How To Fillet a Salmon

hi I'm Scott Halligan Cabela's Pro staff and what we're gonna do is show you two different ways to fillet a fish what we have right here today is a king salmon or a chinook salmon here in the Pacific Northwest it's about a 10 pound chinook and we're going to show you two different ways to fillet this fish first we have the fish on its side it's already been gutted and the gills are removed I'm gonna lift the pectoral fin cut right in there there and come right up underneath the collar right to the spine from there I'm going to stop now I'm going to come to the tail and insert the blade right on the top part of the spine once you break through that skin it'll go easy this is a hatchery fish you can see it's missing the adipose and I'm going to run right up the left side right around the dorsal fin right up the top of the fish and I'm going to connect without first cut that I made now what I'm going to do is I'm going to find the backbone with this knife and I'm just going to work my blade right down along the backbone all the way down from the top of the fish to the bottom now this is my favorite way to filet in an add roomis fish like a salmon steelhead works on any of the salmon in species and big trout as well but the key here is you can see it while I'm cutting it I'm actually keeping my blade against the backbone now I'm right up against the spine and the reason I like this method because it keeps more meat on the filet less meat on the bone now I just cut through a series of bones you could maybe hear them and I could feel them call the lateral bones and those are pin bones that we'll talk about what your options are of taking care of those here in a minute I'm getting down to the ribs right now and down into the collar and I'm going to come right down through the ribs again I'm trying not to get any bones on this cut other than the the pin bones I'm going to cut right down to the base of the tail right down to the edge now what I like doing right here instead of just cut in the Flay off is taking the knife poking about a one-inch hole right through the skin then I'm going to put my finger in there that way when I cut it off it's easy to handle so that's one quick easy way to fillet a fish my favorite way again because it maximizes keeping more meat on the Flay the second method I'm going to show you is one of the most common I see used but there are a couple hints here one is you want to maximize the use of the meat and with this method a lot of meat goes to waste so what I'm going to do again is start again just like like I did with the first cut come right up underneath the collar now I'm just going to take the knife and cut and turn it and I'm just going to run it right down the spine and I'm cutting through the the meat and the bones as I go being careful not to cut through the spine you can see I'm staying on top of the the dorsal fin I'm kind of letting the spine again be my guide and I'm going to go all the way down to the tail now again I'm gonna make a cut right here poke it through I'm gonna flip the Flay over put my finger in there and now you have this flight now a lot of people are happy with that but I'm not for two reasons and I'm going to show you what you can do here with this method what happened is I left quite a bit of meat on the spine and this is some of the best eating meat the meat that's close to the bone like that is pretty high in oil and you might say well gosh that's a lot of work to save you know just a little bit of meat but if you're out there maybe you or or somebodies are out there for the day and you've got quite a few fish this is a lot of meat that's left on the bone and again this is some of the best-tasting meat and some of the best for you so I'm just going to take that meat fly it off a bone you can see how the the spine is being becoming exposed now now you see and I'm just getting some little pieces of meat these things fry up great this is where Tiffany takes over I'll just keep removing that from the spine it's a little bit tedious but again we're out here to catch fish to eat them this section here and again that's what came off the top half of that fish now one of the better eating parts of the fish also is this right here and it's called the collar you have your pectoral fin and then it grows right up to the base of the skull and you'll join that first cut we made a caller is very high in omega-3 it's one of the best eating parts of the fish for you you can smoke these up or you can put them in a fish soup they cook up great two different ways to flay your fish try each one of them see which one works best for you you

Channel: Cabela's Cooking

Views: 824,861

Keywords: cook with cabela's, cabelas, fishing recipes, salmon, filleting fish, filleting salmon, cooking salmon, salmon fillet, salmon filet, cabela's, fillet a salmon, preparing a salmon fillet, preparing salmon to eat

Id: NO6wJnGJzLE

Length: 4min 52sec (292 seconds)

Published: Tue Jun 09 2015