1 Keep it iced
Store fish in chilly bin in salt ice, which you can get from service stations (they’re in the blue bags), to let the flesh ‘set’. Once the fish is cold and firm, it’s ready to fillet (leave it for no more than 24 hours). Don’t store fish in fresh ice as it contains bacteria.
2 Scale smartly
Only remove the scales if you are planning to cook fillets with the skin on, or cook fish whole. Do this once flesh has set. To remove scales, scrape knife at a 45° angle from tail to head. Scales tend to fly everywhere so do this outside or over some newspaper.
3 Use a sharp knife
I can’t stress enough how important a sharp knife is for filleting fish. You want to avoid hacking at the flesh when removing it from the bone and removing the skin.
4 Keep the skin on
If you’re filleting fish to eat the next day, it’s better to leave the skin on and remove it just before cooking – this stops the fish drying out. I store my fillets, with the tail end slightly raised, in an empty, lidded Tupperware container with a drip tray underneath, as this also helps the fish stay moist. As a rule of thumb, if I have a 40cm snapper, I cut each fillet evenly in three. The six pieces of fish feed three people nicely.
This Thai-style fish with coconut sauce is a winner.
5 Try poaching your fillets
If you want to cook up some fish fillets quickly and easily without any smell, boil the kettle and pour it into a bowl and place the fillets in there to poach for at least 2 minutes. You can add herbs and spices to the water for extra flavour. For some nice citrus flavours, I heat pinot gris in the microwave until boiling and add it when poaching.
6 Use waste wisely
I dig a hole approximately 30cm deep under my lemon and lime trees, dump in the fish heads and guts and cover it over. It’s amazing compost. Make sure to keep fish waste inside the tree’s drip line (the imaginary circumference of the tree from the outermost branches) so the nutrients go into the tree roots.
Photography by : Bauer Syndication.
This article was first published in Taste magazine.
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