Filleting Salmon: The Best Tips and Tricks

With the right technique and a little practice, you can fillet a salmon in no time. What you definitely need is a sharp knife and a lot of patience. Grab a fresh salmon and start filleting it right away.

How to fillet a salmon

Before you get started, you not only need fresh salmon, but you also need the right tools. A sharp knife is the most important thing.

• You will also need a fish scaler. You can buy it online or in specialty stores. If you don’t want to use a descaler, a table knife will usually suffice. Fish meat that is too good to throw away but cannot be filleted must be scraped off. The best way to do this is with a spoon. In order to pull bones out of the meat, you also need bone tongs.
• First, you have to ask yourself whether you want to cook the salmon with the skin or not. If you want to fry the fish with the skin, the fish must first be rinsed well and scaled.
• This is best done on an old newspaper or in the sink so you don’t mess up your kitchen with the scales.
  Take the descaler or the table knife and run it against the scales. Go from tail to head.
• Now the head has to be removed. To do this, cut diagonally with the knife just behind the gill cover in the direction of the head. Only cut deep enough until you feel resistance from the center bone.
• Now the knife needs to be turned towards the tail. Then carefully cut along the center bone towards the tail.
  Once you’ve cut the salmon in half, take the top half and flip it over.
• You also have to cut the other half in the same way. To do this, separate the head completely and run the knife along the middle bone to the tail.

This is how you cut the fillet into thinner pieces

You now have two large pieces of fillet in front of you. You have to fillet them again to get thinner fillets. The remaining meat from the middle bone must also be removed.

• To remove fat and bones, gently slide the flat knife under the meat and remove the bones and fat.
• If you want to remove the skin, it is best to cut into the flesh with the knife in the area of ​​the dorsal fin up to the skin and run along the skin.
• If the fillet is too thick, you can proceed in the same way to carefully cut the fillet lengthwise with the flat knife.
• Sometimes single bones protrude from the flesh. In this case, simply pull the bones out of the meat with the tongs.
• Often there is still a lot of flesh on the cut-out middle bone. You shouldn’t throw that away. So carefully scrape the meat off the bone with a spoon. This can be used to make fish balls, for example.
• For example, you can freeze the filleted pieces and prepare them later. Or you smoke the salmon.