Unexpected Lessons From My First Fish Filleting Experience
Proud of my work, I pose with the Vermilion Rockfish that represents my first fish filleting trial. Photo by Jake Stein.
While growing up, the smell of a freshly steamed tilapia with Chinese cooking wine and ginger graced my household during each Chinese New Year celebration. Seafood was not a stranger in our house, because my parents both hail from Shanghai, a city bordering the Yangtze river and the East China Sea, which incorporates a ton of seafood into their local cuisine. I used to regularly accompany my parents on grocery runs to Ranch 99, staring into the tanks of live catfish and glassy-eyed fish on ice while my dad asked for 3 pounds of Dungeness crab to be steamed for dinner later that evening.
Despite my experiences in childhood, as an adult, my diet incorporates much less seafood. In the kitchen, I usually opt for easy meals: sheet pan veggies and meat I can throw in the oven for 20 minutes, prepackaged salads and, as a last resort, microwavable instant meals. Sometimes I struggle with adding fresh protein sources to my meals, feeling too busy or tired after a long day of work to go through the hassle of handling raw meat or fish.
Recently, I gained some hands-on practice with local seafood, because I hoped to learn how to simplify that hassle. I was surprised to realize you barely need any new equipment to filet a whole fish, being that you can use a regular kitchen knife in substitution for the bendy filet knives. I quickly picked up how to cut off the often spikey fins, pull out the guts in one motion, and remove the scales.
After a demonstration, I was coached through the process of filleting - how to safely handle my knife, and how best to get the meat off of the bones. While initially things felt a little cumbersome, I was able to fillet my first fish, a locally caught Mexican Rockfish, with relative ease. It provided me with 6-8 fillet portions, making it a reasonable weekend meal-prep activity. I froze several pieces that day, and they tasted just as good when I thawed them shortly thereafter. Bones leftover from my filleting practice went into a rich and umami stock, helping stretch the value of the whole fish.
The overall handling experience made the idea of incorporating eating seafood in my everyday life less intimidating.
Posing with a Starry Rockfish that I go on to gill, gut, and scale - making it ready-to-cook for whole fish recipes similar to what I had growing up.
Photo by Jake Stein.
Another pleasant and surprising feature of local seafood is the variety. From bug-eyed, bright red thornyhead to the firm, flakey rockfish and buttery sablefish (also known as black cod), all had distinct tastes and textures that I had not had previous opportunity to appreciate. While sampling them, my thoughts turned excitedly towards recipes I wanted to try in the future: Korean kimchi stew with a spot prawn broth, Japanese style grilled kama (the collar of the fish), and a miso black cod Nobu dupe (which is surprisingly easy to make!).
It was interesting how much more mindful I was of not wasting edible parts of the fish while handling it myself, being able to see exactly how much meat was left on the bones and the head. I was shocked to realize that I could scrape several pounds of meat from the bones of a tuna carcass, more than enough for a few delicious poke bowls.
I was left to reflect on the question: if preparing and eating locally caught fish is this easy and less wasteful, why don’t more people do it? Being able to grab a frozen filet from the grocery store is convenient, but often disconnects me from the animal I’m eating.
Is convenience worth the waste and the disconnection?
We almost never get to see the original fish in its entirety, or even think about where it came from, who caught it, and where the rest of the fish goes. We don’t get to have enough conversations about where our food comes from.
I left this experience not only feeling more confident about incorporating local seafood into my everyday diet, but also excited to seek out whole fish, think about their source and the value of all their parts, and have those conversations. I’ll start by exploring the local dockside markets in San Diego, learning new recipes, and doing my own research into what I can personally do to eat sustainably.
Meet the Author
Shirley Zhang
Guest Contributor
Shirley is a second generation Chinese immigrant working in the biotech industry in San Diego. She is passionate about food, often trying new restaurants and experimenting with cooking multiple cuisines. In her free time, Shirley enjoys artistic crafts, listening to audiobooks, and roller skating.
Scraping every bit of valuable meat from the bones of a local Pacific Bluefin Tuna, purchased from Chula Seafood. They allowed us to pick up just the head and bones! Exactly what we wanted for the experience of “spoon meat.” Notice the spoon - use of this tool gives the process its name. Photo by Jake Stein.
