How to fillet a mackerel
Fresh mackerel. Just a couple of hours after being caught and brought home and what a difference from those sold in supermarkets. Notice the eyes are bright and rounded – not sunken and discoloured. The flesh is firm and has retained its beautiful oil-slick rainbowing.
Now, of course you can gut them and bake them whole, but this is a demo, courtesy of my angling husband, on how to fillet them and remove the pin bones. There’s a lot to be said for the ritual easing of meat from bones whilst dining, but equally, there’s something completely wonderful about putting a piece of fish on your plate and not having to go all CSI on it.
You need a good knife. Fishy man has a filleting knife that he got from The Tackle Box (the tackle shop at Brighton marina)- its blade is thin and it’s sharper than a sharp thing. I really wouldn’t want to use a knife that is doubled up as an all purpose kitchen knife for this job. A sharper knife is a safer knife.
One disclaimer – this is a graphic demonstration of removing flesh from a dead fish. There is blood. If you don’t like looking at dead fish or blood, then you might like to peruse the recipe index for some baking recipes instead.
Sleek, meaty torpedos
Just look at those colours
and those bright, healthy eyes
Hold the pectoral (side) fin towards the head – that’s where the flesh begins. Using a controlled sawing motion, cut down until you feel the resistance of the backbone, then flatten your knife down so that you run it horizontally – just resting on the bone.
Keep backwards-and-forwarding to the end of the fish
Keep your other hand resting on top of the fillet – it keeps everything from moving around and allows you to control the speed of the knife and keeps its angle correct. Flat to the bone.
Put that fillet to one side and flip the fish over. Start again. Cut down behind the fin, when you hit bone, turn your knife and cut through above the spine.
Right to the end.
and there’s your second fillet.
Now you need to tidy it up a bit. Start by rinsing it off and patting dry with some kitchen towel.
You’ll see the top section is a slightly different colour; beneath that membrane is a rack of angled rib bones – you can pull them out, but trimming them off sacrifices little to no flesh, so angle your knife to match the angle of the slope and trim that section off at an angle
you don’t have to be razor-thin, but the bones aren’t thick and only lie in a single layer, so don’t hack straight down and lose the whole section.
Tidy up the top of the fillet too – just trim off any little bits of fin.
There’s your fillet. It looks perfect, but there are still some bones – the pin bones. See the line running down the middle of the fillet? That’s filled with pin bones.
Many a time, we have stood hunched over fillets of fish, plucking and digging with tweezers, but after fillet number four, well, frankly, the novelty wears off and despite your most exacting attention and technique, you will miss the odd one, then someone has to root around in their mouthful of fish and there’s a subsequent flurry of accusations and denials of culpability.
The remedy? Cut them out.
Place your knife alongside the seam, fractionally to one side of it, but with the knife angling in towards it – you’ll effectively cut a ‘V’ shape
Repeat on the other side, to complete the ‘V’ shape
Grab the top of the pin bone section you have cut (just cut between the skin and flesh at the top of the fillet – a tiny incision – to separate flesh from skin if necessary to get the ball rolling)
and pull it up and then down the whole length of the fillet – it comes away easily.
Done. A perfectly boneless, perfectly delicious fillet of mackerel!
Hang on! Before you go! Scroll down to the comments box and say hi, would ya? I get so many hits on this post, but no-one says hi… go on… *nudge*
Enjoy your mackerel!
cooking
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[...] start with mackerel fillets (see how to fillet a mackerel here [...]
A very useful tip
Thanks John – glad it was helpful
[...] Learn how to fillet and remove the pin bones from mackerel [...]
Excellent instructions. I shall go out now to get a mackerel and try it. Thanks!
Cool! Hope you enjoy it
Thanks Anna I’m going to give it a try
Cheers for the tips!
I had a go at something similar last week (before reading this) and made a right old hash of it.
Now the mackerel are back around Brighton hopefully I’ll get a few more goes…
Excellent, Bob! Hope it goes smoothly
You won’t make a hash of it Jim; you will do it perfectly (< that's positive thinking for you there. It might well work – don't knock it) Hooray for the Brighton Mackerel. Tight lines!
[...] So you fillet it, in exactly the same way as a mackerel. [...]
just what i was lookin for, cheers
Excellent, Colin! Glad it helped
Hi Anna and Husband, thanks for this fab detailed doc its brill, will hopefully get the chance to try it if we catch some mac when were in Anglesey in 3 weeks!!! take care, Dan & Family x
Sending *mackerel by the string* vibes to you all Dan! Enjoy
the nudge did me in. great post, i feel like it’s somewhat rare to stumble upon something that so perfectly matches what you were searching for! thanks.
Why thank you, Talley! I am glad that I did not underestimate the power of the nudge. Happy to have been of help.
Thanks for the filleting advice – my husband and brother have just returned from a Fathers’ Day fishing trip with half a dozen and I’m already salivating!
Hope they had a blast Emma and that those mackerel were delicious
HI just what i was looking for x
Glad to hear it Nickie! Thanks for saying hi
Nice and easy eh. A pal just dropped some round. Thats Mackerel for you. Catch one, catch a bucketful. Recon skin side down on the barbecue with potato wedges and a sprinkle of Halen Mon. This is really helpful. Thanks!
BBQ’ing sounds goooood! Glad it helped, guys
Hi I will try this at home, as there was no warning not to xx
You should try everything at home once! OK, maybe not everything. I’m phoning a Barrister just in case.
Just caught some mackerel – and followed your guide – now off to enjoy them pan fried. Good advice about the filleting knife.
Oh – and “Hi”
Hi Noel
Hope they tasted most excellent.
great tried instructions and amazingly it worked, well the second fish. but that was my fault. thank you.
Thanks, I was thinking about buying some mackerill from the supermarket but it always has bones in it so I’ve never got any. I really want to try it so cheers
Hi and thanks a bunch just about to give it a try!
Hope it went well Eric, Zoe and Garry (second time’s the charm ?). Happy mackereling
cheers at least someone who goes into depth how to make perfect fillets ,the Mackeral we have was caught off the west coast of Scotland in one of my fav fishing holes Porten Cross using feathers now to enjoy our tea cheers
Someone showed me how to fillet mackerel and it wasn’t very successful. I read this article and the first time I filleted a mackerel using your method it worked beautifully. I don’t spend half an hour picking out bones with tweezers now. Many thanks.
Great to hear that it was useful, guys; thanks! Hope you enjoyed your mackerel tea Adrian
) Glad you could ditch the tweezers Janie 
Hi and thanks for the tutorial, it worked well for me!