What's involved in the curing process

There are two steps involved.

First, as the herring are passed through the splitting machine, they are measured, split, gilled, gutted and washed at a rate of almost one a second. In the 19th Century women would hand-work the herring but now a specially designed machine is used.

Once the herrings have been split, gutted and washed, they are then soaked in brine for approximatley 10 minutes to ensure their unique flavour and freshness is retained.

During the next step, the herring are traditionally oak smoked above fires for 6-12 hours, the same method has been used for over 120 years which gives them their unique flavour.

Modern smoking processes use electric kilns to pump smoke into fire rooms for just a few hours - the traditional smoking flavour may be lost.

To buy your traditionally smoked Manx Kippers, you can visit our secure online store.