How long can you keep kippers in the refrigerator?

Answer 1

Akipper [not 'Kids In Parents' Pockets Eroding Retirement Savings - KIPPERS'] is a whole herring, a small, oily fish, that has been split from tail to head, gutted, salted or pickled, and cold smoked.

In the United Kingdom and North America they are often eaten grilled for breakfast. In the UK, kippers, along with other preserved fish such as the bloater and buckling, were also once commonly enjoyed as a high tea or supper treat; most popularly with inland and urban working-class populations before World War II.

Smoked herring, they can be grilled, fried or poached in water. One should use them up quite soon (unless they are tinned of course) if they are only in one's pantry, not in the fridge!
The word kipper probably derives from the Dutch küppen, meaning to spawn, and was first applied to out-of-season salmon which, because of their emaciated condition and lack of fat, were usually split and smoked to make them more palatable. As early as the fourteenth century there were references to the 'kipper time' in connection with the Thames salmon fishery.

Kippered herrings of the kind we are familiar with today were probably first made in the first half of the nineteenth century; John Woodger of Seahouses in Northumberland is reported to have made kippers in the 1840s by rousing split herring in dry salt and then smoking them heavily for several days in a brick kiln.

Heavy salting and smoking were necessary then to prevent spoilage during distribution but improved transport facilities and the advent of refrigeration made these requirements no longer essential; the modern kipper is a lightly brined, lightly smoked product with a much shorter shelf life at room temperature and a mild smoky flavour.

A kipper is a fat herring with guts and gills removed, split down the back from head to tail, lightly brined, dyed if desired, and cold smoked at an air temperature not higher than 30°C.

Boneless kippers are block fillets of fat herring, brined and smoked as for kippers. Kipper fillets are either single fillets of fat herring brined and smoked as for kippers, or single fillets cut from boneless kippers.