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: How to clean and debone fresh fish
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Knowing how to prepare fresh fish and seafood will give you
more options when buying.
While all the fresh fish fillets and steaks from Gorton's
Fresh Seafood come cleaned and deboned, in order to be an
educated consumer, you might like to know a thing or two about
the varieties of fish and how to prepare them.
Seafood Cleaning Tools you will need:
You will need a few essential tools to successfully clean
and debone fresh fish:
* A razor-sharp, highly flexible filleting knife to create
fillets
* A large, sharp chef's knife to cut through bones
* A strawberry huller, a set of needle-nose pliers, or a pair
of tweezers to remove those tiny, needle-like fish bones
* Heavy-duty kitchen scissors for removing fins
Scaling Fish:
While the delicately scaled salmon do not require scaling,
other fish have plate armor that will need to be removed.
Simply hold the fish by its tail, and scrape away from you
with a knife. This should lift and remove the scales from
your fish.
The preparing and dissecting of fish is called "dressing."
For preparation purposes, it is useful to divide fish into
two types. Rounder-bodied fish, such as salmon and cod, are
known as "round." Their "flat" counterparts,
such as sole, are known as "flat."
Take your scaled round fish:
1. Wash the flesh thoroughly.
2. Either trim the tail into a neat V-shape (preferred by
chefs) or remove it altogether, using your kitchen scissors.
3. Cut off the fins with scissors.
4. Place the fish on one side, pressing down with your hand
flat on the top side.
5. Slice the fish up the belly from base to head with the
sharp blade of your heavy-duty chef's knife. (Be extra careful
not to cut too deeply. Inside the fish's belly, its "viscera"
or intestines contain bitter acids that might contaminate
the fish's delicate flavor if pierced by the knife.)
6. Gutting can be accomplished with minimum mess. Simply,
reach into the belly, grab the "viscera" and pull
down toward the tail. It should detach cleanly.
7. Look inside the fish, and you'll see the kidney - a small
white sack lodged against the backbone. Scrape it out with
your knife.
8. Run cold water inside the bared belly, scraping away any
clinging blood or membranes.
9. If you prefer your fish headless, cut straight through
the backbone to remove it.
Now
your fresh fish is ready for preparing whole.
You can dress a flat fish, such as sole, in much the same
way, washing and scaling it, and removing the tail and fins.
Preparing the whole (unfilleted) fresh fish is easy: simply
cut off its head and press on the body to force out the innards.
Then, rinse the cavity well to remove any lingering blood.
If you intend to stuff a whole fresh
fish, you'll need to remove its backbone:
1.
Start on one end of the fish, inserting the filleting knife
between the flesh and the outside of the rib bones.
2. Work your way around to the other side, separating flesh
from bones.
3. Slide the knife under the backbone and pull it out, with
the rib bones attached.
4. Begin stuffing your fish.
A fillet is the most common (and popular) cut of fresh fish
in the United States. However, whole fish holds its shape
and flavor better than fillets, as anyone who has ever eaten
a freshly caught fish can tell you. So, your fish will arrive
fresher to the table if you buy it whole, straight from your
fishmonger, and then fillet it yourself. (See How to Buy fresh
Fish for advice on how to find the right fishmonger.)
To fillet a whole fresh fish:
1. Rinse it off under cold running water and grab your preparation
tools.
2. Lay the fish with its dark side down on the cutting board.
(You may wish to leave this bottom layer of skin on, as unskinned
fish is less likely to flake apart when cooked. Leaving some
skin on is particularly beneficial if poaching or grilling.)
3. Using your free hand, press down on the fish to pin it
to the board.
4. Slice down the backside of the head with your chef's knife,
as if beginning to cleave the fish into its two halves.
5. Arrange your thin filleting knife (preferably very sharp)
inside this cut, position it neatly between the fish's bones
and its flesh, and cut from head to tail. Keep the bottom
of the blade tight against the bones, so that these are separated
from the fillet. (Make long, even strokes. Do not saw back
and forth, which could result in a jaggedly edged cut. The
flatter you keep your knife, the sharper its blade, and the
more sweeping your strokes, the neater your fillet will appear,
and the better it'll keep its shape during cooking.)
6. When the fillet is all but freed from the fish, hold it
in one hand and snip it loose at the tail, holding the knife
blade tilted downward for this last cut.
7. Cut away the "comb" of tiny bones that will edge
your fillet.
8. Once one fillet has been cut from one side of the fish,
turn it over and proceed as with the dark side up.
9. Begin by making a shallow cut in the top of the fish's
head, bringing the tip of your knife blade just shy of the
backbone, and continue as you did with the first fillet.
Once you've cut the two long fillets from your whole fresh
fish, you'll need to eliminate any bones that you find in
the meat.
1. Start by cutting out the rib bones, which will run across
the front of each fillet.
2. Slice under whatever bones you see, keeping the blade tight
against them to avoid sacrificing tasty meat, and pull up
gently until they detach and you can pull them out with your
fingers.
3. Find the tiny "pin bones" by rubbing from head
to tail with your fingertips, massaging gently to detect their
sharp edges. Typically, these run down the fillet's center.
4. You can eradicate them by cutting on either side in a shallow
V, and removing this narrow strip of meat, bones included.
(Appropriately, this is called a V-cut.)
5. For any stray bones, use your fish tweezers or needle-nose
pliers. As with splinters, grab careful hold of the stray
edge and pull firmly but with a gliding ease so that the whole
bone is removed.
To skin a fillet:
1. Place it skin-side down on the cutting board.
2. With the knife held at a slight angle, begin approximately
one quarter of an inch from the tail end and cut the flesh
from the skin.
3. As you did in filleting, keep the blade as close to flat
as possible.
4. Hold the tail flap with your free hand to steady the fish,
and work the blade of the knife up the length of the fish,
separating the skin from the flesh by maneuvering the blade
in a gentle sawing motion.
If your knife is sharp and your hold firm, the skin should
cut fairly easily from the flesh.
To skin a whole fresh fish:
1. Make a shallow incision at the base of the fish's tail,
without cutting through any meat.
2. Scraping with the blade of the knife, free enough skin
to allow you to grasp it firmly with your fingers.
3. With your free hand, hold the fish's body down, and with
the other, pull the skin toward and over the head (almost
as if you were, indeed, undressing it). Fish steaks are a
popular cut for meaty fish that you might want to broil or
grill, such as salmon or swordfish.
To steak a fish:
1. Lay the whole fresh fish on its side on a cutting board.
2. Starting with the head, make approximately one-inch-thick
slices, moving down to the tail side. To cut through the fish's
thick backbone, you may need to bang your blade with a rubber
or wooden mallet.
3. Cut fillets from the narrow tail end of the fish, until
neat steaks are no longer possible.
Helpful tips for cleaning and deboning fish.
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