Okay. How to fillet a beautiful sea bass. Sea bass is a wonderful fish.
Gorgeous, flakey, white flesh, and can be fairly expensive, but it's pretty readily available
and it farms beautifully.
So first up, lets show you have to fillet it.
Get yourself a nice plastic board, get yourself a wet cloth underneath so it doesn't move.
These bones here are really spiky, and if you cut yourself with them they normally go a bit horrible.
So cut these off.
You can also get rid of these little fins here as well.
So we're going to go behind the neck, it's quite a nice small fish. You could probably
go all the way through.
So if we look in here, can you see how the rib cage goes out a centimetre, and then comes out.
With a salmon it usually just comes straight out like that with a little bit of a bow.
This kind of kinks out. It's much more broader.
We've got the backbone down here and I want to stay on this side. That's the spine in the middle.
I wanna go slightly to the left.
I want to use nice, long, slow movements down the spine.
Very carefully. Don't put too much pressure on your hand.
You don't want to slip, and you don't want to cut yourself.
So once you've done that, that nice smooth action has opened it up. Just have a look in there.
It's opened it up quite nicely.
We can use the tip of the knife again to take it to the central spine.
Once you've got it to the central spine we're going to stick our knife through, straight through, to the bottom.
Hold the knife down.
Hold it to the bone, and flip it out. Look how beautifully clean that is. Right to the bone. No waste.
Have a look in here. I'm just rubbing gently.
Down the little rib cages.
But I'm angling the knife towards the ribs.
This is where the little tweak is. This is my personal technique.
I've taken it down the spine, to there.
I've cut across here, so it's three quarters done.
And then I want to use the tip of the knife to take it, as I said
that rib cage is slightly different on a sea bass. It's more like a cod. It's broader.
So I'm going to do what I can.
And then, I'm going to put my knife in,
here,
I'm going to put the fillet over it,
and my fingers are out of the way, safe.
and I'm going to angle my blade into the ribs so I'm only going to damage the ribs.
I've just found that this is the nicest way to fillet the fish.
And every time I brush it, I'm looking. See how that just beautifully comes off.
Look at that.
That's a gorgeous, gorgeous fillet of seabass.
And look how clean that is.
Absolutely mint clean.
What I want to do is just clean up the edges.
So the edge, I just want to re-shape it. So I want to take an angle here,
boom, that comes off. Nice and clean. Beautiful.
And then if there's any little ribs or bones left, I'll just trim those off.
What I want to hear, as a chef I want to hear, is a nice clean edge.
So I'm just going to use the weight of my hand, push it down, because it's a safe shot, and look at that.
That is a beautiful, perfect, fillet of sea bass.
When I go the other side I do the tail, cut it across, do a nice long movement down on the back bone.
Again, to the end.
I'll take it to the spine in the middle,
go through to the bottom, hold the blade
down and angle it too, so it's clean.
I'm just going to loosen up that broad part there, and this time I do exactly the same but the other way around,
I'm going to angle that blade into the ribs, and I'm going to stroke it angled to the bone.
Not to the fish. You don't want to wreck the fish fillet. This is a critical stage.
Just literally rubbing the bones.
And look. This is your reward for doing that. A wonderful fillet right there.
Just trim that up.
And then along this line here,
just do little scores, and you only want to do it about half a centimetre thick.
This will give it a lovely visual appeal, but will also allow you to stuff it with herbs and seasoning.
And it will also allow heat to penetrate it. Look at that.
Gorgeously prepared like that.
And even with just a little bit of salt and pepper that is going to be a fantastic fish.
Steamed, roasted, pan roasted.
Or even pan fried, skin-side down so it goes super super crispy about 90% of the time,
for like four minutes,
And then on the other side for about a minute. It's going to give you a beautiful fillet.
That is how you take this, and turn it into that.
Enjoy yourself, take care, and if you like this, please like it, if you want to comment , please comment.
And of course if you like a bit of fishmongery share it on your social media so other people
can have a good old go too.
And you never know they might even cook for you too.
Have a look below, and they'll be a whole load of fish recipes that you could cook, with fishes like sea bass,
or sea bass. Take care.