Cutting a Grouper

Video Transcript

"Alright, the first thing we're going to do, we're going to take our good sharp knife. We're going to put the tip of the knife right at the, near the bottom of the dorsal fin, right along the edge of the fish. We're going to make a quick insertion. We're going to work our way up, going along the edge of the back bone. Kind of feeling your way along. Slowly and hopefully your knife is sharp enough that you can perform it as well as me. Once you get your cut made across the top, you have a little opening there. You're just going to kind of feel the knife across the top of the backbone. And I have been doing this for twenty-five years, I know it's sad to some people, but, it's a living. You see how clean this grouper comes off the bone. The white meat, beautiful flesh. I'm going to try to go not only over this, these pin bones here, but over the backbone, the spine. You can lose some yield on this fish if you don't, once you get over the spine, if you don't bear back down to stay along the other side of the backbone. Okay, my knife is completely through the filet now and into the belly cavity. What I'm going to do now is just sort of work my way down, feeling underneath until I come to the tail, pull the knife out. Now, I've got, basically, one filet off the fish. Flip the fish over. I prefer to do, to filet both sides and then cut them off. That way you have a whole fish to work with instead of half a fish. We're going to make another cut going in the opposite direction now. I'm right-handed so this is the way I've always done it. Basically, I'm doing the same thing I was doing a minute ago, just on the other side in the opposite direction. And once again, I'm going to try to go very carefully not to waste any of the fish. Not to lose any of my yield. Some of these fish are hard to hold onto because when they're extremely fresh, they're covered with this slime. The fish produces slime, especially after it's been caught. I guess it's a natural preservative that makes the fish last longer. And I've gone through the fish on the other side. Now I've got two filets."