How to break down or process a salmon. Gut, gill, fillet, skin, de-bone.

yeah I'm just going to show you how to break down a fish I'll do one quickly and then I'll do one a little slower and describe it [Applause] for okay I didn't finish pin Bing that one what I'm going to do now is I'm going to redo one and I'm going to describe each thing as I'm doing it here so this is obviously not a commercial station but um I don't go all I don't go all the way to the end when I do my first cut I use my fingers like this hook the whole all the guts and push the Flop away with one finger cut under twist my hand down cut the top then that way everything comes out all in one nice piece down the bloodline not into the meat take your spoon gently scoop all the blood out there's some backbone right here that needs breaking or else the blood gets caught in there you don't have to rinse out all the time but I like to keep it R out and clean now if you're going to keep the fish whole like that for a day or two or whatever in the fridge you want to take the gills out I don't normally take the gills out cuz I fill at them you can see this Gill this fish has been on ice for a few days so it's lost its color the blood uh rots very quickly and it starts to stink so typically you want to get this out before it happens while it's nice and fresh cut the bottom you trying to get both sides of the Gill out at once you can do it separately but I like to do it all at once so towards you the spine cut the bottom of that rigid part of the Gill go right through both sides scoop around with your little knife and then now there's just the top cut that pull that through and the Gill is out generally speaking you can get it all out one shot like that now that W rot or stink but if you're going to do you're going to fill it them this is one way of filling there's a lot of ways of doing it but uh I put the spine towards me there's a little rigid plate behind the head and then there's meat that goes right into behind the head so you want to try and save that instead of cutting straight down there's at least a couple ounces of meat in there so take this fin curl it then that kind of makes this rigid area more pronounced and keep your fingers and tips and everything in and then you just follow in and kind of go towards the head with the knife that way you're going to get most of that meat onto your fillet I take my index finger flop that flop up and then wiggle this curl it in and flat along the spine so this is your guide along your spine and you the reason you flop this up with your finger is so you don't cut through it with the tip of your knife because then you'll really not fill it so then I'm going to just if if your knife is sharp you should be able to just push through so that's a pretty good fillet take that aside now if you're doing this often and you're practiced up you can get this you want you'll want this back part really thin so I do the spine towards me first so that this time I can curl it this way around that little plate into the head a bit get your fist right under that flop and you don't want to cut through the spine behind the head here that's easy to do get your fist right under there get that blade flat along that backbone and the sharper your knife the smoother it will go so so that's a pretty nice fill out there this spine if I was practiced up this should be really nice and thin and there would be even less waste but that won't be wasted be other plans for that and then now with these rib bones um I'll just show you a couple ways of doing it here you can do it in sections that are manageable until you're good at it and you want this as as thin as you can and even thinner would be even better so swiping in the direction of the the uh ribs and until you get good at it you can just take two or three like that even one at a time if you had to and just wiggle each rib bone out like that once you get good you can take quite big swipes now the one at the neck I always tend to fiddle with like this and then here have for this belly fat some people like the belly fat I don't push and with your blade curled up slightly so that um you're not taking too much meat and until you get really good and practiced up you can kind of just wiggle little bits at a time and then you can take that belly and trim that just the fatty part off pull that up cut of around that knuckle and then put it back down cut the rest out now that's a pretty clean fillet um if the fish is a couple days on Ice the pin bones along here come out quite nicely um it does need a couple days for the tissues to break down enough to release those pin bones you can take them out the day that you catch it but the uh problem is is it it's pretty tough and the fibers are holding those pin bones pretty well and they uh sometimes you end up kind of damaging the meat now the trick to pin bones is you pull them out in the direction that they're pointing so on this side of the fillet they're pointing that way so I'm going to continue pulling them out that way if I pull them out the this way the way it's convenient I actually tear the meat I cut the me with the bone so you start at the head and then just kind of get a a rhythm going pull pull pull and so on so if you're going to fill it it which I I mean sorry skin it which I typically don't especially for smoking but if you are going to cut yourself a little tail like that make sure your knife is really sharp this knife should be sharpened a bit more but I'm just going to show you for demonstration grab a hold it out get your knife wiggled in there nice flat against the skin and then pull so you can see there pull and uh if your knife isn't terribly sharp you might have to wiggle it a bit so this here wasn't the perfect one but it was pretty good there's a bit of waste here and then your uh skined debone filleted um again I've got a few bones to take out of here I'll just quickly demonstrate taking the ribs out of the other side of the fillet the other side of the fish this side you're pushing take a few at a time if you if you want you can do a whole like a big SWAT take a b bunch at a time like this I usually take them up right until the last two in the right by the head and then I do the rib bones by the head a little more carefully again curling the sharp part of your blade up so you don't end up taking too much meat push and swipe basically I'm going trim that out it's always nicer to eat salmon without bones or any fish and I'll just flip the other side that just for looks again a lot of this can be eaten but for presentation a lot of times you'll want to trim it up as nicely as possible I'm going to leave leave the skin on this one and then I'll take the pin BS out hope that helps

Channel: Dawseyandsons

Views: 526,729

Keywords: Fillteting, gutting, fillets, salmon, Salmon (Ingredient), Fishing, butchering, butcher, gut, trout, king salmon, spring salmon, sport fishing, Recreational Fishing (Sport)

Id: ONiVXWhaIZM

Length: 12min 4sec (724 seconds)

Published: Sun Aug 11 2013