Filleting Fish

The best fillets are those you cut yourself. Here, seafood savant JOSH NILAND shows you how it’s done.

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Josh Niland, chef and owner of Sydney seafood restaurant Saint Peter and our freshly minted Best New Talent awardee (see page 100), knows his fish, and for serious quality he says there’s no substitute for buying fish whole and cleaning them yourself. “If the fish is already cleaned, it’s been handled in a lot of water, which affects its quality,” he says. Look for firm fish with bright eyes, clear scales and a smell of the ocean, not of fish. Niland’s other advice? “Ask for ikejime-spiked fish,” he says. “That means it’s been caught and killed quickly.”

1 For the first cuts, place the fish with the belly facing you and the head to the left (or the right if you are left-handed). Pull the pelvic (base) fin outwards and make a cut behind the fins to separate them from the fillet, then cut around behind the head until you hit bone.