Herring in Oatmeal: The Cheapest Great Scottish Dish

Herring rolled in oatmeal and fried is the plainest good dish in Scottish cooking. Four ingredients, twenty minutes, and until the middle of the twentieth century it was what a great many Scottish families ate several times a week, because herring was landed in quantities that are difficult to imagine now and cost almost nothing.

It is still excellent and still cheap. What changed is that hardly anybody buys a fresh herring any more.

Why oatmeal, not breadcrumbs

This is not a substitution for want of bread. Oatmeal behaves differently in a pan and it suits an oily fish specifically:

• It crisps harder. Medium oatmeal forms a rougher, more granular crust than breadcrumb, with more surface area to brown.
• It absorbs oil rather than repelling it. Herring is a fatty fish and it renders fat as it cooks. Oatmeal drinks that and toasts in it; breadcrumb goes greasy.
• It tastes of something. Toasted oatmeal is nutty and slightly sweet, which is exactly the counterweight an oily, strongly-flavoured fish wants.

Use medium oatmeal. Pinhead is too coarse to stick evenly, and rolled porridge oats go soft and slide off. This is the same grade skirlie uses, and for the same reasons.

The method

Serves two.

1. Get the herring prepared. Ask the fishmonger to gut, behead and bone them, opened flat — a butterflied herring is the traditional shape and it cooks evenly. Doing it yourself is not hard: herring bones lift out in one piece if you press along the backbone from the skin side first.
2. Season the oatmeal, not the fish. Salt and a lot of black pepper, mixed through on a wide plate.
3. Press the fish into it firmly, both sides. No egg, no flour, no milk — the fish is damp enough on its own and a wash makes the coating claggy rather than crisp.
4. Fry in bacon fat or dripping over a medium heat, flesh side first, three or four minutes, without moving it. Butter works and burns more easily.
5. Turn once. Two or three minutes on the skin.

Serve with lemon and plain boiled potatoes. That combination — "tatties an' herrin'" — was the everyday version of this dish for generations, and it is still the right one.

Buying herring

Here is the honest difficulty: fresh herring is now hard to find in Scottish shops, despite being a Scottish fish. Most of what is landed is exported or processed, and supermarket fish counters that carry a dozen species will often carry no herring at all.

Where to look:

• A proper fishmonger, who can usually get them and will bone them for you.
• Farmers markets and harbour sales on the east coast, seasonally.
• Frozen, which is a legitimate answer for an oily fish and much better than not eating it.

What to look for in a fresh one: bright, full eyes, red gills, firm flesh and a clean sea smell. A dull-eyed herring with soft flesh has been out of the water too long, and an oily fish goes off faster than a white one — herring is not a fish to buy on Friday for Sunday.

What happened to the herring

Worth knowing, because it explains why a national dish became unfamiliar.

Herring built entire Scottish coastal economies — the fleets, the curing yards, the gutting crews who followed the boats down the coast. The stock was then fished heavily through the twentieth century and the North Sea herring fishery was closed outright in the late 1970s to let it recover. It reopened, and the fishery today is managed with quotas, but the domestic habit did not come back with the fish.

So it is not that herring vanished. It is that a generation stopped cooking it, and the market followed the eaters.

That is also the argument for the dish. Herring is cheap, abundant relative to most of what we eat, high in omega-3, and takes twenty minutes. It is the most sustainable-feeling thing on most fish counters and the least fashionable, which is usually a good sign.

Frequently asked questions

What is herring in oatmeal?

A traditional Scottish dish of fresh herring pressed into seasoned medium oatmeal and fried in bacon fat or dripping. It is usually served with lemon and boiled potatoes — the combination known as "tatties an' herrin'".

Why use oatmeal instead of breadcrumbs on fish?

Oatmeal crisps harder, absorbs the oil an oily fish renders rather than going greasy, and adds a nutty flavour that balances the strong taste of herring. Use medium oatmeal: pinhead is too coarse to stick and rolled oats go soft.

Do you need egg or flour to coat herring in oatmeal?

No. The fish is damp enough for the oatmeal to adhere if you press it in firmly. Adding an egg wash makes the coating heavy and claggy rather than crisp.

Why is fresh herring so hard to buy in Scotland?

Most of the catch is exported or processed rather than sold fresh domestically, and home demand collapsed after the North Sea fishery was closed in the late 1970s to allow stocks to recover. A proper fishmonger can usually get them; frozen is a reasonable alternative.

How do you tell if a herring is fresh?

Bright full eyes, red gills, firm flesh and a clean sea smell. Oily fish deteriorate faster than white fish, so buy herring to cook the same day or the next.