Title: Smoking Salmon and Trout Part Ii - Filleting And Boning
Categories: Seafood Smoke Info
Yield: 1 Text file

A very sharp knife [and a whet stone and a sharpening steel nearby] is essential.

~1- Skin on Fillets: Begin at the vent [anus] making a cut on either side of the anal fin just deep enough to reach the backbone. make these cuts all the way back to the tail.

Start the next cut where the head has been removed on top of the backbone. Cut through the fish, from back to belly, lengthways right down to the tail. You will run into the belly bones which get tougher as the fish gets bigger. Here is where the *sharp* knife comes in; it must be able to cut through the belly bones easily. As you continue the cut from head to tail work the knife along the backbone with the cutting edge slightly slanted towards the bone.

Remove the first fillet, turn the fish over and cut the second fillet. There should be very little meat left on the backbone.

Now the belly bones can be removed without loosing any meat. this leaves you a boneless fillet except for the line of long, thin bones just above where the backbone used to be. You can feel their sharp ends with your fingertip.

These last bones can be lifted out in a strip by making a cut on either side of the row _just_ to the skin. This final deboning will somewhat spoil the fillet in appearance and utility when making smoked products that are thinly sliced. A more finicky method is to remove these bones one at a time with small needle nose pliers. If the bones don't pull out of the flesh readily, you can do it after smoking.

~2- Easy Skinless Fillets: [This section by JW not the author.] Most smoke recipes call for skin on fillets but for sauteing, frying, poaching and grilling fresh fish the easiest way to get a skinless fillet with just a little waste is as follows:

Start with whole fish, uncleaned and head on. Make the first cut just below the gills done to the backbone at a slight angle. Turn the knife and cut along the backbone to the tail at a slight angle so as to "float" over the belly bones. Stop just short of the tail and peel back the skin-on fillet without tearing it away from where it is attached to the fish at the tail. Lay the fillet on the table skin side down and start a cut at the tail. Cut down to but not through the skin and turn the blade sideways. Cut the fillet away from the skin and continue back up the fillet to the other end.

Turn over the fish and repeat. Be careful throughout not to puncture the intestines, bladder or stomach. You should now have two skinless fillets with the guts still attached to the carcass. This way you do not have to scale or clean and you loose only a small amount of meat and belly skin. This works best on larger fish say 4 lb and up. -JW

~3- Defatting Fat Fish: Salmon and trout are fat fish and you *may* want to defat them for various reasons- to adhere to a low fat diet or remove contaminants that may be concentrated in the fat tissues of fish from certain waters. To do this, when you fillet, leave plenty of meat on the backbone where the meat is especially fat. Cut off the belly portion. Skin the fillet leaving about 1/8" meat on the skin. Make cuts on either side of the lateral line, lift it out and discard it.

~4- Boning Small Trout:

French Presentation I - Through the back with the belly uncut. Start by snipping the fins off with scissors. With a small knife cut the gills loose at the throat. With your fingers pull the gills loose along with most of the intestines. Make a cut along one side of the backbone, working the meat loose from the bone and all the way to the belly without cutting the belly skin. Repeat on the other side. with scissors snip the backbone as close to the tail as possible and then again at the head. Now you can finish cleaning the belly cavity with your fingers and the fish with head and tail on is ready for smoking or cooking.

French Presentation II- Boning through the belly. After cleaning, start by making a cut from the vent, along each side of the backbone to the tail. Then work the meat loose from the rib cage and along the backbone to but not through the skin of the back. Then snip off the backbone close to the tail. Pull the bone free up to the head and snip off. Scissor off the fins. Ready for smoking or cooking.

Extracted from: Smoking Salmon & Trout by Jack Whelan. Published by: Airie Publishing, Deep Bay, B.C. ISBN: 0-919807-00-3 Posted by: Jim Weller

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