Get to know your fish anatomy!
Whether filleting or serving whole, knowing fish anatomy helps you make an incision so you can get your meatiest fillet, and easily remove guts from the cavity before cooking.
Preparing whole fish
Step-by-step
Watch Darina Allen walk you through scaling, gutting, and filleting. All you need is a sink and a sharp knife!
Maybe you’re trying something new or maybe you grew up eating fish whole, honoring their fullest form:
Step 1: Scale the fish. This makes it easier to make cuts later. A scaler is a tool that you drag against the grain of the fish scales. Fishadelphia sells scalers! More on helpful tools and alternatives below. Don’t press too hard that you tear the skin, the fish should feel smooth after you’ve scaled and rinsed it.
Step 2: Make a shallow cut into the belly, right in front of the anal fin with the blade facing the head. Apply just enough pressure to open the cavity working all the way to the jaw of the fish.
Step 3: Roll up your sleeves. Pry open the fish and pull out the guts by hand, you may need to make cuts to connective tissue holding the guts to the cavity wall. Try to pull the organs out without crushing them so they ooze stuff back into the fish. You don’t need to separate guts from gills if you are removing gills. Rinse.
Step 4: Remove gills with a scissor, cutting as much out as you can.
Here’s a video from Titli’s Kitchen with details on how to scale and gut a fish.
Here is a helpful article with images on how to scale, gut, and prepare a whole fish.
Scaling and Gutting Videos
Filleting fish
If you choose to try your hand at filleting, you don’t need to be a fancy chef, but getting it right takes patience and practice. There are many different ways to fillet! The best way to learn is to watch someone do it if you can. We’ll describe the steps to get you started and link to a few videos we found helpful. A sharp knife is KEY.
Step 1: Start your cut just behind the pectoral fin on a diagonal angle towards the head. You’ll need to use some pressure, but not so much that you begin to cut through bone.
Step 2: At the dorsal end of your first cut, turn the knife to be parallel along the dorsal fin, and make a slice towards the tail with light pressure, using the dorsal fin as a guide until you reach the middle.
Step 3: Once you’re in the middle, insert the knife through the fish and, keeping the flat edge of the blade pressed along the spine, begin to drag the knife towards the tail to remove the remaining half of the meat off the bone.
Not all fin fish are built the same! Here’s a great tutorial on how to fillet the flat and mighty New Jersey predator in residence, fluke (or summer flounder).
Fillet videos
Check out this video by SAVEUR Magazine to get a sense of the outline and steps for filleting the sides of a fin fish. *Note: fillets from small fish especially may contain bones, you can tweeze them out then or deal with them once you’re eating. Either way, eat carefully. When you start out filleting, there’s bound to be some bones.
Here’s another by Sin City Outdoors that’s done slightly differently and it includes a neat technique to easily remove skin from your fillets!
Helpful items
Fish scaler
Alternative: The seafood sherpa uses bottle caps on a stick as a makeshift scaler.
Cutting Board
Newspapers - for easy guts and scales cleanup
6” and 9” fillet knives - if you’re going to fillet often on different types of fish! Longer knives tend to be more flexible, which can help pull meat off the bones.
How long should my fillet knife be?
Alternative: For smaller fish, a trusty sharp knife can do the job!
Knife sharpener - There is no such thing as sharpening too often, a sharp blade is your friend.
Members, we've got you covered!
Whole Fish Recipes
Wen Xin’s family recipes
Wen Xin is a Fishadelphia graduate who now works as our bookkeeper and Chinese community liaison. Her family cooks fish often and knows all about how to prepare whole fish in simple, healthy, and delicious ways!
Fish Soup
This is a recipe Wen Xin shared with Philadelphia RowHome Magazine. You can read about Fishadelphia in their winter 2021 issue (pp. 48-49)!
Steamed Black Sea Bass
Watch this video of how Wen Xin’s family steams black sea on our TikTok!