How To Butcher a Whole Tuna: Every Cut of Fish Explained | Handcrafted | Bon Appétit

my name is Yuji Haraguchi I'm the owner of the fish market or Sakana today I'm going to boot your whole tuna into the pieces we see at sushi restaurants first I'm gonna check the quality of the tuna I received there are two ways that you can do this the first one is coring and then the second one is cutting a sample from the tail you're trying to see the color of the tail is the same as the middle of the tuna when we grade the grating usually occurs from number 1 to 3 you're looking for a number 1 number 1 has a bright color bright bloodline and a nice fat content this fish is definitely in the moment the important thing about any fish breakdown is sharpening the knives so I spend a lot of time sharpening I always try to use different knives for the same part to see which one gives me the best result if I were to use only one knife to break down the fish of the truth Guto known as a chef knife for butchering the whole tuna I'm gonna use these five knives Yanagi Miroslava debe butyl and you liver now I'll start breaking down the fish I'm taking the colors off first there are strong scales that is connected to the bottom of the thing that I'm holding then from there I'm just trying to put the knife in between the color and then the top of the belly so I'm not cutting through the bones I'm just cutting the meat underneath the color fish which are in general you're not supposed to hit anything other than the meat you're just putting the knife right on top of the bone so that you're pretty much just sliding the knife it is not the power or pressure you need to cut something hard it is a sharpness and the speed if you have a sharp knife you don't need to press hard with the weight but you just need a speed there are four different kinds with tunas in general albacore tuna yellowfin tuna big eye tuna and then bluefin tuna this fish is about 100 pound big eye tuna most of the time tunas head and guts are removed on the boat so we call it hng tuna so 100 pounds hng tuna very nice bright red meat now I'm gonna remove these really hard scales that are right next to the back thing it is important to remove those before we Flay it otherwise the knife wouldn't go through we use most of the scraps and then we make a really nice run man called the tunica theorem em scales are the only thing that we're not able to use but otherwise the other meats and colors bones and fins they are really great for making ramen I'm going to cut this tuna into a style called kawaii auto-ship in Japanese Goma means five pieces to back lines to bellies and the bonds bond at the last primal section I'm using a debe just to cut through the skin because the skins much hotter and after that I'm switching to Guto which is much more flexible and a little bit longer as you go down the flame tuna it gets thicker so that you have to adjust your knife I'm pressing a little bit down into the bone at an angle that doesn't penetrate the bone it's almost close to a parallel it just sits on it so that you're not gonna have so much meat left over or cut through the other side of the fish so now I just switch to a smaller Yoda bar and I'm trying to separate the back from the belly by just opening up the skin Yaiba is the double-edged knife but it has the same sharpness as a diver knife which is the single edge knife but when I cut things straight down double edged knife actually works better because the single edge knife goes a little bit deeper in now I switch to the Guto knife which is much larger flexible and thinner so I can feel the bones better so these bones right here are unique to the bonitos antenna other fish do not have strong bones right here that's just a way fish body is structured here I'm gonna remove one the loins by cutting the Nick bones and in the rest it's all separated so as soon as I cut the neck bones off the whole piece of the meat will come off now I'm gonna remove the thicker loin which is the belly loin so the belly thing known as a harakiri in Japanese is actually very underutilized in cooking lot of restaurants actually don't use it when I was working for fish companies I just realized so many belly fins were being discarded and I started to making a broth he had a really nice collagen so I save it it was really delicious I'm going to do the same process as with the back coin the first thing is always to cut the skin to make an entrance for the Guto the belly is much hotter because it has a strong ribs attached to it the back loan is much easier because if you do it right the meat will come off very easily but a bit annoying it's hard to see the shape of the ribs because it's covered with the skin of the stomach like you see here I always tell people it's important to cut what you see that's why I cut at a level and the knife should always be close to a level instead of a casing I'm cutting the strong bones that separates the back and the belly you could cut the bones that I'm cutting right now from the other side but it's really hard to see because of the meat that's in front of you so I'm trying to make it easy by just looking at it and then cutting it that's why I turn the fish over one time this piece will come off with the bones too attached and it's much easier to take the bones off once it's on the cutting board I'm gonna come back later to remove the bones attached to the blood line and then also the ribs attach to the belly now I'm going to do the exactly same current process again but from the bottom some people put the bones the other way but I personally prefer it this way because I can see where my knife is through the bone the result is always better because you know exactly how your knife is performing I'm just cutting the meat underneath the bone this way it's much easier because I can have really good control of where my knife is and then I can have my left hand to hold it for the grip is much better here I'm going to start peeling the seniors that are connected to each marrow in the spine I'm gonna use my devi' to cut the sinews then lift the bones as I move forward to the head to numb bones are very easy to break because they are not all connected each bone they are connected with almost like a frame or skin that has a collagen in it so that's easy to tear last part I'm cutting is a neck and also the top of the rib which is very hard so I'm using my devil to chop through the bones later I'm gonna come back and scrape all the meats left ownable here I just separate the back loin and the belly loin the bones that are between the butt line I just put my knife right next to it then just cut straight down now go my Odyssey is finished this is the breakdown of the tuna I have followings - bellowing - bellies and one set of bones you also have one belly frame and two colors now I'm going to break down one belly lowing into soccer blocks I'm now removing the ribs from the belly this is much easier to do once the loin is on the cutting board like this I'm just putting my knife right next to the bones so that there's a less waste with a meat and just cutting straight down and then I separate the skin almost like a sheet of the bone is removed this is just an expert that's part of the bone that I was removing just removing one big piece of bone now I'm skimming the ribs and in the skin of the stomach and trying to separate them from the belly loin trying to leave as little meat as possible on the ribs so nothing is wasted cutting a hole fish makes you feel that it's taken a long time but it is important to take your time and do one bone once in you and one muscle of time you have to be very careful you're not gonna penetrate the meat that you're not supposed to and also you're keeping the cutting board and environment very clean now I'm removing the belly known as a baton the baton is usually the fattest part of the tuna that is where we get to toe and in the total the rest of the meat is known as a coming now I'm making what we call coro coro means blocks I'm trying to have the same lengths of the blocks I just use my hand as a measurement instead of using a scale there is no rule some people make the circuit blocks very small depending on their refrigeration some people make it very long it's really up to the chef how they want to utilize the SACU but the very important thing is to cut it very evenly next step is gonna be removing the skin of the loin I switch to my Miura she give a knife Miyoshi dev a knife has a very fine edge and it makes it very easy to do fine work compared to the debe knife or a goethe knife it's almost like a Yanagi but you have more control fish scales if they are very small you can deep-fry them and eat them we oftentimes fry scales from the Tao fish which is very common in Japan but a fish like tuna scales much larger and it's so hard to use unfortunately we have to discard this now skins off so I'm going to remove the blood line the blood lines where the blood runs and the color is much darker and very distinct from the rest of that are coming and then it's one type of muscle so if you put a knife in between the regular meat akame and then the blood line he actually comes off very easily when it's smaller fish you can eat a butt line in sashimi but when it's larger fish like tuna it's better cooked there is actually a lot of iron in the blood line so it has a really good flavor when it's checked but it's very rare to see plotline as part of the menu at restaurants but we use it for our ramen dish known as spicy tuna Mazama we actually compete with other scrubs that we get from the tuna it's really good now that we're done with making color blocks we're gonna turn them into socket blocks first I squared them off then look how thick the meat is and then see how many layers I should be making from one socket block I always try to make 10 to 15 slices that's usually good for one person or possibly two people since we are retail shop I'm just trying to make socket blocks that are convenient sides for customers to purchase I could make socket blocks bigger or smaller but this size I'm doing is a good size for our customers when I look at grains and the colors if there is some parts that are broken or something no good for socket blocks I try to put them into different groups so that I can utilize all of them all these cuts are good for sashimi if it's not good for sashimi I would scrape them it's a matter of the muscles at this point because the skin and blood lines are all removed tuna has a lot of muscles so they need to swim in order to breathe they keep swimming even after they're cut if that happens the temperature of the tuna heats up so fast then tuna actually can cook themselves from inside it's called the yaki in Japanese yeah K means burn yaki is something we look for when coring it's very important that tuna after they're caught they have to be killed right away without any struggle and then they have to be iced down when you can happen it looks like canned tuna very white you said tuna is the most important fish for sushi it's very rare to see sushi restaurant that doesn't serve to know the funny thing is that American school for fatty part of the tuna where the Japanese people go more for Red Wing clean flavor of the tuna alchemy is the leanest power of tuna very bright red colors has more flavor to total is medium fatty and tollways it's very oily part of that tuna it's almost like revisal total sirloin is too tall and then top around in túcume they all connected this Yanagi knife is a very special because of its shape the shape is very long and very narrow which makes it much easier to slice very precisely I normally use it for slicing sashimi but since it's narrow and it has less surface contacts it's actually easier to make this block that I'm making compared to using Merlot sediba or Guto that I was using before the tail part has more seniors so it's gonna be harder to make more secure blocks because you have to remove a lot of tendons and seniors we use a lot of tail parts to be scraped so that we're not going to waste any meat and then the more you go toward the head you have more use for sake blocks this is a ballet known as a baton that I removed from the belly loin previously I'm gonna make this into soccer blocks as well Java tones usually Otto Otto usually it comes from the bluefin tuna which is just the larger version of the bigeye tuna we didn't have Otto row in this are they were smaller bigger tuna the sustainability that I believing is utilizing everything my personal view is less about what is okay to catch what is not okay to catch because I just realized in general seafood distribution has so much waste that is why I started doing business to showcase so many industries so many foods that can be made out of the parts that people are usually throwing away so I try to use all of the fish especially with the tuna 40% of the weight are considered garbage because those are bones and colors we are buying what other people call trash to make ramen and to make other dishes it's so much about how to be creative with while you get if everybody practices this philosophy which we call the mode tonight or no waste creasing you're gonna catch every fish less that's a kind of sustainability that we're trying to promote here is a breakdown of the belly line now I'm going to make them into different types of sashimi sushi is vinegar rice with raw fish usually on top then sashimi usually mean just a slice of raw fish the main tip here is sharpening your knife you always want to make sure you have a really good sharp knife and know how you move your knife you want to utilize the entire stroke so you're not pressing down you are actually using the weight of the knife and then your plane toward you so that you're just slicing without any force the thickness should be when it's tuna it can be a little bit thicker when it's other white fish the thickness should be a little bit on thinner side because smaller white fish have a little bit stronger muscle compared to the bigger fish so the texture will be chewy if it's cut thick also you should always cut against the grain so when you eat it it's not too chewy or to sinewy and then it actually breaks down much easier I'm scraping meat off the tail part of the tuna there has so much more muscle that you can't eat sashimi otherwise you can see this preparation in Tekka Maki you see in Tamaki in the US lot of people use this for a spicy tuna with different sauce mixed into it this is very modern idea of Japanese cuisine lastly I'm going to show how to enjoy the belly by torching you get completely different flavor and texture when you torch a mixture of salt and pepper it's ready to eat I personally think the mirror is oily it's better to be cooked it sort of brings out of the fattiness so when I'm torching I'm just looking for char and then fat that actually rises it has a nice smoky flavor which I think tastes better when it's done it's called a bleep here you see the selection of all kinds of sashimi from one belly loin normally we would repeat the same process for the other three loins that are left but that will be boring for you guys to keep watching so I'm gonna move on to the bones the bones are usually used for our broth it's really great to add into the stock because it's natural collagen and a flavor but before we do that we actually scrape off all the meats we call it packaging now ecology means the meat between the ribs I use a spoon to carefully remove all the meats before I roast them to make ramen broth will combine ecology and in the bloodline together and then we actually convict then make a topping for our tuna doomberry or our tuna spicy ramen also there's a lot of meat left on the colors too so before I make them into a stock I'm gonna try to take as much meat as possible so after all the knuckle Chi is removed I'm going to combine the bones all of them roast them nicely just a surface not too much inside and make a really good ramen broth it's important to cut bones into smaller pieces so it cooks much faster and then saves a lot of space to in the kitchen see there's our something that we use all the time all the bones except for the spines and then the ribs are very easy to be cut with kitchen scissors it's actually safer than trying to cut a bone with a knife now I'm going to break the spine the spine is not all one big piece there's a lot of separation between the bones which is filled with gelatin so you just find a space where the gelatin is and then put your knife in between them and it splits very easily it's important to blanch the bones or roast the bones before you make into stock just in order to make the flavor more mild although bone marrow is really important for making rich creamy ramen broth so when we brought that we make sure we only lost in the surface not cook through the mirror by separating the marrows it dissolves into the stock much much easier then while we are boiling the stock it releases all the judging and in the fat of into the stock so when we roast the bones we make sure that the ovens are like a 500 Fahrenheit and then we roast about seven to ten minutes from their bone and a gold strength to the water finally these are all the cuts you get from the whole big eye tuna

Channel: Bon Appétit

Views: 9,221,088

Rating: 4.8792992 out of 5

Keywords: butcher, butchery, beautiful butchery, fish, tuna, big eye tuna, big eye tuna sushi, big eye tuna sashimi, sushi, sashimi, how to butcher, how to butcher a tuna, how to butcher a fish, how to slice a tuna, how to cut a tuna, how to cut a tuna loin, how to slice tuna for sashimi, how to slice tuna for sushi, how to cut up a tuna, tuna butchery, butchering fish, tuna sushi, tuna sashimi, tuna for sushi, sushi knives, sush, food, bon appetit

Id: _r9Ndb6N_y0

Length: 20min 50sec (1250 seconds)

Published: Tue Dec 12 2017

Reddit Comments

[u/MidnightTeam]

Well done. Bon appetite is making interesting videos. I just saw the fermentation vid not too long ago. Keep it up.

[u/SenyorQ]

This is incredibly informative and very well made!