How to cut fish - instructions, recommendations and useful tips

Do you know how to properly cut fish? So that it’s neat, and correct, and without losses? An important question, especially for those who have to deal with fresh fish.

Fish is very healthy and tasty, it makes wonderful dishes, but there is one difficulty - the bones, especially if there are a lot of them. Separating fillets from bones does not always work out perfectly, and for novice housewives it seems an unattainable skill.

However, in reality it is simple, you just need to know how to properly cut fish. And come to terms with the fact that a couple of fish will take you to train, and the third will turn out perfect.

Tools

Some people think that it is quite difficult to free these cold-blooded creatures from their bones, especially the small ones. But it's actually quite simple. Let's practice together, maybe a couple of fish will go away for training, but the third one will most likely be cleaned in an ideal way. But before you cut the fish, you still need to acquire the necessary tools. We will need:

kitchen scissors for cutting fins;
knife for removing scales;
a sharp knife with a thin blade for separating the pulp from the bones;
long board for cutting carcasses;
tweezers (but you can do without them);
and, of course, the fish itself.

With this minimum set you can begin to take action. By the way, regarding the paring knife: the simplest and most popular tool among people is a butter knife (with small teeth) or a vegetable knife (short). You can, undoubtedly, use modern technologies: fish scalers of various types, if you have them. But an ordinary potato knife will be quite enough.

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Should I choose river or sea fish?

Heated debates between fans of the gifts of the ocean and the treasures of the rivers have not subsided for many years. It is difficult to give a definite answer as to which fish is better. On the one hand, sea fish contains more protein and other useful substances. But it is subject to freezing, which greatly reduces its usefulness.

River fish can be purchased simply chilled, but it is usually smaller, contains more bones and has a pronounced odor. True, price tags usually speak in favor of river fish.

If you are just starting to learn how to cook, then it is better to start with sea fish. It has fewer bones and a more neutral taste. But then don’t give up experimenting and try to cook other options.

What you need to clean and cut fish

Many of us prefer to clean and cut up carcasses with a regular kitchen knife. But there are many cleaning methods that may require other tools:

sharp knife;
scaler;
grater;
Chinese chopsticks;
fork;
tablespoon;
fishing knife;
high pressure hose or Karcher;
tin;
drill;
latex gloves;
kitchen scissors.

A sharp kitchen knife is far from the only device that can be used to clean fish.

How to remove the skin from fish fillets

Additional filleting of fish without skin may be required for some dishes. Before removing the skin from fish fillets, do the following:

Grasp the skin. Place the tail of the fish fillet close to the edge of the cutting board. Use a fillet knife or other knife with a long, thin blade. Cut vertically towards the skin, but do not cut through it.

Place the knife under the fillet. Holding the skin firmly, position the blade of the knife between the skin and the meat at a slight upward angle. Move the blade back and forth across the skin, as if you were “shaving” meat. Remove the skin and rinse the fillets.

Filling fish

Place the carcass on the board. Run a knife along the spine, separating the fillet from the bones. Then remove the loin from the ribs.
Do the same on the other side.
Make a small cut near the tail to grab the skin.
Hold the skin with one hand and slide the other along the fillet parallel to the table until you have a clean fillet in front of you.
Remove the small bones in the body of the fish. It is better to do this with tweezers.
Rinse the fish.

Several life hacks from experienced cleaners

To prevent your fingers from slipping, you can periodically dip them in coarse kitchen salt.
If you don’t want to collect scales all over the kitchen after cleaning, you can perform the scale cleaning procedure in a large plastic bag, putting the fish in it and putting your hands in it. This way you will get rid of the need for additional cleaning of the room.
Before cleaning a small fish with small, nasty scales (for example, perch), you can pull the carcass by the tail quite strongly, holding the fish by the head with the other hand, as if stretching it. This way the scales will come off much easier.

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Fish baked in sour cream

How to make fillet in the oven? Prepare fish fillet, a glass of sour cream, 2 large onions, salt to taste, and a baking sleeve for cooking.

The fish according to this recipe turns out unusually juicy and tasty:

Pour the sour cream into a deep bowl, add the onion cut into half rings and salt. Mix.
Place the finished fish fillet in sour cream and refrigerate for several hours.
Remove the fish from the refrigerator and place in a roasting bag.
Preheat the oven to 190 degrees and bake the fish for 45 minutes.
Serve with any side dish, lemon and herbs.

Clean and gut

The very first thing to do when cutting a fish is to remove its scales. To do this, it is convenient to use a special knife for cutting fish. But if you don’t have one, it’s okay - just take a knife with a short, strong blade. Start cleaning from the tail of the fish to the head. If the scales are attached to the fish too tightly, scald the carcass very quickly with boiling water. Once the scales are removed, rinse the fish with water.
Now you need to remove the entrails from the belly of the fish - gut it. Make a long cut on the abdomen from the caudal fin to the head with a knife or scissors. The main thing when cutting fish is to carefully remove all the insides without damaging the gall bladder, which is located at the head next to the liver. If this does happen and very bitter bile spills onto the fish, remove all bile-stained parts of the fish, cut out and discard. You don’t want your dish to be distinctly bitter, do you? You need to remove the insides by pulling them out with your hand, grabbing them with a paper towel and helping yourself with a knife. Those insides that are attached to the head must be trimmed or pulled out with a strong movement.
The internal cavity of the abdomen is covered with a film; it must be cut along the spine and removed. If there is any blood left on the fish's spine, remove it with a knife or your hands under a strong stream of water.
If you need a whole fish for baking or a separate head for cooking soup, it’s time to start working on the gills; this must be done: the gills are bitter. It is convenient to remove them with kitchen scissors. Lift the gill covers and trim the gills at the top and bottom where they attach to the head, then pull them out. If you work without gloves, then handle the gills with a paper towel or rag: they are prickly.
Use scissors to cut off the remaining fins on the tail, belly and head.
Cut off the head of the fish perpendicular to the line of the abdomen, along the line of the gills. To cut off the head of a large fish, you will need a powerful knife.
If before you only rinsed the fish, now you need to wash it very well. Do this in cold running water, thoroughly washing all surfaces to remove any remaining scales and entrails. At the same time, conduct a meticulous analysis for missed flaws. Then thoroughly wash the board to remove any remaining scales and entrails.
If the fish is small, weighing 400-500 g, the resulting preparation will make an excellent portioned dish. If you plan to please your company with steaks, cut the fish into transverse pieces 2-3 cm thick.

Note to the hostess

1. Wooden planks are familiar, affordable, but unhygienic.
Glass substrates are much more expensive and are vulnerable to the kind of mechanical stress that is inevitable when cutting most types of fish. An ingenious kitchen gadget - a thick silicone mat: with excessive force, it can be scratched a little, but it is difficult to cut through; it does not slip even on a wet tabletop and does not accumulate odors. It is easier to wash it than a porcelain saucer (by the way, they do this in three waters: cold, hot and cold again). Previously, products made from high-quality silicone were expensive, but now they have become cheaper. For those who regularly prepare seafood, such equipment is a must have. 2. Gills, eyes, fins and other unappetizing fragments of the carcass will certainly go into the waste bucket. It is doubtful that the owner will immediately go to empty it into the garbage chute. Meanwhile, after a short time, the trimmings will begin to smell strongly and unpleasantly - fishy spirit will definitely seep through the lid. Helpful advice: inedible parts of the fish should be placed directly in the cutting process in a reliable, whole plastic bag, or better yet, in several. Then the neck of the bag will need to be tightened with a rubber band. Now you can throw it away.

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Where to dispose of fish waste

After cutting the fish, trimmings remain: head, spine, fins, tail, skin. Many people don't realize that these unsightly leftovers make a wonderful broth that can be used to make soup, aspic or sauce. To make a good broth, you will need very little, the actual fish trimmings and some vegetables and herbs for flavoring. Fish broth

1 kg fish carcasses (heads, spines, tails, skin)
150 ml dry white wine
1 large onion
2 medium carrots
1 parsley root or small piece of celery root
1 bay leaf
1 bunch of greens (you can use stems of parsley, dill, cilantro)
5 peas each of black and allspice
salt
Place the leftover fish in a saucepan, add 2 liters of cold water and place over medium heat. Bring to a boil, reduce heat to low and skim off foam. Cut the onion, parsley root and carrots into 4-6 pieces and brown in a dry frying pan, this will give the broth additional taste and a pleasant color.
Add vegetables, herbs, allspice and black peppercorns to the broth, pour in the wine and cook for 40 minutes, covering the pan with a lid. Remember, the broth should not boil too much, otherwise it will become cloudy.
In 10 min. Before the end of cooking, add bay leaf and salt. Strain the finished broth.
If you don't need the broth in the near future, cool it completely, then pour it into individual serving molds and freeze.

Pike perch in potato patches

Now that the fish has been cleaned of all excess, you can start cooking. We suggest starting with pike perch baked in the oven. We will need a fish weighing at least 400–500 g. Cut a medium purple onion into half rings and sprinkle with vinegar. Coarsely chop 5-6 sprigs of parsley, mix with onion, add a little salt. We stuff the gutted and washed pike perch with herbs and onions, and generously rub the outside with salt and black pepper.

Cover a baking sheet with foil, grease with vegetable oil and lay out the stuffed fish. Place several large pieces of butter on the pike perch.

Place the fish in the oven at 190°C for about 30–40 minutes. If desired, a few minutes before the end you can sprinkle everything with grated cheese. With a golden brown cheese crust, the pike perch will turn out even more aromatic and tastier. Serve the fish with mashed potatoes and a handful of fresh spinach. This dish will be the perfect dinner for the whole family on your daily menu.

Advice from experts

Before chopping, make sure your knives are thoroughly sharpened. If they are dull, you should sharpen them with improvised means. Otherwise, the blade will not cut, but tear the flesh.
To remove or not to remove the skin is up to you. If you are going to fry fish in a frying pan or on the grill, then it is better not to do this: the skin will support the fillet so that it does not fall apart during cooking. If you are going to cook or stew, you can remove it. We do this by slightly cutting along the edge at the very base of the meat. Then, with careful movements, we pass along, tearing off gradually.

Head

What to do with a fish's head? The question is not an idle one. Before cutting the fish into fillets, this very head, of course, must be cut off at the very base. But if you are going to store a fresh carcass in the freezer or want to cook the entire inhabitant of the depths, that is, along with the head, then it will be extremely necessary to remove the gills. This is done using kitchen scissors. After everything, do not forget to thoroughly rinse the fish again before cooking it, preferably under running water.

How to prepare fish for cooking?

The first step is to wash the carcass and remove all unnecessary parts - fins, tail, head along with gills, free the fish from scales.

Next, the carcass must be gutted by making a longitudinal incision on the abdomen. The most important thing here is not to accidentally pierce the gall bladder, otherwise the meat may become saturated with bitterness.

How to cut and clean filleted fish

Fish fillet is fish meat that has been removed from bones and skin. Fish fillet is useful for many dishes. For example, cutlets or casseroles, fish sauces or pates. In addition, this type of fish meat is very convenient to eat - you don’t need to constantly pick at your food and be distracted by removing bones. In addition, you can prepare a variety of mousses from the fillet, fry or bake. This dish will be much more enjoyable precisely due to the absence of fish bones.

So how to properly cut fish? First of all, you need to get rid of the fins. This is necessary to make it easier to cut it into portions. In addition, if the fins are sharp, they can injure a person or simply interfere with further cleaning of the fish.

fin removal

In order to separate the fillet, you need to place the tip of the knife at the base of the fin and remove it along with the bone on which it rests.

Edible nuts - varieties with names and descriptions

After this, you need to get rid of the scales. This step can only be avoided if you cook eel or shark. The rest of the fish, unfortunately, have scales. Most often, this part of the fish skin is small and fits tightly to the skin. It is more convenient when it is large and easily separated. The scales of sea fish can be easily scraped off with the blunt side of a knife; you can also use a special cleaning knife for this.

In order to remove scales, you need to make vertical movements along the carcass in both directions, holding it by the tail. It will be most convenient to do this against the growth of the scales, located in a deep basin or bucket. This way the scales will not scatter throughout the kitchen, but will remain in the container. Also, to do this, you can immerse the carcass in water and peel off the scales under the surface. If the process is very difficult, you can scald the carcass. This will help separate the scales.

scale removal

After removing the scales, you need to gut the animal. The abdomen must be ripped open, starting from the base of the tail and ending with the head. If you touch the gall bladder, the fish may be spoiled - bile impairs the taste. If you separate the gills and pull them, the insides should come out next. In addition, with the help of gills, you can remove all the insides without cutting the carcass. If you plan to get fish fillets, you need to cut the belly.

gut the fish

To remove the head , it is necessary to cut the carcass, starting from the gill slits. The remaining entrails can be scraped out with a knife, then rinse the carcass under running water.

head removal

The skin of the fish may not be removed , depending on the purpose. If you plan to boil, bake or fry the fish, you can leave the skin on. In other cases, it is necessary to separate the skin. If the fillet is removed from a small fish, you can not clean it of scales, but immediately remove the skin along with the latter.

skin removal

For round and flat fish, different filleting methods are used, which take into account the individual structure of each species. To successfully separate meat, you need to distinguish between types of fish.

Ways to navigate by the stars, moon and sun

In order to remove fillet from a flat fish , you need to place the cleaned carcass with the tail facing you, cut the back, insert the knife from the base of the head and move towards the tail. You need to make small cuts, gradually separating the meat from the ribs. The manipulation must be repeated on the other side of the fish. The remaining edible parts can be used in cooking, for example, to make broth.

flat fish fillet

In order to get fillet from round fish , you need to cut the meat on the sides of the ridge. If you do this with a dull knife, the process will be very annoying and take a lot of time, so you need to monitor the condition of the tools. to begin with, you need to place the fish with its tail on its side and make a cut to the ridge. You need to move carefully, from tail to head.

round fish fillet

After this, you can separate the top fillet . To do this, just make an incision behind the gills and remove the meat from the ridge. The sharp end of the knife is placed between the meat and the ribs and, using cutting movements, is separated from the bones. Then repeat the manipulations on the other side.

Author of the publication

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Nika

I am interested in hiking and traveling, photography and videography. I have been going hiking since childhood. The whole family went and went - sometimes to the sea, then to the river, to the lake, to the forest. There was a time when we spent a whole month in the forest. We lived in tents and cooked over fires. This is probably why I am still drawn to the forest and, in general, to nature. I travel regularly. About three trips a year for 10-15 days and many 2 and 3 day hikes.

Other seafood

How to eat oysters

One of the most delicious seafood is oysters . To open them, you will need an oyster knife with thick blades and a chainmail-like glove that will protect you from possible damage. But in restaurants they will only serve you an oyster knife and fork, because such gloves are expensive. Place the oyster flat side up and run a knife along the shell flaps. Having found a recess suitable for the blade, begin to carefully scroll it so as not to touch the mollusk. When the doors are slightly open, use a knife to pull them to the sides. And the oyster is ready to eat. Use a knife to trim the oyster leg, then remove fragments from the shell if they suddenly get on the mollusk. The oyster is either drunk with liquid directly from the shell, or eaten with an oyster fork.

What to eat snails and bulotes

Snails and boules are served in prepared form in restaurants. They are offered with oyster forks or skewers. Using the sharp end of the device, you need to pick up the edge of the snail and carefully pull out the mollusk.

How to eat shrimp correctly

Shrimp can be served unpeeled. Then they are taken by the body and the head is torn off with their hands, then the tail is torn off and the shell is removed. If large shrimp are the main dish, then use a knife and fork. The head and tail are also separated, and the meat is removed from the shell with a fork, which needs to be dipped in the sauce or sprinkled with lemon juice. Additionally, establishments serve a plate intended for cleaning and rinsing.

Mackerel full of surprises

A win-win option for a festive dinner is stuffed fish. For example, mackerel with mushrooms and cheese. Choose larger fish, weighing at least 1 kg.

Dice a large onion and 300 g of champignons. Fry the onion until it becomes transparent, add the mushrooms and evaporate all the liquid. Continue frying until golden brown. Season everything with salt, marjoram, black pepper and fresh dill to taste. Rub the cut mackerel with salt and pepper, outside and inside. We fill the fish tightly with fried mushrooms and onions, carefully turn it onto its back, and sprinkle grated cheese on top if desired.

To prevent the mackerel from tipping over in the oven and the filling from falling apart, we will make a base for it with high sides from foil and place it on a baking sheet. Along with the fish, you can put small whole champignons and cherry tomatoes, potato wedges, cloves of garlic or lemon mugs inside the “envelope”. We will bake the stuffed mackerel for 30–35 minutes at 180°C. Before serving, transfer the stuffed fish to a platter and add baked side dish. This dish will rightfully become a signature dish at any dinner party.

There's nothing complicated about cooking fish from scratch. Learning how to cut it easily and naturally is a matter of practice. Things will go much faster if you have indispensable kitchen helpers at hand. You will find them in the Faberlic by Julia Vysotskaya branded line. These modern gadgets should be in every kitchen. Thanks to them, you will take your culinary skills to a new level and will be able to delight your family with delicious and healthy fish dishes every day.