How to quickly and correctly clean burbot

Mistresses rarely use this type of fish for cooking, since not everyone knows how to clean the burbot. While this freshwater fish has very tasty meat, suitable for preparing various dishes. Moreover, the burbot does not have small bones.

Brief description of fish

Burbot is the only freshwater representative of the cod family. In appearance, it somewhat resembles a catfish or snakehead. His body is covered with a layer of mucus. Very small scales tightly adhere to the skin, which is why many people think that this fish does not have scales at all. Color changes depending on the habitat - from light yellow to dark, almost brown.

The head is flattened, somewhat resembling a snake. One mustache under the lower jaw. Burbot is a predatory fish. He has many small sharp teeth in his mouth, similar to catfish. It can reach impressive dimensions and weigh up to 24 kilograms. Although such specimens are found only in northern water bodies. In the middle lane, individuals weighing up to 2-4 kg are usually caught.

This fish can live and develop normally only at low water temperatures. Therefore, burbot is active, starting from the onset of steady cooling in the fall and until the spring ice drift. The warmer the water, the less active it is. At temperatures above 15 degrees, the burbot goes into deep holes near the springs, falls into a stupor for the whole summer - until the time when the water again becomes cold. Because of this feature, legends appeared that this predator for the summer somewhere disappears from water bodies.

The burbot has white, dense and at the same time tender, fatty, slightly sweetish and tasteful meat. There are no small bones in it. In addition, the large liver of this fish is not inferior in taste to the cod liver.

How to clean burbot

Burbot is suitable for cooking almost any fish dish, but people are reluctant to use this fish, since they believe that it is very difficult to clean it. Although there is no particular difficulty in this. You just need to remove the skin from it along with the scales. This is done in the following sequence:

To make it pleasant to carve the burbot, it is better to immediately wash off the mucus from it. To do this, rub the fish with coarse salt and rinse with warm water.
Having laid the fish on the prepared surface (cutting board or spread paper), make a shallow cut of the abdomen from the head to the anus with the end of the knife.
Carefully remove the insides so as not to crush the gallbladder.
Separate the liver (set aside for cooking). If there is milk or caviar, they can also be left. Throw the rest of the insides.
Remove gills and cut fins - they are not needed. The tail does not need to be cut off, since it, together with the spinal bones and the head, is useful for preparing broth or fish soup.
Make a shallow circular incision behind the gill slits.
Clamping a strip of skin near the incision with a pair of pliers, carefully tighten the skin with a “stocking”.

Further actions depend on what dish they are going to cook. You can separate the head and tail, bake the rest of the carcass whole or fry in portions. And you can separate the fillet and cook dishes from the pulp (minced meat or in batter), and use the bones to prepare the broth.

In order to remove the fillet from the carcass, it must be laid on its side, then with a knife edge make an incision along the spine just above the spinal bones from head to tail. The incision must be gradually deepened until the blade abuts against the costal bones. Work should be done carefully so as not to cut them. Turning the blade parallel to the ribs, remove the flesh from them. Then, lifting the flesh removed from the front of the carcass, cut the fillet from the tail, cutting it with a knife along the spine and spinal bones.

Turn the fish over and similarly remove the fillet from the other side.

You can first remove the skin from the burbot, and then gut and separate the fillets, but in this case it is easy to damage the peritoneum and it will be much more difficult to further process the fish.

Skinning is easy with large enough fish. It is difficult to clean the small burbot in this way. Therefore, it is better to salt it, and then sag it. But much tastier is a small burbot of hot or cold smoking.

We advise you to read the article on how to clean catfish