Hi, I am Barton Seaver and in this segment what we are going to be doing is showing you how to fillet a wild striped bass, its one of my favorite fish. The Blue Ocean Institute in their Seafood Choices Guide list this as one of the their 'Green List' species meaning its a very sustainable catch. Its coming out of Rhode Island, the fish that we have today but it comes all the way up and down the east coast.
Its really a great story of sustainability. In the 1980s and early 1990s the fish had really almost disappeared but through a great cooperative interstate agreement, the entire east coast really made it so that—the fish had a marvelous come back and right now its doing very, very well and its somewhat considered the king of the fish, so moist, rich and succulent. They have a great flavor. It’s a great angling fish. A lot of sportsman really loves catching it. So we have got a nice specimen here. One of the great things about wild striped bass is you can always tell it’s legal because a whole fish will always have a tag saying where its caught.
This one here is from Rhode Islands, absolutely beautiful, beautiful fish. So what we are going to do is start off by showing how to fillet it. This is how you fillet almost every fish. You just cut just above that fin right there, come out down through the stomach. Now again I would like to use a small knife because you have a lot of control over it. What we are going to do is then come right down the backbone of the fish and what that does is it's beginning to separate your fillet. And it gets a little bit tricky in here as we come in over the spine, so you can see just in there, when you reach the spine, you want to come just over that and down the other side. Come out the tails, so you separate completely and then you begin to just, whittle the fillet away.
Now once you get to the rib bones, its where it gets a little bit complicated. The rib bones protect the belly and are just right up in here. So if you just go right over those and then you come straight down those rib bones and then you end up with the whole fillet coming right off, end up with this beautiful, beautiful slightly translucent pinkish flesh, gorgeous, gorgeous fish. So in the next segment I am going to be showing you how to take the fillet and then brine it. That’s one of my favorite techniques.
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