How is caviar cured and preserved?

Seafood such as fish meat and caviar is a highly valued product due to its high nutrient levels, unique health benefits, and very particular but also incredibly exquisite taste. Caviar, both black and red has a special place among such products and represents a coveted delicacy that will be appropriate for any celebration. The refined taste and subtle aroma of caviar will make for an extraordinary tasting session and easily please the most demanding consumer, turning those into devoted connoisseurs on the spot.

But what exactly is caviar?
Caviar is non-fertilized fish roe carefully acquired from the most valuable species of fish in the sturgeon family and cured in salt to help the product preserve and enhance all of its beneficial taste and nutritional qualities. When searching for the best type of black caviar available in the market, Beluga caviar is an unchallenged winner among them all.
The elite Beluga sturgeon caviar is recognized worldwide for its outstanding smooth and nutty flavor, delicate yet elastic texture, and rich aroma that teases your senses and reminds you of those special but half-forgotten moments at the seaside. Other high-end types of black caviar are Osetra caviar, Alverta caviar, Sevruga Sterlet caviar, Kaluga Huso, Baika caviar, Shassetra caviar, and Daurenki tsar imperial caviar. All these can not only offer you a truly sublime, one-of-a-kind experience but also provide other substantial benefits. Here is what consuming black caviar can do for your health:

• Expedited skin rejuvenation
• Iron deficiency/low hemoglobin compensation
• Mental health decline reduction and lowering of depression levels
• Improvement of heart health
• Enhancement of male fertility
• Powerful immune system boost.

Following the harvesting of the eggs from the fish, caviar is treated in one of three ways to maintain the product and uphold its top-notch quality for a prolonged period of time. All three preservation methods use salt as the main preservative ingredient which helps boost the roe flavor and expand its shelf life. However, the amount of salt used and the preservation method may vary depending on the quality and type of roe being treated.

Grade 1, Malosol Caviar: This curing method is used for preserving the most valuable and expensive types of roe, normally roe of the sturgeon family of fish, with only about 3 to 6 percent of salt to roe ratio. Malasol has the finest sparing effect on the delicate black caviar eggs leaving them intact and producing the most uniform and consistent pearls of ideal color, fragrance, and flavor. If interested to learn more about the malosol process than follow the link which explains what is caviar malosol in detail.

Grade 2: Similarly to Grade 1 good quality roe is used to produce Grade 2 caviar, but the uniformity and consistency of the grain, its size, color, fragrance, flavor, luster, and firmness are slightly inferior. The resulting caviar still has normal grain size and very good color with fine flavor.

Grade 3, Pressed Caviar: (payusnaya in Russian) This method is used for curing low-quality fish roe with too many soft, ripe, and/or defective fish eggs when the products' look is secondary to its shelf-life expectancy. During this process caviar is treated in a different manner than grade 1 and grade 2. The roe is blended and becomes milky and soft. It is then heated in a saline solution to 38 degrees Centigrade and stirred until it has absorbed enough salt and regained its natural color. It is then poured into fabric pouches and pressed out to remove excess salt and oil. Pressed caviar is considered to be a delicacy because it contains four times more roe than fresh caviar of the same weight and has a highly concentrated flavor. It takes approximately four kilograms of fresh caviar to prepare one kilogram of pressed caviar. The resulting black jam-like paste is drier and spreadable with a distinguished aroma which is favored by some gourmets.

Hopefully, our little guide can help you pick the best and most flavorful kind of this gourmet caviar food. Enjoy!