1. Put fish dark skin side up on a board. Using scissors, cut off the fins and tail. Turn over and cut off fins underneath.
2. Put dark skin side up again. With tip of a flexible filleting or boning knife cut around head, down to bone, then cut along backbone from head down to tail.
3. Angle knife against skeleton underneath, and slice along backbone and outwards, using a gentle, sweeping motion and all the time feeling skeleton against knife.
4. Keep working outwards in this manner until the fillet is removed.
5. Remove the second fillet from other side of the backbone in the same way.
6. Turn fish over, cut around head the same way as before. Cut along backbone down to tail and remove fillet on one side of backbone in same way as before. Repeat to remove the fillet on the other side of the backbone.
7. Finally, trim the edges, the ‘skirt’, off all the fillets to neaten.
Use your skills to make these triple-tested recipes:
Provencal fish fillets recipe
Fish ministrone soup recipe
10 showstopping fish main courses
Pro filleting knife, Zwilling J.A. Henckels. White ceramic bistro plate, Sophie Conran. Large FSC certified beech "TV Chef's" board, T&G Woodware. Kitchen scissors, chef's own.
| Love food? Want to tailor your cooking skills further? Check out the courses at the Good Housekeeping Institute SHOP NOW |
An experienced and highly skilled team of food writers, stylists and digital content producers, the Good Housekeeping Cookery Team is a close-knit squad of food obsessives. Cookery Editor Emma Franklin is our resident chilli obsessive and barbecue expert, who spends an inordinate amount of time on holidays poking round the local supermarkets seeking out new and exciting foods. Senior Cookery Writer Alice Shields is a former pastry chef and baking fanatic who loves making bread and would have peanut butter with everything if she could. Her favourite carb is pasta, and our vibrant green spaghetti is her weeknight go-to. Lover of all things savoury, Senior Cookery Writer Grace Evans can be found eating crispy corn and nocellara olives at every opportunity, and will take the cheeseboard over dessert any time (though she cannot resist a slice of tres leches cake). With a wealth of professional kitchen know-how, culinary training and years of experience between them, they are all dedicated to ensuring every Good Housekeeping recipe is the best it can be, so you can trust they’ll work (and if they don’t – we’ll have the answer for why*) every time (*90% of the time the answer is: “buy an separate oven thermometer”!).
