to cure the kokanee salmon eggs. You combine 4 cups of water with 1 cup of salt and stir until the salt has completely dissolved. Some people like to boil the water for this. This will both help purify the water and make the salt easier to dissolve, but the down side is that you then have to wait for the water to cool down before adding your eggs. As long as you’re using clean water to start with, there shouldn’t be a need to boil the water, especially when using so much salt. I was taught by someone that didn’t boil their water, and they didn’t have any problems. You just have to stir the salt water a bit longer.

Once the salt has fully dissolved in the water, and the water is cool, you put the eggs in the brine for 30 minutes. After the 30 minutes, you drain the eggs once more. It also helps to let them sit in the strainer for 10-15 minutes to allow the water to fully drain. At this point, the caviar is done, and is ready to eat, or you can add additional salt.

Optional Additional Salt

Some cultures really like their caviar extremely salty. My friend that taught me to make caviar told me that when he makes it for his European friends, they always say it isn’t salty enough. If you like the salt, while it is doing the final drain, you can add 1-4 more tablespoons of salt. You can gently mix that in while it is in the strainer. If you’re not a fan of saltiness, you don’t have to do this. You can also rinse the eggs before using them to remove even more of the salt. I prefer kosher salt for the caviar.

How to Store Your Kokanee Salmon Caviar

You can store your kokanee caviar in an air tight container in the fridge for up to 2 months. Or, it can be frozen for up to one year.

What Does Kokanee Caviar Taste Like?

Kokanee caviar tastes salty. Most all caviar is salty, as its essentially just fish eggs cured in salt. If its your first time having caviar though, that’s the first thing you’ll taste. From there, it has a smooth, buttery flavor, kind of like a slightly fishier tasting (salty) egg yolk. Kokanee salmon roe goes well on crackers, sushi, or just about any other application you’d do for other caviar.

Start to finish it takes 2.5-3 hours, depending on how many eggs you have, and how quickly you can remove them from the membrane.