How to Skin a Fish

Series Summary

There is nothing like preparing fresh seafood. Seafood has generally been worked into our subconscious as the dish of any special occasion. Because of the effort that it takes to select and make fresh seafood, most of us don't spend the time creating fantastic seafood dishes everyday. And, for those of us that do not cook seafood often, we may be a little reserved to take on the responsibility. Let's face it- some seafood has a bad wrap. We may be cautious to cook seafood because of the dangerous superstitious surrounding it. We have all heard of the potential threat of mercury in seafood, but there are other concerns as well. Will seafood make you ill? How can you protect yourself against bacteria and viruses in seafood? What other toxins can be found in seafood? Well, if these concerns have limited your seafood intake, it might be well worth understanding how to safely prepare your seafood dishes.

In this free video series, Louis Ortiz shows you how to prepare common seafood items. He shows you how to clean and skin a fish. He also illustrates how to pan fry and sear fish. Learn how to clean and crack crab legs. Louis illustrates an important step in eating fresh shrimp. He teaches you how to peel and devein shrimp. So, with these simple preparation tips, you can learn the beginning steps of preparing a tasty seafood meal.

Video Transcript

"Now we're going to show you how to skin a piece of salmon and this technique we'll work with most any fish and usually the skin starts to separate here at the top anyways. So we're going to use that as a guide and a marker for ourselves and I got a scimitar knife that I like to use, so I got my first cut started this way so now I'm just going to anchor the fish and I'm just going to slice the knife parallel to the cutting surface again. And just shave that skin and separate the skin from the fillet and there's the fillet and there's the skin that's left you got a nice even cut."