Goby

Goby
Goby

[Sand Goby, Tank Goby Glossogobius giuris, (family Gobiidae)]
This fish is found in tropical fresh and brakish waters from the east coast of Africa to the South Pacific islands. Caught wild and farmed. It is absolutely gigantic - for a goby - most of which are between 1 and 4 inches long. This one gets as large as 19 inches in brackish water, less in fresh, but is generally marketed at about 9 inches and 3.2 oz.

This fish is a lot of trouble to eat due to small size and troublesome bones and fins - which would be OK if it was really outstanding in flavor, but it's not.The only way I've found to eat these is to fillet them, but that's a bit of trouble for so small a fish. Anyway, if you end up with a pile of gobys, instructions follow.

The goby has large scales but they're easy to scrape off and with a minimum of scattering around. A pound of gobys will yield 9.6 oz of tails after cleaning and removing the heads, or about 7 ounces of edible flesh (43%). The skin has little shrink and softens when cooked. Goby heads, fins and bones make a very nice mild soup stock with no oil at all, probably the best use for this fish.

Scale the fish.
Split the belly as for any other round fish, up to the pectoral (bottom) fins (which are fused together into a single fin on this fish). Use your kitchen shears to continue through the fins. If you intend to use the heads for stock, you want to continue the cut all the way up under the chin because you have to remove the gill from the underside.
Cut around the collar in the usual way, snip the spine with kitchen shears and pull away the head. Unlike some smaller fish the innards will not all come out with the head so you have to pull them the usual way.
You'll find two strips of flesh under the head which you can salvage for some use if you wish. Open the head from the bottom to pull out the gills.
Cut off the tail with your shears.
Hold the fish upside down and make two quick fillet cuts from the body cavity to the tail, one on each side of the fin.
Set the fish on it's belly and make two quick fillet cuts, one on each side of the fins for the full length.
Now just peel the fillet off from the tail end. Just pull it off over the ribs, but most of the rib bones will stay with the fillet.
Take your needle nose pliers and working from the front back remove all the ribs from the skirt area. You can practically just scoop them out with the nose of the pliers.