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• Equipment -
• Scaling & Cleaning a Round Bodied Fish
• Filleting a Round Bodied Fish
• Skinning a Round Bodied Fish
• Preparing a Fish for Stuffing
• Links -

Naturally you need the right tools to do the job efficiently. Shown are the essentials, but also nice to have are a long straight turkey slicing knife for skinning wide fillets and large long nose pliers for pulling out the backbone if you're going to stuff a fish (see below).

• Kitchen Shears to cut through bones and other tough stuff.
• Filleting Knife with blade at least 6 inches long, razor sharp and very flexible. A razor sharp boning knife is second best.
• Knife - your standard cutting and chopping knife for the more brutal cuts, will also serve for skinning fillets if they're not too wide.
• Sharpening Stone to keep your knives razor sharp.
• Needle Nose Pliers for pulling out small bones.

For our example we'll use a Striped Sea Bass but any fish of this general shape will be pretty much the same. In my Varieties of Fish article the "Prep and Cooking" page for each variety of fish will have notes if a particular fish needs different handling.

Important: when filleting fish you need to have your sharpening stone ready and know how to use it. Fish fillet knives get dull quickly because their razor edge is scraping along hard bones. If you find any reluctance slicing through skin, time to sharpen.

First scale the fish (not all fish have scales, but all kosher ones have at least some). Pros use a fish scaling tool (concentric toothed rings) on some fish and a very coarse stainless steel scouring pad for others, but for a few fish the back of your kitchen knife will do fine. This is the messy part as scales will be flying about, so you might want to do the scaling outdoors.

Some fish are much harder to scale than others. In some cases you have to pull some of the scales off with needle nose pliers, in others you have to shave some of the scales off with the sharp edge of the knofe, and for one soft fish I found a grapefruit spoon worked well.

Next make a cut from the vent forward into the jaw. Make the cut shallow from the inside out because you don't want to cut into the innards. When you get to the bottom (pelvic) fins you'll meet resistance. Use you kitchen shears from that point forward.

Now reach up into the fish and warp your fingers around the innards and pull them down and out. For many fish they will all pull out easily but for others you will need to use your kitchen shears to cut the esophagus.

Scrape out anything left inside and break through the swim bladder (if present) so you can see the backbone. Note that many fish are going to be a whole lot messier than this very fresh bass.

Next, unless you intend to simply discard the whole head, open the gill slots and pull out the gill arches. For some fish these are soft and pull out easily but for many you will have to cut them lose at the top and bottom ends with your kitchen shears.

For most fish you can remove the gills through the gill slots but for some it's easier to go in through the gill slots and push them out through the bottom cavity and for some fish your only access is by removing the bottom jaw.

Above and behind the gills you will find the heart and other blood works. Scrape everything out and rinse with cold running water and you should have a nice clean empty fish. There should be nothing blocking the opening between the body cavity and the head and the spine should be exposed.

It Seems to me the thickness of the spine and other factors of geometry would cause quite a bit of flesh to be left behind, particularly on some of the more unusual fish. The procedure I use works well for me on many different kinds of fish, leaves very little flesh on the bones and I believe it would be less disaster prone for persons new to filleting.

Some instructions have you fillet the fish before cleaning, and that can be a little easier with some fish, but since most of you will have your fish monger scale and clean your fish we'll use a procedure that works both ways.

Make a cut across the tail and up from the bottom on each side of the anal fin from the cut you made across the tail up into the body cavity. This cut doesn't have to be real deep, but it does have to cut through the skin to free the fillet.

Make a deep cut all the way around the collar but as close to the collar as you can get. This will vary depending on the variety of fish. For the top half of the cut keep your knife tilted well under the collar to get as much flesh as possible. You may encounter a rib or other bone you can cut through with your kitchen shears and deal with later. In the case of this striped bass the cut has to go behind the pelvic (bottom) fins but for some fish they're farther aft and you can cut in front of them.

Note: For some fish, particularly those with a wide head and for small fish, I find it easier to fillet with the head removed. Just do the cuts around the collar on both sides and use your kitchen shears to sever the spine as close to the head as you can (from the top for small fish, from inside the body cavity for larger). Actually, I can't think of any fish this wouldn't work for except when you want to cook it head-on.

Make a cut from the top to the backbone moving from head to tail. have the blade following against the fin rays until it can pick up the skeletal bones and follow those all the way to the spine. Lead with the length of the blade rather than the tip because following the bones is easier that way. Make sure the head end of the filet is completely free from the head if you've left the head on.

Some fish are perverse enough to have no fin rays to follow and for others the fin rays stop before the skeletal bones start so you have to be careful not to slip under the skeletal bones.

Now from just behind the ribcage to the tail end cut downward from the spine until you meet the cut you already made from the bottom. This should have freed the fillet everywhere except the ribcage.

It's quite difficult on many fish to follow the ribs without leaving a lot of flesh or accidentally cutting off the skirt. On some fish you don't care because the skirt is little more than skin but on other fish it's quite fleshy. I recommend just cutting the ribs away from the spine with kitchen shears and dealing with them after the fillet is removed from the fish. If you've removed the head you can cut in from the head end.

Now you have a fillet separated from the fish. Use needle nose pliers to pull out any remaining ribs. Start at the back and hold the flesh with a finger on each side of the rib as you pull it diagonally toward the top front.

Feel down the centerline and in most fish you'll feel a row of spines. These usually only need to be pulled for the first 1/3rd of the fish because they get progressively softer. Use the needle nose pliers and pull them straight forward.

Now you are ready to do the same on the other side. You should end up with two nice fillets and a fish with very little flesh left on it. Feel around one last time for any bones that have escaped, particularly along the cut where the head was. Pull any you find with the needle nose pliers.

For a good filleting fish there should be no bones or spines left if you've been careful, but some fish aren't cooperative. See my special instruction for Deboning Milkfish (Bangus). Carp (distantly related) has the same problem but it's nearly impossible to remove the spines, the diners just have to deal with them as they eat. As far as I'm concerned, carp is for countries that don't have catfish.

With many fish you're going to want to skin the fillets, either because the skin shrinks badly and will curl or tear the fillets, or because it's a delicate flavored fish and the flavor of the skin is too strong. With a few fish you can practically just pull the skin off, but for most the skin is too delicate, adheres too well, or both.

You'll need a flat cutting board and a very sharp knife with a long straight blade. I find my 8 inch turkey slicing knife is excellent for this purpose. Our demo fish is the same stripe bass used for the cleaning and fillet sections above.

Start skin side down with the fillet lined up along the edge of the board so the knife has flat access for the full length. Have the tail end just a little over the edge of your cutting board so you can bend it down and get a straight start with the knife blade. At this point you can see what you're doing and if you're down to the skin and not through it.

Once you're started you're going to be running blind. The fillet isn't going to curl up as shown in the photo, that was done just to show you what is going on. Once you're started you cn move your fingers up onto the board to get a better grip.

Holding the skin tightly to the board, keep the sharp edge of the blade turned just vaguely downward toward the skin and run it forward using just a tiny bit of sawing motion if you need to. Don't turn the blade too far down or you'll cut through the skin or at all up or you'll be taking flesh with the skin. When it's going just right the blade has sort of a sizzling sound and feel.

You should now have a skin with practically no flesh and a nice clean fillet with no skin. If your fillet has some of the silver inner lining of the skin on it, don't worry about it. If you've broken through the skin and have patches of whole skin on the fillet, it's going to be difficult to remove (use the point of your filleting knife) so think hard whether you can tolerate a bit of skin before you try.

For most fish it's fine to toss the skins into the pot with the head, bones and fins for making fish stock for soups, chowders and stews. In fact in Southeast Asia Snakehead skins are sold separately for use in making soup stock.

Explore the cavity with your fingers to find any remaining bones and remove them with long nose pliers. There's a lot more on this in our recipe Stuffed Baked Mackerel which has a pictorial instruction section at the bottom.

Another method of stuffing for fish that are quite round is to cut on each side of the dorsal fin and pull it out, then cut the spine at both ends from the top of the fish and and pull it out. finally clean the fish from the top leaving the belly intact. You place the cleaned fish in a normal swimming position and stuff from the top. I haven't tried this yet so I have no pictures.