The Easiest Way to Skin Fish Fillets and Remove Bones
Filleting, skinning and boning your own fish is easy if you know the correct technique. Gordon Ramsay demonstrates how to quickly skin and remove bones from a large fillet so it can be cooked safely.
You can see both techniques here in the video above (skip to 3:25), illustrated with a huge salmon fillet. For those who cannot look, you will need a long flexible knife to remove the skin from the fillets. If you don’t have one, it will be a little more difficult, so take your time. Start at the tail end of the fillet and make a small cut so the knife is almost horizontal to the skin and fillet so that it can slide between them. Then, using the leather, pull the fillet towards the knife, sliding the blade over the bottom of the fillet.
After you’ve cut about a third of the length, check how close you are cutting to the skin by gently turning the fillet and skin over and pulling it back. If you are cutting too much fish with the skin, adjust the knife position, flip the fillets and continue cutting. The final trick with this method is to wrap the skin of the fish around your fingers as you move in order to increase the grip and make it easier to pull the skin towards the knife while cutting.
After you have removed the skin, run your knife along the side of the fillet to pick up the heads of bones still in the fillet. Use tweezers to separate the pin bones from the fillets.
How to Master the 5 Essential Culinary Skills “wiki useful Gordon Ramsay (YouTube)