How To Fillet a Fish with an Alaskan Fisherman

and if you do it really right you'll flip this over and there'll be no skin on the bottom and i'm blown away that i did that right on the first try we're not going to do another take that well [Music] hi everyone my name is jeremy woodrow i'm the communications director at the alaska seafood market institutes and our goal is to raise awareness about all seafood that comes out of alaska's waters and educate consumers chefs around the world about how to treat and use alaska seafood i'm born raised in alaska my father was a commercial fisherman my brother is a commercial fisherman so i grew up on the boat grew up commercial fishing been catching fish whether it's sport or commercially as long as i can remember i couldn't tell you how many thousands or more fish that i've filleted or broken down over my lifetime so what we're doing today is we're going to be breaking down a wild alaska sockeye salmon that i'm using a fairly stiff knife here this is a 10-inch butcher knife with a nice stiff blade you're actually going to be controlling the the fish all the way through this one has come to us already gutted um that's pretty typical if you're going to buy one in the markets this fish has a little bit of slime on it you want it on there that's how you know the fish is going to be fresh so i'm just going to wipe that down it just kind of keeps the surface clean how we're going to start with the knife is we're going to work along the back ridge here every fish has a backbone and if you'll notice in the sockeye salmon here you'll see this lateral line well that is actually where the ribs basically stop so your knife point as you're going into the back of the backbone here is going to go to about where that lateral line is first thing we're going to lift up the pectoral fin here we're going to cut behind the pectoral fin at about 30 degree angle back along the gill plate then i'm going to make a cut on the end of the tail here where the tail stops on both sides and just maybe a little bit behind it and once again i come right down to the the bone i like to start from the tail and work my way up and i'm going to follow that backbone all the way up another reason i make this cut is i like to put my hand up here and kind of guide myself as i work work up with the backbone so i'm gonna lift up just make sure to see my work i can see i've cut some rib bones off i'm just gonna finish trim that meat off there and voila we got one fillet and you'll notice that here the sockeye salmon this is really dark red does the color represent flavor the answer is no what the color actually represents is what they eat on in the wild so just the same way that a flamingo is pink salmon get their same coloring from eating crustaceans like little krill and shrimp in the wild so that's the how you get that coloring now that we got our fillet i'm actually going to set this aside and show you how to take off these rib bones here but we're going to take our knife and we're going to get it just under that first bone and work and you can see i kind of started a little bit there so i'm just going to kind of start it going along and i don't want to work too hard or too fast because if you go a little bit too fast you'll pull off a little bit too much meat we're just going to slightly peel away as you see i'm just going to work it up and peeling back at the same time and when you get toward the end the bones actually don't go all the way to the belly here they can't stop a little short so just pull them off a little bit you've kind of lost where the pink is and you get to that nice white section there i'm just going to come in with a knife and just trim it right off here and that can be thrown away you know if you like to compost and and you have a nice garden salmon is a great fertilizer actually in alaska a lot of indigenous villages they'll take parts of the salmon whether it's the tail or the heads and they'll put those in their garden and grow huge beautiful vegetables year round because there's so many nutrients so we have a nice fillet here i'm going to trim off the belly i'm just going to go with the white part i'm just going to draw a line go right through the skin and just kind of set that aside next we're going to do is we're going to take the pin bones out of the salmon if you rub your finger across you'll feel some of those pin bones which are basically the bones that are attached to the backbone to the outer part of the fish then what i have here are some pin bone tweezers you can also use needle nose pliers but if you're dealing with a lot of fish i really recommend that you make the small investment and get a good pair of like pinbone tweezers these are cheap these are less than 10 bucks the key to them is they have a nice sharp edge and also a flat edge here so that pointy edge allows you kind of to dig in without ruining the flesh of the salmon and that flat edge holds a really good tension on the bone that helps you pull it out i'm looking for that first feel where you can kind of feel it poking out and just pull out so that first one is always really small and keep working my way out and sometimes they slip which is okay where the pin bones stop here is they actually don't go all the way down they only go about maybe halfway or so so you kind of just kind of have to feel your way down and when you stop feeling any of those bones poking up then that's how you know you're done with them got one more here you said these last few ones are always a little tricky we've got this taken care of next step is skinning the fish and the only reason you would skin a salmon is if you have a technique that you're planning on cooking it where you don't need the skin if you're going to be grilling it i really recommend you always keep the skin on so you always start the tail and best way to start is to kind of do a little cut here and leave a just a little bit of meat on the end this will give us something to hold on to as we go i'm going nice and lightly i'm not putting a lot of pressure i'm not doing too much downward pressure i'm kind of keeping the knife just a slight angle as i'm going pushing down on the skin i'm right-handed but i also like the skin this way i like to push away from me it's probably the boy scout in me that always cut away from yourself so i'm going to put the knife down here and i'm going to hold on to the skin here and work it just slightly and when i get to a point where i can hold on to the skin i'm actually going to come back i'll make a slight hole in the skin i don't want to go all the way back i'm going to put right in the middle skin with the knife and i'll show you how that looks here so we have a nice little little cut there and that's going to help me put my finger in there so i can hold on to it so i can pull against the skin as i work the knife and back and then see how i'm wiggling the skin but i'm not wiggling the knife too much i'm just kind of slightly just pulling it and i'll pull off and if you do it right and have a nice beautiful piece of skin let's actually talk about the rest of the fish there's some important parts here there's actually a lot of flavor that happens above the fillet which is in the collar area and the head area salmon collars have become really popular lately they kind of eat like chicken wings so we're going to take the head off and i'm just going to go underneath the gill plate here if you want to use your palm to come all the way down and we'll just trim it off there oh there we go chop down like that all right so now i got myself a nice little salmon collard steak so what i'm going to do is i'm actually going to go around you have the backbone right here that's not edible so i'm going to go around both sides of the backbone and i'll flip it over and it'll kind of butterfly out and then i'll cut down in half in the middle there's a lot of meat in the cheeks of the salmon here there's a little bit extra meat up here as well there's also a lot of good collagen so if you're thinking like a nice healthy bone broth you're going to get a lot of nutrients a lot of flavor from from the head so if we're going to fillet the other side there's two ways to do that you can either start from this side or you can flip it over i'm going to flip it over for us today so we'll come in from the tail again now something that's you got to be aware of here is that we have the the dorsal fin so we're when we're coming down we're going to make sure to go above the dorsal fin the dorsal fin is telling us where that backbone is so as we're working our way here i'm feeling that backbone you can kind of feel you kind of bump along the way with the ridges of the knife i'm going to work it down a little bit [Music] and now when i got to a point now i'm getting where i'm breaking off those [Music] rib bones and we'll flip it back over and we basically have ourselves a filet this part right here is what we call the spoon meat and definitely don't want to throw this away don't put this in the garden if you take the back of your spoon and rub it along here see how i'm rubbing along that backbone and i'm getting all this meat coming up here this is what you want to use to make like salmon burgers or salmon patties there's a lot of good flavor here and there's also a lot of nice fat up top here so this is there's a lot of good nutrients in here too also the worst job you do fellaine especially on the back end the more spoon meat you'll end up with so a fun way to cut salmon is to go we'll do about a three inch piece here we're gonna cut all the way through this is where things get fun you only can do this for about the first half of the salmon we're going to come we're going to go halfway down the fish and go right down to the skin and we're going to do it like that and what's great about cooking your salmon this way is one that keeps the meat together you can do in a saute pan but it's the same thickness all the way through here's our fully broken down sockeye salmon now you have all the information to break down a wild alaska sockeye salmon you also can go to wide alaska seafood.com you can get recipe ideas as well as more techniques of how to prepare your salmon

Channel: Munchies

Views: 1,341,958

Keywords: fish, Seafood, MUNCHIES, food, how-to, How To, how to make, cooking, CHEFS, cooking tutorials, fillet a fish, jeremy woodrow, vice, documentary, culture, interview, drinks, eating, vicevideos, Chef, restaurant, travel, vice videos, INTERVIEWS, exclusive, funny, world, documentaries, Munchiestv, munchies tv, how to fillet a fish, fillet salmon, debone fish, debone salmon, what to do with a whole fish, salmon burger, whole salmon butchery, butchering a whole fish, fillet a whole salmon

Id: hLs0EKmDOoo

Length: 9min 16sec (556 seconds)

Published: Sun Jun 23 2019