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Well I’ll tell you what from late winter; it really is a magnificent afternoon here at Lake Conjola and what better way to finish the day than getting your filleting knife out and clean your catch. Now this is a very, very important piece of equipment, your filleting knife. Now this particular knife is a Martini Knife they are made Finland and what a difference it makes having a good quality filleting knife when you’re filleting your fish. You don’t leave half the fish off the bone. You get as much in your belly as possible and that’s a good thing as far as I’m concerned.
So I’m going to show you a very, very quick way of filleting these fish and skinning them. There’s no tricky technique it’s very, very simple. If you already know how, fast forward because you don’t need to watch it but if you don’t know how to clean fish then tune in this might help you. My very fist job when I was 12 years old was cleaning fish in a fish shop. It’s been awhile since then but I still have a few tricks up my sleeve. Alright let’s have a go.
Very, very simple I start over the tail, all I do is I get my filleting knife and I would like to slice as close up to the top of the head as possible and then straight behind the back of the fin there. Just like that. And then from the tail, we’ll start it up there and then flip the fish around. I start from the tail and get to the head. Some people like to run their knife along its backbone and that sort of thing. Well I think you can actually do it in one fell swoop.
The good thing about a very think filleting knife is you can actually feel it running along with the spine of the fish so really you’re not losing any flesh and that fish will actually bend to the contour of its backbone. This is so sharp and look at that it doesn’t get any more perfect and that’s not really based on my skills that’s based on having a quality filleting knife like this martini knife. This is one beautiful, beautiful fillet.
It’s a very important knife folks when you catch tailor. If you don’t eat them, don’t freeze them, some people might argue this but don’t freeze, because I think they just taste terrible after that, but you must bleed your fish. And the way you bleed a tailor, it’s very simple you stick your knife in through there or even your finger and you just cut straight through there and it bleeds through that doing that the blood will go everywhere.
Getting the blood out of the fish makes a big difference to its table quality afterwards so there’s one lovely fillet and now for the other side. So I’ll do the same again, I’m going to slice down there. Slicing its tail and then away we go. You can feel the backbone with the knife and the other thing you could also do is another way you can place your hand in on it. You push down on either side of the fillet there and actually push or bends the knife over the backbone of the fish so you clip as much flesh as possible and you can actually fell that backbone with the knife all the way right over the top
Another magnificent tailor fillet there, there you go. Now the next step look at that— is to skin them, again same filleting knife. What you’ll do you lose a little bit of flesh by doing this because you’re just coming off the tail there so you need something to grab on to so you just start there and like that and come down on to the skin. There, it’s there. Just run your knife and pull that little end bit there towards you so that’s a pull/push sort of a technique right through. Off comes the fillet. There’s the skin that you don’t really want to eat that the pelicans love. There you go boys, oh gee.
Okay to finish this off now, there’s pretty much no bones in this fillet except for the rib cage that’s along there so it’s very, very simple. Some people just cut it straight off That is if you don’t want that piece of flesh but there’s still meat there so you just put your filleting knife underneath that rib cage and you can actually just remove the rib cage just like that and you still have plenty of flesh there to eat that’s just full of bones and you don’t want that chalk full of bone. There you go boys, they like it and you have a beautiful skinless fillet a bit of butter on the barbecue, absolutely sensational.
One last tip when you’re cleaning your fish, do not clean your fillets in freshwater. What actually happens is the fillets will absorb the freshwater and they become doughy and milky and awful. You must if you’re going to wash your fillets, wash it in saltwater, in clean saltwater before you put them on the barbecue or before you clean them. Do not wash your fillets in freshwater. That’s a tip; I’m going to make your fish taste a lot better. Ooh that’s going to taste good!
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