How to Debone a Fish

When prepared well, fish is one of the tastiest meats you can enjoy. This fact is doubly so in instances where someone is looking to go on a diet without sacrificing a lot of the flavors that makes life worth living. Whether someone is looking to prepare some sushi or go with something basic like grilled salmon, he is going to need to know how to get the bones out of his fish before he bites into it. To that end, here is a comprehensive guide on how to debone a fish.

Steps to Skinning and Deboning Fish

1. Begin the process of stripping the fish down to its essential meat by placing it along the side of a cutting board.
2. Dip fingers into some coarse salt or grip the fillet’s tail with a paper towel. This will ensure that the fish cannot slipping away as it is being handled and manipulated.
3. Using a sharp, narrow-edged blade, make a small incision at the base of the tail and gently loosen the fish’s flesh from its scaly skin.
4. Firmly gripping the tail end of the separated skin, slip a knife along the length of the fish through the space between skin and flesh. Make sure that the knife remains against the skin.
5. In a gentle saw motion, keep sliding the knife along the length of the fish until all the skin is loosened. Trash any little scales that remain on the fish or on the cutting board.
6. Run a clean hand over the surface of the meat in order to feel for the relatively small bones of the fish. Use a narrow grasping device to extract each of the fish’s pin bones; while fish tweezers exist for this exact purpose, needle-nose pliers make for a fine substitute implement. Before going to cook the fish, give the meat a second examination just to make sure that each and every problematic bone has been successfully purged.

While fish can be a delicious protein with a great deal of variety in its culinary applications, a lot of those applications depend on successfully removing the numerous and tiny bones with their sharp and pointy surfaces. Nothing spoils a fish dinner more than swallowing something that contains a mouthful of organic glass shards. By carefully and thoroughly going over a fish fillets and using a tool dedicated to removing the tiny hazards of a fish-eating diet, the chef can ensure that he avoids risking any sort of injury to anyone he prepares fish for. By abiding by the steps presented in this article, no one should have trouble when it comes to the prep work for a fishy meal.