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How to cut a pike? Video
Fish is a healthy product rich in fatty acids and microelements. Pike is considered one of the most delicious river fish, a particularly good dish is obtained from the pulp of pike, for example, cutlets, but cooking the fish takes a long time: it needs to be cleaned, gutted and cut. And if the first two points are usually not difficult even for inexperienced housewives, then you need to be able to cut the pike correctly.
Pike dishes are very popular: it is not only tasty and nutritious river fish, but also a healthy dietary food product with a large amount of proteins, fatty acids and other healing substances. To fry a pike, it is not necessary to cut it completely, that is, to separate all the bones from the pulp, but the taste of this dish is inferior to the taste of pike cutlets and other chopped fish dishes.
The first way to cut pike
There are several ways to cut pike, each housewife or chef also has their own secrets of this laborious process. First, the pike must be rinsed in cold water, removing mucus and debris, and then cleaned of the scales with a sharp knife. To prevent the scales from scattering in different directions, you need to hold the fish at a slight angle.
You can put newspapers or a plastic bag under the board – it’s easier to collect scales later.
Then the tail, dorsal and anal fins are cut off from the fish, while holding the knife against the direction of the scales. Then gut the pike – puncture the skin near the head, hold the knife to the very tail and pull out the entire contents of the belly from the resulting incision. Milk or game can be left to cook later. The pelvic fins can now be cut off. Cut off the head and tail – they can be used to prepare other dishes. Now it remains to remove the skin from the fish, for the pike it is elastic, dense, it is removed well. Then with a strong movement of the knife, cut the pike in half along the ridge, you get a strip of fish flesh with a row of bones on the upper back. Aiming the knife at a sharp angle, cut off this part with the bones. A few bones will remain on the pulp – large bones can later be removed, and small bones when cooking minced meat will be well crushed and will not interfere. The second strip of fillet should be turned upside down and the ridge should be cut off.
The second way to cut pike
Another way is much faster – you do not need to gut the pike and separate the skin from it. Clean it and immediately start cutting along the ridge, as in the first method. When one strip of pulp is cut off from the pike, the remaining part will contain not only the ridge, but all the contents – now all this must be separated from the pulp. It remains to separate the fillet from the skin, necessarily from the side of the tail, while it is convenient to hold the skin with a fork.
Some experienced anglers advise using tongs when removing the skin – hook them over the edge of the skin and pull off
How to properly cut frozen pike
Another method involves first cutting the gutted and skinless pike into pieces, then cutting off the ridge from each piece. It is so convenient to cut frozen solid fish, so as not to wait a long time for defrosting.