Snakehead flesh is pink or nearly white depending on cooking method, with an attractive flavor - most people should like it. Wet cooked the flesh is tender, fine grained and does not flake apart, making it excellent for soups, stews and curries

This fish is extremely slimy, making it rather difficult to hold on to until it is scaled, beheaded, cleaned and rinsed several times. Scaling, cleaning, filleting and skinning a whole fish will take 20 min to 25 minutes depending on your skill level and tools.

Scales:   Snakehead scales are very large but easy to scrape off with very little flying about.

Cleaning:   Cleaning is a little different from most fish - there's lots of innards running from the head all the way to the tail. After making the usual incision from vent to under the jaw, make a cut on each side of the long bottom fin and pull it out. The innards are tough and well attached up at the head end. Use kitchen shears to cut them loose from the head (and immediately rinse off the green stuff that may spurt out). The gills are difficult to pull, you would need to cut them loose at the ends with kitchen shears, then pull them with long nose pliers. This is a waste of time as I do not recommend the head for stock, just cut the whole head off and toss it.

Skin:   The skin has almost no shrink and becomes quite tender when cooked. Fillets can be pan fried skin-on with no problems, and I recommend it that way. A skin-on fillet dropped into hot poaching liquid will curl only slightly. The skin has no strong or off flavor, but can be easily removed using the long knife and cutting board method. In Asia the skins are often sold separately from the fish and are valued for making stock.

Fillet:   Filleting this fish is not hard, even though the the body cavity runs all the way from head to tail, with ribs all the way. At the front end they are very short, but attached to substantial centerline spines. Cutting in from the top you'll not find any bones to guide you until you're almost to the backbone.

Once down to the backbone I usually just cut the ribs from the backbone with kitchen shears, all the way to the tail. I then shave them from the fillet with my fillet knife for the aft 2/3s of the fish. Up at the head 1/3 the ribs are very short, around 3/4 inch, but are attached to very substantial centerline spines (which go all the way out to the skin). I pull all these bones with long nose pliers, holding the flesh firmly to keep the bones from tearing it up. You may still feel some prickliness along the centerline out by the skin, but these bits will soften with cooking.

Yield:   A fish 15-3/4 inches long and weighing 1 pound 10 ounces yielded 11-1/4 ounces of skin-on fillet (43%) and 10-1/8 ounces skinless (39%). The fillets are free of bones. In some cases Snakehead is sold factory cleaned, which will give a yield of around 50%.

Cooking:   Poaching, pan frying, roasting, baking, chunks in soups, stews and curries - this fish works very well for all these uses, and offers excellent flavor. It isn't at all oily, so it's probably not very good for grilling or smoking.

Stock:   The skins make an excellent light stock with plenty of body and almost no fishy taste, explaining why the skins can sell at a higher price than the fish. I do not recommend using heads, bones and fins as they produce a strong flavored murky tan stock.