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!
cooking
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A very useful tip
Thanks John – glad it was helpful