How to clean from scales and gut the pike perch?

Sometimes housewives have difficulties when it comes to preparing caught in a pond or purchased in the market pike perch. Some do not want to mess with this fish at all, since it is not very easy and even unsafe to clean zander. But if you take into account how tasty and healthy it is, then perhaps it’s worth overcoming the difficulties associated with its preparation in order to please your family with a wonderful fish dish. To do this, you need to figure out exactly what obstacles arise during the cleaning of this fish and how to deal with them.

Why is it difficult to remove scales from zander and what can be used for this?

Pike perch belongs to the perch family. Its habitats are rivers and various fresh water bodies. Like other individuals of its family, zander differs from many freshwater fish in the presence of stiff scales. In addition, he has very prickly dorsal fins, which are dangerous for the hands of the one who caught him or is trying to clean it.

To correctly and quickly prepare zander for heat treatment, you need to get a convenient tool for removing scales. Perhaps, in your household from the time of the Soviet Union, a device specially designed for this purpose has been preserved. Or maybe you will find such a fish scaler in modern hardware stores or in the market. If this is a difficult question for you, then try to clean the scales with a knife with serrations on the back or with a regular metal fork.

But the easiest way is to make a fish scaler that looks like a factory product from improvised materials yourself. This can be done in the following ways.

Take a metal grater for vegetables with small burrs, bend her sides with pliers and attach a wooden handle to it.
Screw a few beer caps with the teeth out to the wooden spatula (from kitchen appliances) with screws.
In the bottom of the tin can, from inside, a lot of holes are punched with a nail, due to which barbs are formed from the outside - the same as with a factory grater. Equip the resulting product with a U-shaped handle made of hard metal, attaching its edges to the diametrically opposite sides of the walls of the can.

As for the first two options, the tool will be more convenient to use if its working surface is at a slight obtuse angle with respect to the wooden handle.

Scaler

The method of cleaning and cutting this type of fish

To clean the pike perch from scales without causing harm to yourself, you must first remove its dangerous fins. For this, you can use special kitchen scissors. If this item is not in your household, then use an ordinary knife, only it is important to sharpen it well. It is better to cut the spines, capturing the part of the body located at their base. When wielding a sharp knife, do not direct it to where your hands or other parts of the body are - cut from yourself.

Tip
In no case do not ignore this recommendation regarding the preliminary removal of fins, even when you want to quickly prepare zander. If you clean off the scales without getting rid of the thorns on the back of the fish, then if you hurt yourself about them, you can get a festering wound that does not heal for a long time, and sometimes blood poisoning.

Freed from the fins, you can safely proceed to the removal of scales, using one of the options for the above tool.

To do everything right, you need to perform the following steps (for right-handed people):

grab the pike perch with the left hand by the tail,
take the cleaning device in your right hand,
moving the tool in the direction from the tail to the head, tear the body of the fish until you release it from the scales.

Tip
So that during the cleaning process the fish does not slip in the hand, you can rub it with salt before this.

The procedure for removing scales in zander has another negative consequence. Whatever device you use to clean this fish, the scales will fly apart, littering the surrounding area. But this can be avoided by applying one of the following recommendations.

If you yourself caught a fish, clean it right on the shore of the reservoir, without putting garbage into the house.
If you still decide to do this at home, then clean it in water.
You can also clean zander by lowering your hands inside a plastic bag.

Whichever of these methods you choose, you will save time and effort that you would have to spend on cleaning, especially if you need to process more than one fish. Having removed the scales from the body of zander, you can begin to extract its entrails.

The sequence of this procedure is as follows.

Take the fish with your left hand (for right-handers) by the head, placing it with the belly up, while catching the gills with your thumb. So it will be easier to keep in position.
Take a sharp knife in your right hand so that its blade "looks" up.
Holding the knife at a slight angle to the surface of the fish’s body, pierce its belly between the gills and rasporite it, moving the tool to the base of the caudal fin.
Take out the insides, setting them aside, and rinse the zander under running water inside and out.

It remains only to separate the fat from the extracted viscera, if there is a lot of it, as well as milk or caviar, if they are in the fish, and discard the rest. After that, the peeled and gutted zander and its edible contents can be used to prepare various delicious dishes.

We advise you to read: how to clean flounder