Many recipes which involve the use of catfish will require you to cook the fish as fillet; this means you remove the flesh from the bones. Catfish fillet tastes great; you can enjoy the delicious flavour and taste without bothering about the bones getting in your way.
Preparing Catfish Fillet without Skinning
In this article, I will be describing how you can get the fillet without removing the catfish skin. The physical features of catfish make it easier to cook the fish without skinning. This is because the catfish skin is smooth and without scales. If catfish had scales covering the body, you would need to go through the process of scraping these scales away.
To get started with your catfish fillet without skinning, you will need a sharp kitchen knife. The steps are quite easy, but if this is your first time of preparing the catfish fillet, you may need some practice. No worries about this, you will probably get it right the first time.
Bones in the catfish
You can find some bones in the catfish that must be removed when preparing the fillet. The bones are in the vertebrae region running from the catfish’s head to its tail. Also, there are a collection of smaller bones along the back and sides of the fish.
Removing the bones from catfish is quite easy because the bones are concentrated in particular parts of the fish. Also, the bones in a catfish are aligned on only one side of the fish, so, if you can cut the flesh clear from one side, the set of bones you see are the only ones to be removed.
Cutting the catfish
The catfish has short ribs along its sides, the ribs run from its head to the tail, so it will be difficult to slice down from the head to get your fillet.
First, you will need to bleed the catfish by sticking the knife in its heart region; the blood will flow out and completely drain away.
Then, you need to cut off the head; the next part to be cut will start from the ribs of the catfish. Since the catfish has a rounded shape, you should keep the knife moving in a curved pattern instead of cutting straight into the flesh. Cut from the head region, down to the tail of your catfish. The flesh should come off when your knife reaches the tail, but it will still be attached at the fish’s sides.
Next, position your knife at a right angle to the part you have already cut and slice down in the same rounded pattern from the head region to the tail. You will get catfish fillet shaped like a triangle. With the bones out from one end, cutting the flesh from the other side should be very easy.
Once you have your fillet, you can proceed to wash it while keeping the skin. To preserve the catfish fillet, you can store the pieces of flesh in a refrigerator until you need to cook.
