Filleting A Fish

(or how a Steenbras became supper)

I work at a hotel in Pondoland near the Wild Coast in South Africa, which is a couple of
minutes walk away from the beach and we are fortunate enough to have a ready supply of
fresh fish from the local fisherman.

This is the tale of me turning a whole fish ( a 5kg Steenbras) into fillets which where then cut into
220g portions to be grilled and served at supper to our guests that night.


(Unfortunately my brain works in metric, hence the measurements)

Step 1 Slicing behind the gill plate

Taking a sharp knife slice behind the bone on the back edge of the gills all the way to the
spinal column and the through the belly.

Comments

[fluent]

Hey - does this work on most fish? I watched some guys filet some Alaskan halibut and silver salmon - my question is: will it work on rainbow or brown trout? Thanks!

[SinAmos]

This definitely might be improved with a video. Still pictures hardly tell the tale. Thanks anyhow.

[Stoveboy]

I'll try get a walkthrough video of me filleting a fish soon, no promises on the timeframe though.

[mvberg]

Hey bro, chill out. Nice dork gear though...

[SinAmos]

Relax your brain, bro-ha. Nice ice cube in the brew-ha.

[thecheatscalc]

very interesting, and a nice job! However... did you skip the part of removing the guts? I was curious about that.

[Stoveboy]

I didn't skip it, we buy our fish ready scaled and gutted from the local fishermen. In all it works out as less waste for me to deal with.

[scoochmaroo]

I love this I don't ever want to do this, but I like that now I have the knowledge. I never would have been able to follow this without the clear, instructive pictures. I think this is a perfect use of this site. Great Instructable!

[Stoveboy]

Thanks. Unfortunately I struggle to explain how to do it. Normally when I'm teaching my staff something like this, we all have a fish and a knife and I demo the step and wait for them to do it before moving on.