Fatty, tender herring is good both in salads and as an independent snack. It is usually recommended to use whole herring to prepare dishes from this fish. With a handy carving knife at hand, you can quickly disassemble the fish into neat fillet pieces.
It is necessary
- - herring;
- - knife;
- - fish tweezers.
Instructions
Step 1
Rinse the fish, dry it with a paper towel and place it on a cutting board covered with clean paper.
Step 2
Cut off the herring head. It is more convenient to do this by placing the fish sideways on a cutting board, bending back the fins and placing the knife blade at an acute angle to the carcass. Make an oblique incision down to the spine.
Step 3
Flip the carcass over to the other side. Make a second oblique incision and cut the spine. As a result, the pulp, which would have been cut off and thrown away along with the herring head, remained on the carcass.
Step 4
Cut off the bottom of the abdomen, about half a centimeter wide, along with the pelvic fins. This is a rather fatty part of the fish, but if the herring is of good quality, the cut belly can be peeled and used in cold appetizers.
Step 5
Remove the entrails and skin the herring. It is more convenient to remove the skin by picking it up near the head, more precisely, near the place where it was. The dorsal fin will prevent you from removing the skin on both sides in one piece, so pull it off one side, then the other.
Step 6
Remove the dorsal fin and use a knife to clean the dark film from the belly of the herring. Roll up the paper with the insides and discard it.
Step 7
Separate one half of the fillet with your hands. It is more convenient to separate the herring along the back, starting from the head. At the same time, try not to tear off the ribs from the spine, but to shift the pulp from them. Separate the backbone including the tail from the remaining fillet half.
Step 8
Use fish tweezers to remove the remaining rib bones. It is convenient to do this by bending half of the fillet up with the side that was inside the abdomen. The fillet is ready, you can cut it into pieces, as required by the recipe for the dish you are going to cook.
