How to Use an Electric Fillet Knife

When you have a lot of fish to clean, or you are cleaning fish with thin skin, an electric fillet knife can make the job a lot easier and quicker. You can buy an electric fillet knife or a cordless fillet knife sold specifically for filleting fish, or you can use any electric knife if you happen to already have one. The electric fillet knife works especially well with panfish like perch, sunfish, bluegill, crappie. With its longer blade, you can also fillet salmon, trout, tilapia, snapper, and other larger fish.

With two people, we cleaned that whole bucket of 59 crappies in the picture in a record 45 minutes!

Difficulty: Moderately Easy

Instructions

Things You'll Need:

• Electric fillet knife
• Regular fillet or thin knife.
• Cutting board
• Whole fish

1. 
   Fish vs. electric fillet knife -- who will win??

   CHOOSE YOUR KNIVES -- This is an electric fillet knife made specifically for fishermen, but you can use most any electric knife. You will also need another knife to cut the 'belly meat' and remove the ribs. We used a regular fillet knife.

2. 
   Make the first cut.

   START AT GILL COVER -- Holding the fish at the head, begin by cutting down behind the gill cover, cutting down to the backbone. Don't go through the backbone though.

3. 
   Cut along backbone.

   SLIDE KNIFE ALONG BACKBONE -- Turn the knife toward the tail and slide it down along the backbone like this, angled slightly downward. Do not cut through the backbone, and stop cutting before you go through the skin at the tail.

4. 
   Flip fillet over and remove skin.

   FLIP OVER AND REMOVE SKIN -- Flip the meat over and continue cutting with the same technique, only slide the knife along the skin to separate it from the meat, like this.

5. 
   Slice near top of ribs.

   SLICE AT TOP OF RIBS -- This part of the process is done by the second person if you have two working on cleaning the fish. When the meat is separated from the skin, use your regular knife to make a slice near the top of the ribs.

6. 
   Cut belly meat away from rib cage.

   FOLLOW RIB BONES -- By pressing down on the handle, you can flatten the knife blade so that it's parallel to the rib bones. Slice down along the tops of the ribs, separating the 'belly meat' from the bones.

7. 
   Cut around rib cage.

   TURN OVER CUT AROUND RIBS -- Turn the meat over and make a cut along the top of the rib bones.

8. 
   Remove ribs.

   REMOVE RIB CAGE -- Continue cutting around the rib cage until you can separate it from the fillet.

9. 
   Boneless fillet!

   COMPLETED FILLET -- Here is what your completed fillet should look like. This is a crappie fish, so your fillet may have a different shape. But the technique is the same for most other fish.

Tips & Warnings

• Keep your electric fillet knife sharp. You want to use minimal pressure when cutting.
• Electric fillet knives cut fish and human equally well.

Resources

• Rapala makes a good electric fillet knife
• Rapala also sells a deluxe cordless version

[sabrinacareer]

on 7/22/2009 great tips on how to use an electric fillet knife for fish

[kittycooks]

on 7/22/2009 Great instructions on cleaning pan fish. Your photos are very helpful.