Cleaning flounder

[MSilvia]

I've speared a few flounder lately, and have found them pretty difficult to clean. I keep hearing stories about people who have a lightning-fast technique I've never seen. Does anyone know the real deal on this? What's the best way to clean one of these?
:dead:

 

[Stone]

Here's a link with pictures.

Flounder

This is not exactly the way I do it, but it's close.

 

[MSilvia]

Good to know... I was wasting time with several unnecessary/knife dulling/ messy/difficult steps. That's much better!

 

[Rick Murchison]

Interesting.
I do 'em a lot different... I scale 'em, head 'em and gut 'em, then score the dark side in a criss-cross pattern with the cuts about 1.5" apart... butter, salt, pepper to taste & broil.
Serve with saffron rice, fresh spinach & chardonnay.
Rick

 

[Genesis]

I do 'em just about like I do every other fish, but I usually (unless its a REAL big fish) leave the white side alone - not enough meat to be worth it on that side.

I make a vertical cut behind the gills vertically to the backbone, turn the knife 90 degrees, slice off the fillet and skin to the tail, stopping short of the tail itself.

Then flip the flap of meat and skin over, and, starting at the flap of skin at the tail, slice the other direction between the skin and meat.

You now have a fillet.

I then slice down the lateral line just one each side and discard the small center piece; there are, if you got all the meat, some pieces of bone in there.

What I end up with is two pieces of fillet, completely boneless.

I can fillet these things in under a minute each; they fillet almost exactly like a snapper or grouper, but with only one side...

If I get a real monster then I'll bother with the bottom, but most of the time there isn't enough flesh there to be worth it.

 

[Finesse]

MSilvia

What I like about this method is there is very little meat wasted while filleting....It really maximizes the filet size

I also lay the fish on a terry towel to keep them from slipping away ....then I try to keep the filet attached (just a little bit ) in the tail section and skin the filet as its attached to the whole fish (gives you more to hold onto when skinning)

Bottom line is what you feel comfortable with....This is how I learned to do it from a Butcher (the Boats owner that I used to work for) .....Want to talk about fancy knife handling


Scott

 

[Ronmedic]

I will tell you how my Dad showed me years ago and it seems to work well.

I start by making a light cut through the skin only,vertical at the gills.

I then make another light cut through the skin at the tail section

I then make a cut under the dorsal for the length of the flounder, connecting the gill cut and tail cut.

I also make a cut along the pectoral line the length of the flounder connecting the gill and tail cuts along the bottom

I get a pair of pliers and grasp a piece of skin and pull the skin off (it comes pretty easy)

Once the skin is off I make a long cut at the midline, and cuts again at the gills and tail until I hit the backbone.

I then slowly slice along the backbone toward the tail, but cutting only half of the filet off at a time

It seems to work very well and you end up with the most meat for your time.

Just make sure your filet knife is good and sharp

But anyway that is what has worked for me, and worked for my Dad for about 25 years too

hope it helps

 

[Stone]

Ronmedic's technique is very similar to my Triggerfish technique. I'll have to try it on a flounder.