How To Fillet A Fish

You could get filleted fish from stores. But, in comparison, a whole fish retains its taste and it would be a better deal if you could get a whole fish and fillet it by yourself. Here, in this article, few easy steps to do filleting are mentioned. Initially one may find it a bit difficult to pace the knife accordingly, but one can master the art with experience.

How to fillet a fish? Follow the steps below,

The only tools need to fillet a fish are a good and sharp, thin and flexible knife and a cutting board. One can also manage to start filleting by placing the fish on the floor or any other hard surface. Start filleting by cutting below the head up to the backbone. Once the knife touches the backbone, turn the face so that it is now parallel to the direction of the length of the fish.

Hold the fish tightly against the cutting board by placing your other hand against its head. Now, push the knife parallel to the backbone up to the tail in a sawing motion. Make sure that the knife, all through its way up to the tail, touches the backbone thereby ripping the last piece of flesh from it.

Now slowly pull out the fillet meanwhile making small cuts so as to free the last bits of flesh holding on to the backbone. Now turn the fish over and repeat the above steps until the fillet is fully separated from the backbone.

Using a flat blade knife, strip off a bit of skin from the flesh. Make a hole in the loosened skin and by holding one's finger through the hole, rip off the skin completely from the fillet, meanwhile holding the fillet down using the knife. Make sure that the knife is held at near 45 degree angle to the surface.

As a last step, using one's finger and clean tweezers, feel for any pin bones. If there are any, remove that as well. Now the fillet is ready to be cooked.

Before ending this educative article, here are few general tips to take note of.

1)While filleting, make sure that the knife is thin and sharp. With that one must be able to cut through the piece in a flowing pace.
2)Filleting needs some expertise to perform. Hence go slow if you are a beginner. Else you might end up filleting your fingers.
3)Separating the fillet from the ribcage is the most difficult of the steps. Hence take care doing that even if you have sufficient expertise.

Enjoy your meal!!