A small, oily, omega-3-rich fish whose spring run fed Black coastal communities for generations. Cheap, low-mercury heart food, fresh or with its prized roe.
The spring herring run up the coastal rivers was a community event in the Tidewater and Carolinas — Black families dipped, salted, and fried the run, putting up barrels of salted herring for the year. It was both feast and preservation, fresh fish in season and cured fish for the lean months.
Fresh herring is a small oily fish in the same nutritional league as sardines and mackerel — dense in EPA/DHA omega-3s, vitamin D, B12, and selenium, and very low in mercury because it feeds low on the food chain and is short-lived. That combination — high omega-3, low mercury, low cost — makes it ideal for pregnancy and for the whole family. Eaten with the small soft bones (when fried whole or canned), it adds calcium too. The roe is rich in omega-3s and B12. This is the small-oily-fish budget-protein strategy in its truest form.
Scale, gut, and fry whole or filleted; the bones soften with hot frying. Roll in cornmeal and fry, or grill. The roe is dredged and fried as a delicacy. Soaking salt-cured herring before cooking reduces sodium. Fresh herring is best eaten quickly — like all oily fish, it does not keep well.
Free, no account needed to ask.