Filleting a Fish

[paulraphael]

I've been hearing more than a few cooks talking about applying Japanese knife techniques to western cooking. But there seems to be precious little information on the techniques themselves.

Chad Ward mentioned this site: http://www.tsuji.ac.jp/hp/gihou/Basic_Techniques/index.html

which is interesting, but the pics are small and it's stingy with details.

One thing I've been wanting to learn is basic fish butchery ... at the very least filleting small fish, like trout, branzini, snapper, etc.. This is one area where I've heard people claiming the superiority of Japanese techniques, including japanese style knives instead of western style fillet knives.

Does anyone know about this? Or about good sources edumacation?

[Prawncrackers]

Here is an invaluable source on YouTube about Japanese knife skills including of course preparing fish:

<<click>>

He has a lot of videos, his earlier ones are especially informative. Some are quite advanced - i'm still building up to Fugu standard myself

There's a lot of hot air about the superiority of this over that. Japanese techniques appear very precise and efficient but a lot of this is to do with the skill of the user and the quality of the equipment. I wouldn't look down on Western fish prep techniques. There are some things you can't do easily Japanese style. For example, three-piece filleting of flat fish where you want a whole fillet from each side. For this a western-style flexible blade is preferable. (It's called three-piece in Japanese because you are left with three pieces - two fillets and the bone).

Personally i like to use a combination of flexible western filleting knives and rigid single-bevel knives - best of both worlds. I've only been using Japanese knives for a couple of years and i can see the pros and cons. Best advice i can give is just to go for it - practise makes perfect! After a few hundred fish you'll decide what the best techniques are for yourself.

[budrichard]

Japanese techniques are different than Western because Japanese knives are not flexible. Western technique relies on a flexible blade following the contours of the rib cage and basically two cuts, one vertical just behind the gill plate and then one along and down the backbone to remove the flesh. I have seen Western Chef's when using a Chef's knife approximate the Japanese technique and then have to remove the rib bones separately. The above strictly concerns a vertical type fish rather than a flatfish or a cod type.

I prefer the Western technique and use either a 8" Wusthof 'Flexibel' or a 9" 'Punta Chivato' made by Phil Wilson.

Shown below from top to bottom:

Corbet Sigman Utility Hunter with sharpened swedge, useful for starting a cut at the anal vent for gutting fish. Tip is so sharp it has a kevlar lined sheath.

Wusthof 8" 'Flexibel' fillet knife. Works well for most fish.

6" Gerber 'Coho' Fillet with handle scoop for cleaning blood line. My first fillet knife.

15cm Debabocho(single edge) by Takeda Hamono. I don't use at all.

9" 'Punta Chivato' by Phil Wilson in CPM 154. Great for large fish

'Japanese Cooking, A Simple Art' by Shisuo Tsuji has an nice treatise on Japanese techniques.-Dick

Edited August 17, 2008 by budrichard (log)

[paulraphael]

I'm mostly dealing with small, non-flat fish, so I'm picking up a $25 forschner flexible fillet knife. Much more appealing than a deba that costs 5X as much. We'll see how it goes.