Jump to content
  • Welcome to the eG Forums, a service of the eGullet Society for Culinary Arts & Letters. The Society is a 501(c)3 not-for-profit organization dedicated to the advancement of the culinary arts. These advertising-free forums are provided free of charge through donations from Society members. Anyone may read the forums, but to post you must create a free account.

Fish filet knife


mcohen

Recommended Posts

I've started cooking more fish, and I figure it should be cheaper and better in terms of getting fresher fish if I buy whole fish and break it down myself.

But, when I've been tried to do that with a regular chef's knife for salmon, I end up leaving so much meat on the bones that I figure its probably costing me more money buying a whole salmon rather than buying salmon fillets.

I don't know if its technique or equipment, and its probably both.

So, what's a good flexible boning knife to use on fish?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I use a few different knives for filleting fish--French and German style chef's knives and a flexible and a stiff boning knife. The main thing is that it needs to be really sharp to do a clean job. Lately I seem to be doing a lot with my 4-star "Elephant" Sabatier carbon-steel chef's knife. It's thinner and lighter than a German style chef's knife and holds a terrifically sharp edge.

The ones you see the guys in the fish markets using usually have a very thin blade that's angled back like the Wusthof on this page (scroll down to "W4622WS")--

http://www.knifemerchant.com/products.asp?manufacturerID=19&mtype=18

I'd like to get a deba at some point, but it seems that the main attraction of a deba is that it serves two functions--it can be sharp enough to make a clean fillet and heavy enough to cut off the head--and in the meanwhile, I have other knives that perform those functions perfectly well. If you've never handled a deba before, I do recommend picking one up in your hands before ordering one. They're surprisingly heavy.

Here's a demo showing one way to fillet with a chef's knife--

http://www.chow.com/videos#!/show/all/11243/how-to-fillet-red-snapper

Check out "itasan18" on YouTube for many excellent videos demonstrating Japanese fish preparation techniques.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

You can use a deba for the heavier cutting in breaking down fish. It's not the best tool for taking the skin off one side of a fillet, or the line of ribs off the other.

I can speak for my own (flexible-blade) filleting knife, which I've owned for many years and always been satisfied with: it's the 'Filleting Knife' on this page, and can also be bought under the designer's brand here.

QUIET!  People are trying to pontificate.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

From top to bottom:

Corbet Sigman custom trout knife, sharpened on the swedge

Wusthof 'Flexibel' fillet knife 8"

Gerber 'Coho' fillet knife

Takeda Hamono Deba

Phil Wilson custom 'Punta Chivato' fillet knife 9"

FilletKnives.jpg

There are two methods of fillet, the Western technique using a flexible blade whicih follows the rib cage contours and the Japanese technique which use a rigid blade to seperate the fillet from the backbone with the rib cage attached. The rib cage must then be removed. When a chef uses a chef knife, he is using the Japanese technique.

The Sigman is used only for opening the anal vent of a trout to remove the guts and as such is sharpened on the top(swedge) so a little upthrust will start the cut.

The Wushof along with the Gerber and custom Wilson are flexible to follow the rib cage contours of most fish and when done, there is no need for another cut to remove the rib cage. The Wilson is made for big fish and is a new CPM 154 steel I believe.

The Gerber is a stamped blade and I don't know if still available. This one is almost 40 years old. I would start with the Wusthof 'Flexibel' as it is relatively affordable and is a lifetime investment. A deba is not suitable for a first fillet knife.

Remember that not all fish have the same structure and you will have to learn the methods for each fish. Salmon have a row of 'pin' bones along the fillet and it doesn't matter which technique one uses, you still must use fish tweasers to remove each pin bone.

Cod have a unique rib cage and most lend themselves to a flexible blade. And of course a flat fish is an altogether different technique.-Dick

Edited by budrichard (log)
Link to comment
Share on other sites

The cleanest fillet jobs I've seen have been done with Japanese technique and a deba. The caveat is that it's more technique intensive, and different types of fish require more radially different techniques when using a deba. This guy has posted dozens of videos showing technique for different fish. There's a lot to learn. Western style is easier to learn and also faster (and the knives are generally cheaper). I'd like to get a deba and put in some time learning to use it ... but I happen to enjoy this kind of geekery.

Edited by heidih
fix link (log)

Notes from the underbelly

Link to comment
Share on other sites

The construction of the knife determines the technique that is used. A stiff non flexible blade is not suited to following the rib contours as the OP has learned. The Japanese do not make a flexible blade for this purpose so the Deba determines the technique.

I think the Western technique with flexible blade is much better than the Japanese multi cut technique. I hardley ever use the Deba pictured here for anything as the other blades do a much faster and better job. Many Western chefs use the Japanese multi-cut technique for the simple reason that all they have available are inflexible blades such as a chef's knife.

I would be interested in viewing the videos you referenced if you can supply a link. I loooked at the blog but no videos. I will try a search on YouTube in the meantime.-Dick

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I would be interested in viewing the videos you referenced if you can supply a link. I loooked at the blog but no videos. I will try a search on YouTube in the meantime.-Dick

For some reason Paulraphael has put a link to his own blog, i think he meant to link to Itasan on YouTube. Possibly the best thing on the internet!

Link to comment
Share on other sites

For some reason ...

Ack! Reason may be early senility. Thanks for the catch, and for linking to Ittasan ... that's exactly who I had in mind.

(and apologies in advance to anyone who gets Ittasan's theme music permanantly lodged in your head)

Edited by paulraphael (log)

Notes from the underbelly

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Take a look at this website. It has videos on how to filet many different species of fish. You may find the 'dutchglish'quite hilarious,and some of the pages are only in dutch, but i think the videos are explicit enough without the language.

It's dangerous to eat, it's more dangerous to live.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I've watched a number of professionals do this, and the ones who aren't sushi chefs have mostly used cheap Forschner/Victorinox knives. The blue-handled 6" Microban flexible fillet knife seems to be an industry favorite and is available for between US$15 and $20 depending on the merchant.

Steven A. Shaw aka "Fat Guy"
Co-founder, Society for Culinary Arts & Letters, sshaw@egstaff.org
Proud signatory to the eG Ethics code
Director, New Media Studies, International Culinary Center (take my food-blogging course)

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I watched this video http://www.youtube.com/user/itasan18#p/u/9/rfzGeu69Qns

As I stated, the knife determines the technique and since the chef does not possess a flexible knife he must gut, remove the gills and do a multi cut to prepare a seas bass(Zuzuki) for sashimi/sushi. I have to assume that the reason the gills were removed is that the chef has use of the head in mind along with the carcass. In any event, the use of the deba to remove the gills is much better and safely accomplished by a heavy duty fish shears of which Wusthof makes one, that will also very easily also remove fins, but again this is a Western versas Japanese method. Using a flexible fillet knife, one can in two strokes prepare the fillet without gutting the fish or removing any bones. first remove the fillet by cutting down the backbone and following the rib countours and then remove the skin. If the head and carcass are wanted, simply gut, remove gills and fins.

The chef because of the knives used and technique, spends a great deal of time(about 10 minutes) on what is a very quick task with a flexible fillet knife.

I can do either technique but rarely use the Japanese method.-Dick

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I've watched a number of professionals do this, and the ones who aren't sushi chefs have mostly used cheap Forschner/Victorinox knives. The blue-handled 6" Microban flexible fillet knife seems to be an industry favorite and is available for between US$15 and $20 depending on the merchant.

The knife referenced is listed as boning knife by Forschner with a usable blade of 5". I would have to assume that the Microban treatment makes the knife attractive for commercial use but in reality the knife is too short to fillet and remove skin from all but the smallest fish. An 8" fillet is the shortest I use and sometimes even the 9" Wilson could be bigger depending on the fish size.-Dick

Link to comment
Share on other sites

The chef because of the knives used and technique, spends a great deal of time(about 10 minutes) on what is a very quick task with a flexible fillet knife.

This is what's really good about these videos, that he's slowed the action down so we see exactly what's happening. The point of view camera work makes for the perfect educational tool. I don't think he's trying to impress anyone with rapid knife skills here. For the home cook like me 10 mins to fillet a fish perfectly is 10 mins well spent. In a commercial setting I'm sure Itasan would be much faster like other sushi chefs I've watched in real life.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

In my short spells in a trout-processing factory, for beheading half a ton or a ton of fish between two or three of us first thing of a morning, we used a knife almost identical to 'Heavy Duty Fish Chopper' shown on page 2 here. For the heavy lifting of filleting, we had automatic machines from Germany, and for going over the resulting fillets and taking off part/completely missed rib cages, we used something very like 'Filleting Knife 8053'. I don't know the details - in those days I was just one of the guys that wielded the blades. The filleting knife hadn't as much flex as my own does. One of my colleagues put all the knives over a stone first thing, and we'd use two or three each of the 'choppers' per session.

I only found this catalog recently. I'd always wondered why we used to use butcher knives to cut fish up - and here they were fish choppers all along. My manual technique always followed the cut-into-three-slices-then-remove-ribs Japanese sequence I learned from the German machinery.

It's interesting that the catalog shows 'color coding' to be an important concern in trade applications.

Edited by Blether (log)

QUIET!  People are trying to pontificate.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Picture quality isn't great, but here you can can a sense of the fundamental difference between the European and Japanese techniques.

Final sea bream fillets from filleting-fish.com:

bream_euro.jpg

And final sea bream fillets from Ittasan 18:

bream_japanese.jpg

Ittasan is definitely slowing things down a lot for the camera. Nevertheless, someone with similar skills will be faster with a western fillet knife. It's just a faster technique. Which is why Western techniques (or similar ones) are ubiquitous in high volume places like fish butcheries. Even in places like the Tsukiji fish market in Tokyo.

But the results are never as clean. Is this important? For fish eaten raw, very much so. For lightly cooked fish, it makes a difference. Chefs debate if it makes any difference when fish is fully cooked.

Notes from the underbelly

Link to comment
Share on other sites

"But the results are never as clean. Is this important? For fish eaten raw, very much so. "

I absolutely disagree with the above and in fact the results are exactly opposite of what is stated. I can fillet a fish without having to remove gills, guts or fins, all of which result in blood, slime gettting spread around. Even for a flatfish, I end up with 4 fillets with the entire flatfish intact except for the fillets. The fillets then have the skin removed and no washing is needed, period. There is no question in my mind that if preparing small fish for sushi/sashimi, the Western technique is far superior in every way. Now if were talking about tuna, that's another topic.-Dick

Link to comment
Share on other sites

The way I've done salmon for the pasty 20 or so years is with a cheap Victorinox sandwich knife (serrated blade) and a ho-hum but sharp 10" Chef's

Behead the fish with the sandwich knife, then with the blade resting on top of the spine, bring it down all the way to the tail, remove the side. There will be a bit of meat clinging into the hollow of the spine,and this is virtually inmpossible to remove with any filleting technique. Use a soup spoon and scrape this off--good for farces, quiches, etc.

Flip the fish over so it's spine is resting on the board, put the blade of the same sandwich knife again ontop of the spine and draw it all the way to the tail, remove second side, and scrape the flesh from the spine with the soup spoon.

I tend to remove the skin before de-boning, as I find it easier to remove the pin bones after the skin is removed. For the skinning, I find a heavy--albeit sharp- RIGID blade works best. Make a cut about 1/2" in from the end of the tail and rest the edge of the blade into this cut and on the skin, angle the blade almost level to the cutting board and pull the tail skin with your hand against the blade, wiggling the knife a bit as you go all the way up to the other end.

What's left of the rib cage is best removed with a sharp chef's knife, then the "belly flaps" are cut off.

Pin bones are best removed, I find, with a pair of cheap-o s/s tweezers I found in China town. The ends of the tweezers are a good 1/2" wide and angled, with sharp ends. As this is "spring-loaded", I find it much less effort than to use a pair of pliars which must squeezed open and closed

Link to comment
Share on other sites

"But the results are never as clean. Is this important? For fish eaten raw, very much so. "

I absolutely disagree with the above and in fact the results are exactly opposite of what is stated.

Whose results? Whenever i've seen fish filleted by someone with good deba skills, the cut flesh is as smooth as glass. I've never seen similar results with western technique. Maybe it's possible, but not common. You certainly don't see examples of it in that how-to-fillet fish website.

Notes from the underbelly

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I've watched a number of professionals do this, and the ones who aren't sushi chefs have mostly used cheap Forschner/Victorinox knives. The blue-handled 6" Microban flexible fillet knife seems to be an industry favorite and is available for between US$15 and $20 depending on the merchant.

The knife referenced is listed as boning knife by Forschner with a usable blade of 5". I would have to assume that the Microban treatment makes the knife attractive for commercial use but in reality the knife is too short to fillet and remove skin from all but the smallest fish. An 8" fillet is the shortest I use and sometimes even the 9" Wilson could be bigger depending on the fish size.-Dick

Definitely, Dick. The 6" knife is only suitable for small fish. But man do these fishmarket guys do a lot of fish per hour with those cheap Forschner knives, stopping every few minutes to hone them on the steel and sharpening them daily on a grindstone. For larger fish they use larger knives, but the blue-handled Forschner seems to be very popular, along with the similar green-handled ones the brand-name of which I forget.

Steven A. Shaw aka "Fat Guy"
Co-founder, Society for Culinary Arts & Letters, sshaw@egstaff.org
Proud signatory to the eG Ethics code
Director, New Media Studies, International Culinary Center (take my food-blogging course)

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I've done it inexpertly and uncleanly. You make a cut behind the gills, then you work the knife along the ribcage from one side, then the other, then the whole fillet comes off. Those of us who do it badly really hack up the flesh while doing it. But I've seen professionals do in in just a few quick, clean strokes of the knife.

By the way I saw a guy in a fish place using one of these today:

http://www.swissarmy.com/Forschner/Pages/Product.aspx?category=forschnerfilletfishing&product=40613&

Steven A. Shaw aka "Fat Guy"
Co-founder, Society for Culinary Arts & Letters, sshaw@egstaff.org
Proud signatory to the eG Ethics code
Director, New Media Studies, International Culinary Center (take my food-blogging course)

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 2 weeks later...

I only found this catalog recently. I'd always wondered why we used to use butcher knives to cut fish up - and here they were fish choppers all along.

This is a very interesting point. If there are specific knives designed for fish, why do we use something like a boning knife to cut up fish? I know I'm almost never going to use it to bone a chicken, and I want the best possible knife form to cut fish.

I'm assuming people have used the boning knife for versatility- one knife to bone both meat and fish instead of getting two knives. However, in Fat Guy's experience with professional fish mongers, they're using a boning knife to cut fish even though they don't need that versatility. Surely, the professionals must be using a boning knife for a reason?

Can anyone quickly explain the Western, flexible-blade technique? Or point to a good video of someone doing it cleanly and expertly?

Here's a really good video:

At the very least, you should watch it just for the part about the importance of using a mallet when cutting fish into steaks.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

×
×
  • Create New...