How to clean and carve catfish

A large number of different dishes can be prepared from catfish meat: meatballs, pies, pies, baked fish and even kebabs. But for them to be tasty and fragrant, you need to know how to clean the catfish correctly.

Outlandish fish - catfish

Catfish live in almost all major rivers of Russia. They are nocturnal. During the day, catfish lie in deep whirlpools on the muddy bottom of ponds, buried in mud. This is truly a huge fish that can reach 5 meters in length and weight up to 3 centners. But such giants are rare, and getting such a trophy out of the water is very problematic. For cooking, specimens are used much more modestly - up to 20 kg. Properly cooked meat of young catfish is very tasty.

In addition, this fish has absolutely no scales, which means that during its processing the kitchen will remain clean. Another significant advantage of the catfish is that catfish lack small bones in the muscles and tail - only spinal and ribs.

How to clean catfish before cooking

There is no scale on the skin of catfish, but it is abundantly covered with mucus, which has an unpleasant smell of mud. If you do not get rid of it, then you can thoroughly spoil the cooked dish. But in general, cleaning catfish is not difficult.

• First, the fish should be sprinkled with coarse salt (or roll in it).
• To rub with an old sponge or napkin (you can just use your gloved hand).
• With the dull side of the knife, carefully scrape off the salt and mucus from the skin. We must try to make the skin a light shade.
• Rinse the fish well.
• If the mucus is not completely cleansed, you need to repeat all the steps again.
• In “traveling” conditions, you can clean the catfish using wood ash instead of salt.

The skin of this fish is strong, so you can safely clean it without fear of damaging it.

The catfish do not have sharp spikes on the dorsal and ventral fins, like perch or pike perch, but on the front fins (near the gills) there are sharp spikes that can be injured. Such punctures are very painful. Therefore, during operation, care should be taken, or, first of all, remove the fins, cutting them with kitchen scissors or a knife.

Gutting

After you finish cleaning the catfish, you can proceed to gutting. For this:

• Putting the fish on its back, a shallow puncture should be made next to the head so as not to damage the insides. Insert the tip of the knife into the hole with the blade up and, slightly pulling the peritoneum with it, cut the belly from the head to the anus.
• To open the incision and carefully remove the insides, without tearing them from the head, while trying not to crush the gall bladder - the bile that has fallen on the meat will make it bitter.
• Trim the gills and pull them out along with the insides.
• The inner walls of the abdomen must be well cleaned from the films.
• Make cuts on both sides along the fins, then pull them out with your hand or pliers, starting from the side of the tail to the head.
• If caviar is found during gutting, it must be carefully removed and then peeled off the film. This is easy to do with a regular plug. Salty or fried catfish caviar is a real delicacy.

When bile enters the meat, the pieces are most often cut and thrown away. Should not be doing that. Bile must be washed off or wiped with a napkin, and rub the place where it got into it with salt. After a couple of minutes, wash off the salt and you can safely send these pieces to the cooking.

How to separate the flesh

If necessary, separate the fillet from the bones. To do this, you first need to cut off the head. Then the fish should be laid on its side.From the tail, along the back, make a shallow incision, placing the blade of the knife parallel to the countertop, trying to make it go along the spinal bones. Then, pulling the edge of the pulp along the cut, with the tip of the knife, deepen the incision to the costal bones.

Turning the blade along the ribs, carefully remove the flesh from the front of the carcass, without cutting off from the tail. Raising the cut part of the fillet, place the knife parallel to the spinal bones and, moving along the spine, cut the fillet from the tail. Turn the carcass over and remove the fillet from the other side.

The head and bones do not need to be thrown away, they can be used to prepare the broth or for boiling out when cooking double soup.

Remove the skin

For the preparation of minced meat or barbecue skin is not needed, which means that it can be removed. It is more convenient to do this with a whole carcass of catfish, and not with a fillet filmed.

• Previously, the fish must be washed, gutted and removed fins.
• After that, with a sharp knife, it is necessary to make a circular incision of the skin across the body behind the gills and another one in the middle of the back along the body.
• Grab the edge of the skin near the head with pliers and pull towards the tail, if necessary, trim with a knife.
• Having removed the skin on one side of the carcass, it is likewise removed on the other.

You can cut the carcass into portions or remove the fillet.

It is the skin that has a strong smell of mud, so removing it from the carcass, you can almost completely get rid of this smell.

It will be much more convenient to remove the skin from the fish if it is suspended by the gills.

How to get rid of a specific smell

Soma is not always taken to cook because of the specific smell of tina that its meat possesses. Moreover, the larger and older the fish, the more sensitive this smell. You can significantly reduce unpleasant aroma by removing the skin from the catfish. To get rid of it completely, before cooking it is necessary to pour meat with lemon juice or dry white wine, soak for 15-20 minutes, then rinse.

You can soak somina in milk for 2-3 hours. This will not only remove the smell, but also make the meat tastier. During cooking, it will not be superfluous to generously season catfish with spices, including allspice and black pepper.

This fish is very good in smoked form, and it does not matter, cold or hot smoking. It makes wonderful steaks for barbecue and even barbecue.

From properly cleaned and processed catfish meat, you can cook many different dishes that will not leave anyone indifferent.

We recommend reading the article: how to quickly defrost fish before cooking