Jamaican Solomon Gundy Recipe

Solomon gundy is Jamaica’s smoked herring spread: salted red herring boiled out, chopped or blended fine with onion, pepper and pimento, then bound with oil and vinegar and left to mature. It is an appetizer, eaten on plain water crackers, and the smoke is the whole point of it.

Ingredients

Amounts here make about 2 cups. Red herring is not a substitutable ingredient: the dish is built on the two flavours it carries, salt and smoke.

The fish

• 4 oz (115 g) dried salted or smoked red herring, about 2 to 3 fish.

Aromatics and heat

• 1 large onion, purple or white.
• 3 scallions.
• 3 garlic cloves.
• 1/2 red and 1/2 yellow bell pepper.
• 1 Scotch bonnet pepper, or red pepper seeds to taste.

The dressing

• 1/2 cup (120 ml) red wine vinegar.
• 1/4 cup (60 ml) olive or corn oil, plus more to seal the jar.
• 1 tsp pimento seeds (allspice berries).
• 1 tsp black pepper and 1 tsp garlic powder.
• 1 tbsp sugar.

Instructions

1. Clean and debone the herring. This is the tedious part and there is no way around it.
2. Boil the fish about 10 minutes, or soak it, to take some of the salt out. Taste it before you go further: it should be seasoned, not brutal.
3. Warm the vinegar with the pimento seeds and sugar until the sugar dissolves. Do not let it boil.
4. Chop the fish and the aromatics very fine, or process them to a paste, depending which texture you want.
5. Squeeze the scallions by hand as they go in, so the juice and the flavour come through rather than staying in the stalk.
6. Combine everything with the oil and the warmed vinegar and mix well.
7. Pack into a jar and pour a layer of oil over the top to seal it. Let it sit so the flavours marry before you eat it.

The Smoke Is the Dish

Red herring carries two flavours, salt and smoke, and cooks describe the smoke as the potent one. That is what you are building around, and it is why a generic white fish does not produce solomon gundy no matter how you season it.

Which makes the desalting a balancing act. Boil the fish for around ten minutes or soak it to pull salt out, but stop while it still tastes of itself. Strip it too far and you have removed the reason the dish works.

One cook offers a useful visual tell from the shop-bought jars: they contain no green condiments at all, just the fish and visible red pepper seeds. If your version looks like a herb salad, it has drifted from the thing being copied.

Paste or Chop, and Other Splits

Texture is the first disagreement. Two cooks put everything through a blender or food processor for a smooth spread. Another makes a point of a no-food-processor version, chopped by hand, which gives a coarser mixture you can see the components in. Both are solomon gundy.

The dressing splits too. Red wine vinegar in one kitchen; malt vinegar with red cooking wine in another, that cook also adding dried rosemary while admitting outright that it is not traditional. That is a useful piece of honesty to borrow: know which parts of your version are yours.

And fresh against dry. One cook argues the old authentic taste comes from keeping the condiments dry, pepper flakes and dried onion flakes rather than fresh, while the others build on fresh onion, garlic and scallion. Dry gives a sharper, more shelf-stable result; fresh gives a brighter one.

Storage: Oil Seal, and a Word on the Counter

The traditional preservation is a layer of oil poured over the packed jar. Vinegar, salt and oil are all doing preserving work here, which is why this is a keeping dish rather than a same-day one.

One of these cooks says specifically not to refrigerate it, to leave it on the counter so it matures. That is how it has long been done in Jamaican kitchens, and it is worth knowing. It is also a fish preparation, so our advice is to keep it in the refrigerator, where the flavours still marry over a day or two and the risk is lower. Take it out ahead of serving so it loosens.

Sealed under oil and refrigerated, it keeps a couple of weeks and improves for the first few days. Top the oil back up when you have taken some out, so the surface stays covered.

Crackers, and Where It Gets Eaten

Solomon gundy is served on plain, unflavoured water crackers, and Jamaicans name the brand without thinking about it. That is deliberate rather than incidental: the spread is intensely salty and smoky, and the cracker’s job is to carry it without competing.

It is an appetizer, meant to whet the appetite, and it lives in bars as much as at home. Men drinking will eat it through an evening, which tells you the portion size: a little, on something plain, repeatedly.

The salted-and-smoked fish habit runs across the whole region. Our Belizean smoked fish panades put the same kind of preserved fish inside fried corn masa instead of onto a cracker, and ackee and saltfish starts with the same problem this recipe does: getting the salt out of preserved fish without stripping its character.

Tips and Variations

Warm the vinegar with the pimento and sugar, but keep it off the boil. Warming dissolves the sugar and pulls flavour out of the allspice; boiling drives off the sharpness that the dish needs.

Deboning is easier while the fish is still whole and slightly damp from soaking. Work through it properly, because a bone in a spread is unpleasant in a way it is not in a fillet.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is solomon gundy?

A Jamaican spread of smoked, salted red herring, chopped or blended fine with onion, peppers and pimento and bound with oil and vinegar. It is a staple appetizer, eaten on plain water crackers.

Can I use a different fish?

Not really. The dish depends on red herring for its salt and its smoke, and the cooks name smoke as the potent flavour. A generic fish gives you a seasoned fish paste, not solomon gundy.

How do I take the salt out?

Boil the cleaned, deboned herring about ten minutes, or soak it. Taste as you go. The aim is to reduce the salt, not remove it, since the salt is half of what the fish contributes.

Smooth or chunky?

Both are made. Two of these cooks blend it into a smooth spread; another chops everything by hand for a coarser mixture and calls it the no-food-processor version.

How should I store it?

Packed in a jar under a layer of oil. One cook leaves it on the counter to mature, which is traditional; we would refrigerate it, since it is a fish preparation. Sealed under oil in the refrigerator it keeps a couple of weeks and improves over the first few days.

What do you eat it with?

Plain, unflavoured water crackers. The spread is salty and smoky enough that anything seasoned underneath it fights for attention.