How to clean a fish

Here are some tips to help you become a master chef.

Wash your hands in cold water, and run the fish under the water to wash off excess slime. Next, cut off the fins. If your fish has scales, scrape the scales off with a knife or fish-scaler; you can do this by holding the fish by the tail while scraping towards the head of the fish.

If you're not already disgusted, you may enjoy the following part. Slip the knife into the fish's anus and make an incision from the gut to the head. The incision should be deep enough to pull out the guts. Place the knife behind the gills and cut the head off; if you have mastered this, you can pull the entrails out with the head. Make sure you remove all of the entrails. You can also cut off the tail.

Other methods of fish cleaning include cutting the fish from the side, just below the back bone of the fish and then pulling the meat out from the back bone. After doing this, the bone and guts are removed revealing a fillet of fish.

Note that if the fish is a catfish, the method above is should be modified as you really should skin a catfish. Just cut around the head, circling the body of the fish, to break the skin. Grab a pair of pliers and grab the edge of the cut, and pull back until all the skin is removed. Apart from that, gut the fish as indicated above. Filleting the fish is pretty common, as is cutting a cross section of the fish similar to steaking larger fish (such as salmon). Some scrap meat is used for nuggets. Note that catfish are some interesting animals. They may continue to swim for a short time after gutting. My mom actually froze one and discovered it still alive the next morning. Rasputin reincarnated!