HOW TO CURE COD
It’s the 1850s in a Newfoundland outport. Although you’re no pirate, day after day you feel like you’ve struck gold with a scaly fortune of your own: seemingly endless stocks of cod like the catch you’re hauling home.
Thick, yellow-tinged Newfoundland cod is popular worldwide, and the industry employs thousands. Mechanical refrigeration doesn’t exist, so to preserve your fish you must cure your catch using a centuries-old salting method. “Making fish,” the process of drying and salting cod, is a seasonal business that involves the entire family.
Although there are many ways of curing fish, you and your family will be making lightly pickled cod. It is a complex and technical process but yields a high-quality product.
1. Find at least two other people to help you to dress the cod. One cuts the throat of the fish and makes a cut down its belly. A second person guts and beheads it. The third splits the fish open to its tail and cuts out the bones.
2. In the bottom of a watertight barrel, lay a row of fish with the scaly side down. Sprinkle salt lightly on thin parts and more heavily where the fish is thicker. Layer another row of fish and salt it, repeating the process until the barrel is full. Leave for three to five days.
3. In a large tub, rinse away the brine and scrub off
any salt that has accumulated on the fish.
4. Leave the fish in a pile, called a “waterhorse,” on the fishing stage (a wooden platform at the water’s edge) to drain.
5. Carefully spread the fish across flakes (wooden platforms for drying fish). Dry the fish, scales down, until they become stiff, then flip them so their scales face up. If it starts to rain or snow, pile the fish to protect them and then spread them out again. Drying the fish completely takes between two and six weeks.