Update 2023/9/10: I've posted a new definitive guide to making ikura from salmon roe along with a new video. I'm leaving this one up for those who prefer curing ikura in a dashi brine.
With spawning season in full swing, the salmon are packed to the gills with roe. If you're able to find a skein of salmon roe at your local seafood shop (or you happen to know someone that's going salmon fishing in Alaska), this salmon roe recipe, 5 minutes, and a handful of ingredients is all it takes to turn that ugly sac of roe into a decadent bowl of ikura (salmon caviar)
Unlike the limp salty goop that that comes out of jars, my homemade ikura recipe is truly sublime. The plump silken pearls of caviar glow like precious gemstones and are loaded with the savory taste of umami. Stick a spoonful in your mouth and each orb bursts with a satisfying pop, sending their rich, briny flavor flooding over your tongue in a wave of culinary bliss.
Serve it on blinis as a canapé, use it for making sushi, or just spoon it over a bowl of hot rice to make ikura don. I also like serving this red caviar along with salmon sashimi on a bowl of vinegared sushi rice or as a filling for temaki sushi rolls.
In addition to my instructions here on how to make ikura, I've put together a little video to show you how to separate the delicate salmon roe from the skein. This technique should work with almost any salmon or trout roe. Just be sure to select a skein of roe with large mature pearls. Immature roe have weaker sacs which will break as you try and separate them from the skein.
📖 Recipe
Equipment
Units
Ingredients
- 1 ½ cups dashi stock
- 2 tablespoons soy sauce
- 1 tablespoon sake
- 1 tablespoon granulated sugar
- 1 tablespoon salt
- 2 large skeins fresh salmon roe
Instructions
- Make the brine by adding the dashi, soy sauce, sake, sugar and salt to a bowl and stirring until the salt and sugar are completely dissolved.
- Watch the video for instructions on separating the pearls of caviar from the skein.
- Rinse the caviar with cold water and then put it in a container with enough brine to cover it.
- The ikura will be ready to eat in 1 day.
Rizza says
finding "FRESH" salmon roe is a bit difficult. Can I use the store bought that is usually in containers from japanese supermarket?
thanks
Marc Matsumoto says
Hi Rizza, the ones that have already been separated are generally already cured with salt, so they can be eaten as is.
Stephanie Campbell says
Hello! I live in Vancouver and we do west fishing at our cabin. How you do recommend freezing? Can I freeze just the egg sack and do the curing when I get home? Or clean then freeze, or fully make it and then freeze?
Do all salmons work? We get sockeye, spring and coho.
Thanks!!
Marc says
Hi Stephanie, I don't recommend freezing the whole skein as the eggs will tend to pop more easily when you go to separate them. I haven't tried freezing before curing so I can't make any guarantees, but I think it might work. Your best bet would be to cure it first and then freeze. As for the type of salmon. It should work with any salmon that's carrying mature eggs (immature eggs will be very difficult to separate from the skein).
Molly says
Do you use kosher salt or table salt?
Marc Matsumoto says
Hi Molly, unless otherwise specified, "salt" in my recipes refers to table salt.
Jim Bachman says
How long a shelf live does this have in the fridge?
Marc Matsumoto says
Hi Jim, this has a relatively low amount of salt, so it should be consumed within a few days. If you think it will take you longer to eat it, drain it after soaking for 24 hours, divide it into batches and freeze it.
Steve S says
Can you buy the dashi somewhere??
Marc Matsumoto says
Hi Steve, "dashi" is just the Japanese word for soup stock. In this context it refers to a specific type of stock that's made with konbu and katsuobushi. You can learn more about it and how to make it here: https://norecipes.com/how-to-make-dashi/
Lawrence says
Hi we followed your recipe it turned up very well,thanks.but I have a couple.questions hope you can advise
1. After the 1 day curing do we drain the brine or keep and drain only those we wanted to serve?
2. How long can it last in the fridge?
Marc Matsumoto says
Hi Lawrence, sorry for the slow response. Yes, you'll want to drain the brine after a day. If you let it soak too long, the skin of the eggs starts to get tough. As for shelf life this brine does not contain a ton of salt, so you'll want to eat or freeze this within 5 days.
Jen says
Hi,
I just tried your method to separate the roe from the egg sac but they all disintegrated 🙁 I didn’t use much pressure at all and now I have this liquidy stuff I don’t know what to do with. Is it still edible? Any tips on how to prepare it or is it basically toast at this point?
Marc Matsumoto says
Hi Jen, I'm sorry to hear it didn't go well for you, that has happened to me once so I know it's pretty frustrating.It usually has to do with the freshness of the roe (i.e. the longer it's been since it was removed from the fish the more likely they are to pop). If the roe sac was frozen once this could also cause them to burst. Unfortunately there's no way to rescue the roe once they've burst. Next time, if you have a roe sac that doesn't look like it's going to be cooperative, you can try salting it without separating the individual roe. This is called Sujiko in Japanese, and it can be sliced like cheese and eaten, but it is extremely salty (it needs to be heavily salted to kill parasites that live in the membranes between the eggs.
ly wright says
can you make ikura with uni???
Marc Matsumoto says
Hi ly, I'm guessing you're asking if you can brine uni like Ikura? If so, I don't see why not. Uni is often sold in brine in Japan to keep it from falling apart so this should be no different. That being said, you couldn't really call it Ikura since it wouldn't be salmon roe.
Yvonne says
Hi Marc,
Thank you for sharing the video of how to deskin the ikura. I bought two frozen ones. After I rinsed the ikura in cold water, many white fatty goblets appeared and I couldn't separate them from the fish eggs! Would you know why this happened and how I can prevent it?
Marc Matsumoto says
Hi Yvonne, the white goblets, are most likely the skin of popped roe. This happens when Ikura is frozen before being separated from the skein as ice crystals that form during freezing will piece the skin of each piece of roe. When you defrost it the ice melts away leaving big holes in the roe from which the inside of the roe leaks out. Next time I would recommend looking for fresh roe that has never been frozen. If you are worried about parasites, you can freeze it once after separating it from the skein and soaking it in the brine for a day. Then you can drain off the brine, put it in a sealed container and freeze it.
Ivy Baker says
I liked that you explained that you will want to include dashi and soy sauce. It is cool to know that it can really help enhance the flavor. I wonder if you can do this with other types of fish eggs.
Marc Matsumoto says
Hi Ivy, in Japan we eat all sorts of fish roe (cod, herring, salmon, trout, mullet, etc) , and they're all prepared a little differently, but dashi can definitely enhance the flavor.
Elizabeth says
Hello Marc,
I used your recipe to cure Salmon roe and the result does not look right and I'm wondering if you can help me figure out what may have gone wrong. The eggs did not soak up the brine and remain very small. The roe is from Sockeye salmon and had been frozen since the end of July.
Any suggestions will be appreciated.
Best,
Elizabeth
Marc Matsumoto says
Hi Elizabeth, I'm sorry to hear it didn't turn out as expected. A couple of possibilities here. The first is that sockeye salmon has smaller roe than king salmon so the roe could have been small to begin with. The second possibility is that the roe was not fully matured. In Japan, roe that is not fully matured is usually salted and cured without removing it from its skein and only the fully matured roe is sold for turning into ikura. I'm not sure where you bought yours from, but if the store didn't make this distinction it's possible that it had not fully developed before being harvested. The last possibility is the fact that it was frozen. Unless it was flash frozen and held in a deep freezer, freezing food impacts it on a cellular level. As the water in the food freezes it forms ice crystals which rupture cell walls so when it’s defrosted, liquids leach out of the cells (this is called drip loss). Also, home freezers are set to cycle the temperature up and down to prevent ice from building up on the walls. This means the food is repeatedly partially defrosted and refrozen again, which can worsen the damage to the cells (freezer burn). That’s why I usually recommend freezing Ikura after it has been cured, but even then it will not have the same texture as when it was fresh. I hope that helps.
Elizabeth says
Thanks, Marc. I let it cure for another day and they got a little bigger. They also turned out to be delicious. The roe is from Sockeye which I got from a friend who went fishing in Alaska last summer.
Marc Matsumoto says
I'm glad to hear it!
Maggie says
You're talking dirty to me on this. Thank you for the GREAT video! How do you recommend storing the ikura. Are you okay w/ freezing individual half pint canning jars? I've got about 10 pounds of to process from a local fisherman.
Marc Matsumoto says
Thanks Maggie! Wow that's a lot of Ikura! This has a relatively low level of sodium so it won't keep in the fridge for more than 4-5 days. If you want to store it longer term, I'd recommend draining the brine after a day or two and then packing it into sealed containers and freezing it. You can then defrost it in the fridge.
Allen says
Hi Marc,
I live in Alaska and I have access to a lot of salmon eggs but I need help finding a proper screen strainer like you have in your video that fits in a bowl. I ended up using some chicken wire and it didn't work very well.
Where should I look online and what's the proper name for it?
Thanks,
Allen
Marc Matsumoto says
Hi Allen, it doesn't need to fit in a bowl, but it needs to be stiff and the holes should be no larger than 1/3-inch. What I used is a cheap disposable BBQ grill that's used in Japan (https://www.amazon.com/Stainless-Squares-Barbecue-Nonstick-Grilling/dp/B07GGLJ3YY?th=1&psc=1&smid=A387MXZEP21FUM&linkCode=ll1&tag=norecipes-20&linkId=633da3afc5100097c91c2607d353f1df&language=en_US&ref_=as_li_ss_tl), but anything with similarly sized holes should work.
Allen says
Hi Allen, I use a tennis racket that i picked up at the thrift store. It works very well, I have also just used a large metal spoon to seperate the eggs from the skein with very good luck. From Allen.
Ada says
Hi, can you send the video link again? Thanks.
Marc Matsumoto says
Hi Ada, sorry about that, the video embed seems to have disappeared in one of our moves. I've added it back in or you can check it out here: https://youtu.be/YM8mMB_JI8Q
Cheryl says
I have salmon roe frozen immediately after cleaning the fish. How do I work with that?
Marc Matsumoto says
Hi Cheryl, my experience with previously frozen roe is that the individual egg sacs tend to break much more easily so I lose a lot while trying to separate them from the skein. That being said, if the other option is to toss them, it might be worth doing anyway. In the future you may want to separate the eggs from the skein when they're fresh, and then you can freeze the roe after it's been cured.
Kathleen says
How long can you keep Ikura. I'm fishing in Alaska and want to make this recipe and share with my friends back home.
Marc Matsumoto says
Hi Kathleen, because there's a relatively low salt content (compared to other methods of curing), it will only last about 5 days max, and towards the tail end of that the texture starts to go off a bit. I'd recommend draining and freezing the ikura after letting it soak in the brine for about 12 hours. It won't have quite the same texture as unfrozen, but it will be better than letting it sit in the fridge for a few days before delivering it to your friends.
Marc Matsumoto says
Hi Terri, sorry I don't know of any places online, you may have a tough time finding it online because it's easily perishable before it is cured, so it needs to be used almost as soon as it comes out of the salmon.
Terri says
Do you know of any online sources for ordering a skein of salmon roe?
Marc Matsumoto says
Hi Elizabeth, ikura definitely needs to be refrigerated and this should be eaten within a few days as the brine is relatively low in salt. If you make a more concentrated brine the ikura will keep a bit longer (maybe a week or so), but it's be to either eat this right away or freeze it.
Elizabeth Faust says
How long will the ikura keep? Does our have to be refrigerated or is the brine liquid sufficient?
maggie says
amazing ,delicious ,thank you for sharing your knowledge ,I'm in florida , u.s.a where can i find some skein
Marc Matsumoto says
Hi Ivonne, they will continue to get more plump until 2 days, which usually makes them easier to eat. But if you want to remove the liquid now, just dump them in a strainer set over a bowl and leave it in the refrigerator for an hour to drain.
Ivonne Istiadi says
Hi Marc, I try your Ikura recipe and the taste is wonderful but I keep the soaking for 22 hours and turn out it's already plump ?. Do you have any suggestion what to do now? it's getting tired to bite since the egg is running around in my mouth ?
Marc Matsumoto says
As far as ikura goes, this is a relatively low sodium recipe (most recipes call far more salt). The salt is in there because the soy sauce is diluted with dashi stock (it's not pure soy sauce). Also the whole point of curing roe is to preserve it using salt, so if it does not have enough salt it will not last. Lastly if someone has high blood pressure they should not be eating ikura.
mchan1 says
One could use less salt and low sodium soy sauce [it's basically salt with add. salt!] will help it become less salty in taste. Don't really need the salt itself since soy sauce has salt in it.
Not everyone can handle the salt esp. those on a relatively restricted diet and those with relatively high blood pressure.
Also, it doesn't need to be cured that long either, so every little thing to reduce the sodium content is good as not everyone can stand the relatively high sodium taste.
Thanks!
Marc Matsumoto says
Nice catch, the correct color is the darker color. The video was done over a couple takes as I didn't have the right type of soy sauce when I made the first brine, so I ended up using white soy sauce. You should use regular dark colored soy sauce for this as it has more flavor.
Jane Cipra says
The dashi brine when you added it to the roe looks a lot lighter than what you prepared on camera. Did you dilute it?
Tais Fedoroff says
Interesting!
With the Russian recipe it doesn't come out as salty because you only brine it for 5 minutes 😉 try it some times. They're pearly and bursting as always.
I'll let you know how mine turned out soon 😉
Marc Matsumoto says
This is probably going to be a lot less salty than you're used to. Hope you enjoy it! Interesting about the Russian word. It's actually possible that the Japanese Ikura comes from the Russian word as the word is written in katakana (usually used for foreign words), and it's a specialty of Hokkaido (the northernmost part of Japan).
Tais Fedoroff says
Thank you. I just made a batch and can't wait to taste it. I wonder how much of the brine it will soak up.
I'm so used to making it the way we always do: clean it, prepare a pot of boiling water with as much salt that will make an egg sized potatoe float. Chill it to room temperature and add ikura. Let it brine for 5-7 minutes. Then dump in the cheese cloth and let dry for a couple of hours depending on the amount. Comes out plump and delicious. We refrigerate a portion to be eaten within a day or two and freeze the rest.
p.s. I wonder if the Russian word "ikra" comes from the Japanese ikura... Oh! And a fish soup that we call "ukha"(ookha?). Sorry for off topic 😉
Marc Matsumoto says
Hi Tais, the ikura continues to get plump for about 2 days after soaking. It's best to keep it soaked until it reaches its maximum plumpness, which gives each pearl a firm texture that pops when bite into it. At this point it's best to strain in as soaking it longer will cause the skins to get tough.
Tais Fedoroff says
Do you strain the ikura after it's been cured? I generally use the Russian 5 min recipe and then drain it through a cheese cloth for a couple hours, that way it's not watery and mushy. Very curious to try out your recipe 😉
Marc Matsumoto says
Hi Jenny, the purpose of the sake is to provide umami without introducing other tastes. Using other wines and spirits will alter the flavor, so I'd recommend using water if you don't want to get a bottle of sake.
Jenny says
Is it possible to use something other than sake? I don't have any one hand and don't think I need an entire bottle! Thanks.
Catherine Williams says
How do I make whitefish or sheefish caviar. And how do I preserve them like the ones which come in a jar from the store. I don't have reliable refrigeration as we use solar power.
Marc Matsumoto says
Thanks Andrew! You could, but you'll want to use real mirin (not the kind with corn syrup and flavorings in it) and you may want to cut back on the sake otherwise your ikura may end up a bit alcoholic.
andrew lee says
awesome blog, but can you sub mirin for sugar? so far this was the most concise step-by-step and the video was great. Some excellent roe is up in Canada for $6/lb!
Eduardo Suga says
Marc,
That is how it came out. The first pic shows unseasoned (left) and seasoned tobiko (right). I used it to test a tobiko jelly sushi made with kanten. Thanks again for your awesome site!
Eduardo Suga says
We get them frozen but unseasoned. They look like very bright, translucent pale yellow globules. It does not need to be strained as they come without the sac. I will use your recipe to cure and season it and I'll post it later. Thanks a lot again.
Marc Matsumoto says
Hi Eduardo, first I have to tell you I'm a little jealous. I've never seen uncured flying fish eggs around here. That's also why I've never cured them before and am not sure what the process is for separating the eggs (I don't think the technique for separating salmon roe will work). As for the curing, you should be able to use the same brine to cure the flying fish roe through you may have a difficult time straining the small eggs from the brine once it's done. If you try it, let us know how it goes.
Eduardo Suga says
Hi Marc. Greetings from Brazil.
Is it possible to do the same with flying fish eggs? We can't find salmon roe here but have plenty of tobiko. Or do you happen to have a recipe for that? Congratulations for your awesome site!
Marc Matsumoto says
This should be consumed within a few days after making. If you don't think you can eat it all you can drain and freeze it.
Ann says
Good news - I found the salmon skein at Mitsuwa. It was the last one (maybe the only one) left! Followed your directions and it turned out fantastic! Thanks much!
phu says
Oh man, I've been seeing sacks of roe lately and had no idea how to prepare them... now I'm excited to try this out! Thanks!
Edit: Do these keep well? If so, for how long, and would draining the roe after the one-day soak be a good idea?
Marc Matsumoto says
Hi Ann, unfortunately if you don't live in an area where salmon is caught it's unlikely you'll see it in markets as the roe doesn't keep very long. I think I've seen it at Mitsuwa (in Edgewater, NJ) before, but I'd call them before making a trip out.
Ann says
Mark - I live in NYC. Where do you recommend getting skein of salmon roe?
samnmini says
I absolutely love ikura or tarako with a nice big bowl of steaming gohan. All that I would need to complete that meal would be a side bowl of miso soup.
Marc Matsumoto says
Hi Grey, thanks for the heads up and sorry about that. It’s fixed now.
Best,
Marc
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Grey Chen Junyang says
Hey Marc! your video is set to private. Let me know when it is up (: