How to clean pike from bones. Getting rid of scales using Karcher. Stages of mandatory cleaning of pike

Pike is a tasty and healthy fish, but it has a lot of bones and sharp teeth. Therefore, not all housewives like to cut it. Your husband brought a rich catch from fishing, but you don’t know how to cut a pike? Don't worry, our tips will help you do your kitchen work safely and quickly. Be patient and begin the troublesome process.

Cutting pike - preparation

Please note that it is easier to cut fresh fish. If it stays in the refrigerator for several hours, it will be more difficult to work. Clean frozen pike after the scales have thawed. Clear everything from the table. Cover pieces of furniture and the stove with paper or polyethylene so that there are no problems with subsequent cleaning due to splashes and fish scales flying in all directions. Prepare:

Sharp knife. If you have a special device for cleaning fish on your farm, use it.
Fine grater and scissors.
Apron.
Latex gloves. You can use rubber gloves and put on cotton ones.
Culinary or cosmetic tongs.
Cutting board. It is better to take a board made of plastic or glass. Wood absorbs odors. Place a damp cloth under the board to prevent it from slipping on the table.
Large bowl for soaking pike. You can use the sink. Remove the dishes from there and wash them.

Cutting pike - where to start

Wash the fish well under cold water to remove river mucus. Fill the sink with water or pour water into a large bowl. Place the fish there. Scald it with boiling water and dry it a little. Your next steps are as follows:

Place the fish on the board at an angle and grab it by the tail. You can hold the tail in one hand over the sink or any utensil, and work with the other. Sprinkle the tail with salt first, this will prevent the fish from slipping out of your hands.
Remove the scales with a grater or knife, moving from the tail to the head.
Cut off the fins with a knife or scissors.
Place the pike with its head facing you. Make a piercing near the head and cut the incision line to the tail. Make a shallow puncture, otherwise it will cause damage. internal organs fish and stain the abdominal cavity with its entrails.
Carefully remove the giblets and cut off the gills with a knife. From large pike, you can use its liver separately for dishes. Carefully separate it from the gallbladder. Air bubble with blood clots, remove them as the last thing, the clots are under the bubble. This is a white film located along the ridge.
Cut the cartilage that lies between the fish's belly and head.
Wash the pike well inside and out.

Fillet the pike

Now let's start filleting the carcass:

Cut off the head and tail with a sharp knife.
Get rid of the ridge. Open the belly of the carcass and make an incision along the spine. The ridge is cut along with the cartilage. Do everything carefully, otherwise you will damage the meat. You will end up with two fish parts.
Pull the bones out of the two pieces using tweezers. Remove all the large bones and as many small bones as possible.
Remove the skin from the fish if necessary. Place a piece of fillet skin side down on the board. Using a fork, press the piece from the tail side to the board, and with the other hand, run the knife up from the tail, separating the fillet from the skin. Perform similar actions with another piece of fish.

Now you can use the fillet for minced meat or fish dishes.

How to cut a pike - the fastest way

This method of cutting pike does not require initial gutting or skinning. Cut the scaled and well-washed fish into two parts along the ridge. After the first strip of fillet is cut, another piece will be left with a backbone and entrails. You separate all this from the pulp. Take tweezers or tongs and carefully and patiently remove the fillet, starting from the tail. Hook the tongs onto the edge of the skin and pull it off. All that remains is to remove the bones from the pulp. But this method of cutting pike requires experience.

If you are patient and do everything correctly, you will deal with the pike in a few minutes. Boil a delicious fish soup from the head and fins, bake or fry the fillet with skin, and use the separated flesh for cutlets and fish casseroles. Surprise your family with delicious fish dishes!

It gave an excellent result, and you return home with a rich catch of pike, then you need to find out how to properly and easily clean and cut this striped predator.

First of all, the fish must be washed well in cold water. This way you will remove all debris and mucus from it. Next, take the pike in left hand, and with the other start scraping off the scales. This must be done with a well-sharpened and sharp knife, otherwise no advice on how to clean a pike will help you. To prevent the scales from scattering in all directions, hold the knife at a slight angle.

Once the fish is scaled, you will need to cut off its tail fin. The next point is to rid the pike of its dorsal and anal fins. Cut against the direction of the scales, pressing the end of the fin firmly with your thumb.

In order to open the belly, you will need to pierce the skin near its head with a knife, and cut it down to the anus with a knife.

Next you will need to remove the pike's head and cut off its pelvic fins. In order to clean the predator of mucus, blood and remaining scales, you need to rinse it again with cold water. Last step- This means cutting the fish into pieces of the desired size.

In order to properly clean pike, there are several universal advice. And the main one is to use only well-sharpened knives. It is easiest to clean the predator immediately after it is caught. It is after fishing that it will be softer and not yet weathered. It is also worth mentioning that pike that has been left in the refrigerator for even a couple of hours without a lid is very difficult to clean. In order to get rid of the unpleasant swamp smell of this striped predator, you should take a couple of drops of lemon juice.

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Few people know the secret of how to clean pike. Firstly, these are the fishermen themselves. For them, this is a familiar and long-familiar matter. Secondly, these are their wives. They inevitably have to master this difficult art.

Main stages of the process

In order to prepare any dish from fish, you first need to clean it. This rather tedious process consists of several steps:

It is necessary to rinse well under running water to remove any debris and unpleasant mucus on the surface.
Removing scales. This is the most time-consuming part of the process. The carcass must be laid out on the table so that its tail is on the right, and its head, accordingly, on the left. Then, using a sharp knife, slowly scrape off the small scales from the head to the tail.
Using the same knife, separate the tail and dorsal fin.
Rip open the belly of the fish, making a neat cut in the head area and gradually moving towards the tail.
Having opened the belly, take out all the insides and remove the thin film located along the spinal bone.
Cut off the head and rinse the carcass clean again.

To finally understand how to clean a pike, you need to understand the intricacies of each of the listed stages.

Important details

In the complex process of preparing fresh fish for further culinary processing, there are several important points that need to be understood in order to have a complete understanding of how to clean pike:

1) First you need to remember that for such work you will need a large amount of water and a very sharp knife. As you know, pike scales are very small and need to be washed off periodically during cleaning. In addition, the fish itself is covered with a layer of natural mucus. It's not easy to remove. This will require a lot of water.

2) It is necessary to scrape scales from the surface with smooth, confident movements, holding the knife at a slightly angle to the fish. This will make the job much easier and prevent small scales from flying all over the kitchen.

3) You need to cut the belly very carefully. Do not stick the knife deep into the body of the fish. This can damage the gallbladder and spoil the meat. A smooth cut from the head to the anus will be sufficient.

4) When removing the insides, you can see a thin transparent film near the spine, under which there are small bloody clots. All this must be removed.

Fish scales perform a protective function, but are completely unsuitable for food. However, it is worth noting that it contains many rather rare and at the same time useful substances. Therefore, if the pike is used exclusively for cooking, then it does not need to be cleaned. This leads to two ways to properly clean a pike:

1) The scales along with the entrails are removed before cooking.

2) The scales, along with the skin and bones, are separated from the meat after cooking. This option is used if you are going to cook, for example, fish cutlets.

There's one more thing Golden Rule. The scales need to be removed only when the insides are removed. You should not separate these two processes, since they are fundamentally interrelated with each other. Sometimes you come across fish with rather dense scales. In this case, the fish should be slightly steamed by dipping it briefly into a container of boiling water. And, of course, every housewife knows how to properly clean a pike so as not to cover the entire room with scales. In addition to a sharp knife, you will also need a regular plastic bag. The cleaning process will take place inside it, which will prevent the possibility of waste being thrown around.

If you only need meat

Before you start processing fresh fish, it is better to decide in advance what will be prepared from it. For example, I want to make pike cutlets. In this case, only meat will be needed from the entire carcass, and you can choose from two already known options. Most often, housewives follow the usual path and process fresh fish. In this case, you need to figure out how to clean pike for cutlets. Here the usual process is repeated step by step:

Rinse the fish under running water.
Clean the scales with a knife or a special scraper. To avoid scattering debris, the pike can be placed in the sink, having first closed the drain hole and filled it with some water.
After the scales, remove the entrails, and then trim off the tail and all fins.
Now you need to carefully remove the fillet from this gutted fish using a special knife. And the small bones that remain in the pulp can be removed using ordinary tweezers.

Now it becomes clear how to clean pike for cutlets. All that remains is to grind the fish pulp in a meat grinder. In principle, the skin does not need to be removed. It will be completely invisible in the general mass.

Cleaning on the go

Processing fish at home is, of course, convenient. But what about those who decide to do it in nature? What fisherman wouldn’t want to boil fish soup or fry a couple of pike from a fresh catch? To do this, you need to prepare it. How can you clean a pike from scales right on the street without the usual conditions and tools? But fishermen are a people accustomed to everything. Any of them can do this in literally 2 minutes. For such purposes, each of them always has a small device in their travel bag. You can easily do it yourself. To do this, you will need a piece of board no more than 20 centimeters long and a couple of metal caps from glass bottles. The board needs to be cut lengthwise to create a blank for the handle. To avoid injuring your hands during work, it is better to process and sand it with sandpaper. On one side, secure the plugs one behind the other using regular nails. Such a simple device is easy to make at home in advance. But at the right time, you can use it to clean even the smallest fish.

Simple and fast

Cutting pike is a long and rather dirty process. But experts have come up with a way to clean pike quickly and with virtually no debris. For this you will need: a cutting board, a knife and a fillet fork. Now you need to correctly perform the following steps:

Place the washed fish on a board.
Cut out the middle fin, and behind the front one make a cut towards the head.
Having reached the ridge, unfold the knife and continue cutting along the ridge right up to the tail. It turns out exactly half the carcass. Then turn the other half over and do the same with it.
Separate the ribs from each half, carefully cutting them off with a fillet knife. At this time, you can hold the fish with a fork.
Now, alternately, separate the skin from each half along with the scales. To do this, place a piece of fish on the board, skin side down, and carefully make a cut with a knife, slowly moving it along the table.

The result is two pieces of pike meat. And the fish turns out to be cleaned without dirt and without scales.

If the fish needs to be fried

To fry fish, it must first be prepared. No one will put the whole carcass, scales and entrails, into the frying pan. In any case, the fish must first be brought into a semi-finished state. This work can be done in different ways. Here you need to know how to clean pike for frying, depending on the method of its preparation. For example, to make battered fish, you will need fillet. You can get it using the method described above, without bothering yourself with cleaning the scales. This will greatly reduce the time it takes to cut the pike. The work is done quickly and, most importantly, cleanly. If you want to fry fish in the usual way, you will first have to deal with the scales, remove everything unnecessary, divide the cooked carcass into portioned pieces, and then proceed to the main process. In any case, the choice is always up to the hostess, because it depends on her how well and tasty the dish will be prepared.

For greater convenience, you can wear gloves, this way you will minimize the risk of injury and the fish will be easier to hold.

The knife must always be held away from you and cut accordingly, because at any moment it can slip, causing injuries or cuts.

Don’t forget to thoroughly clean the scales, this is quite simple: you need to draw a knife against the growth line of the scales, but do it carefully if.

The first step is to cut the belly and carefully remove all the insides, since the pike is a predatory fish, there may be its prey inside its stomach, which also needs to be removed.

It's up to you to decide what you will do with the skin: if you plan to use it to prepare, for example, stuffed pike, then you should put it in the freezer. Its skin is quite durable and there should be no problems with removal. But, one way or another, you should remove it carefully.

Head

Before cutting the pike, you need to make a couple of relatively deep cuts in the head area. So you almost completely cut off her head.

But! Important point: Make the cut up to the ridge, in no case deeper. Position the pike with its ventral area away from you. Hold her head with one hand. Be careful, because you can easily injure your hand.

Continuing to hold the fish by the gills, run the knife from head to tail, thus cutting it along the ridge line.

If suddenly the knife rests and does not go further, slightly change the angle at which the blade is located and continue.
Half the work is done. If you see that green or yellow liquid has appeared on the table, this means that you have touched the gallbladder. In this case, you need to rinse the meat under running water as quickly as possible so as not to spoil it.

Don’t be lazy and thoroughly rinse all meat that has been exposed to bile, otherwise it will have a rather bitter taste. Remember that the bubble is located in the head area.

Caviar and milk

Inside the fish there are several parts that can be eaten: caviar and milt. Ripe caviar can be salted, but some experts do not recommend doing this. It is also not recommended to consume pike liver, since pike is predatory fish, and it can be infected with helminths, which can be very dangerous for humans.

If you don't know how to properly cook these organs, then just throw them away.
After you have cut off one part, you should turn the pike over and repeat the procedure again. Slide the knife closer to the spine and move the knife towards the tail, while holding the pike by the head.

Next, you should rinse the fillet that we have obtained very thoroughly under running, cold water. The meat must be washed until it turns pink, completely removing all blood clots and impurities. The better you can, the tastier it will be.

On your ear

Don't forget that we still have: the head, fins and spine. You should not throw them away, as in the future you can cook fish soup from them.

If the head will be used as an ingredient for fish soup, several simple works should be carried out:

First, remove the gills completely. Since you don't know what kind of water the pike lived in, its gills can be very bitter, which in turn can transfer this bitterness to the broth. Don't forget about your teeth, because you will be working dangerously close to them.
Next, it is recommended to remove the eyeballs, which can also add bitterness to the broth. Removing them is not difficult; just pry them with a knife and pull them out.

Fish is a food rich in vitamins and is often used in diet menu. There are a variety of types, and even more cooking methods. Many lovers prefer pike, whose meat is rich in protein and has excellent taste. Regular consumption improves human immunity, the body becomes resistant to various infections, pike meat contains antiseptic substances.

Preparation

To make the dish quick and easy to prepare, it is important to properly prepare the pike. The processing is as follows.

Get rid of the smell of mud.
Remove the bones.

Cutting up a carcass is a dirty task and few housewives do it willingly. But the desire to get something tasty and healthy dish, will force you to sacrifice a manicure. Knowing how to cut it correctly, everything will end quickly. We will need:

Convenient knife.
Cutting board.
Running water.
Paper towels.
Bowl or other suitable container.

Classic cutting of fresh pike

How to get rid of mucus

To get rid of mucus, the pike must be washed under the tap, then placed in a container of water and left there for 30 minutes. After this, rinse again and start cutting.

How to remove scales correctly

Pour boiling water over the fish and the scales will be easier to remove. It is best to use a knife with a thick blade for cleaning. It is necessary to move against the growth of scales.

How to gut

Using a thin sharp knife, an incision is made in the abdomen area and the entrails are removed. The tail and all fins are cut off using scissors. The finished carcass is washed under running cold water. Next, cooking from pike. If these are fish cutlets, then the fillets are separated. Fried or baked fish requires preliminary removal of bones.

Milling

An incision is made 1 cm from the gills deep into the ridge, without cutting it. An incision is also made along the back. Using a knife, starting from the head, carefully cut off the fillet on one side. Then turn the carcass over and do the same manipulation on the other side. From the inside, remove the film and remove the ribs.

Video tips

Features of cutting frozen pike

To easily handle frozen pike, you need a sharp knife, cutting board and tongs. The step-by-step cleaning step looks like this:

Rinse the pike in running water.
Trim all fins and tail.
Make a shallow cut around the entire head.
Also make an incision along the entire abdomen and back.
Using tongs, grab the edge of the skin from the side of the head and gently pull it off.
After this, cut off the head.
The fish is cut into pieces 5 cm in size - this makes it easier to separate the fillet from the backbone and small bones.

Preparing to cook

The basis of preparation is proper cutting, cleaning of bones, scales, and skins. Pike is getting ready different ways, which we will consider below.

Frying

To fry a pike, you need to cut the carcass into pieces about 5 cm in size. In a separate plate, mix flour and salt and pepper, in another, break a couple of eggs. You can lightly salt them. Heat a frying pan with a little oil. Each piece:

Roll on all sides in flour.
Dip completely into egg mixture.
Place in a frying pan and fry on both sides until golden brown.

To prepare pike soup, you need to throw potatoes, a whole onion and salt to taste into boiling water. When it is ready, it is the turn of fish and cereals (you can use rice, pearl barley, millet cereals). At the end you can add bay leaf and fresh dill.

Fish cutlets

Grind the pike fillet, add the egg, spices, onion, a couple of tbsp. spoons of flour, mix. The dough should look like pancakes. Fry in a small amount of oil.

Baking

One of the cooking options is baking in the oven. Cooking time is about 30 minutes. You can use foil if desired. The fish will turn out juicy, tasty and healthy.

Ingredients:

Pike – 1 carcass.
Hard cheese – 100 gr.
Spices to taste, salt.
Mayonnaise or vegetable oil.
Fresh tomato – 1-2 pieces (depending on size).

Preparation:

Cut the prepared carcass into 3 cm pieces. Place in a bowl.
Add salt, spices, oil (or mayonnaise) and mix. Leave for 30 minutes, let it marinate.
Place the finished pieces on a baking sheet or foil.
Place a tomato circle on top of each piece, brush lightly with mayonnaise and sprinkle with grated cheese.
Place in the oven until fully cooked.

Video recipe

The remaining backbone with a small amount of fish meat (after filleting) can be used to prepare fish soup.
When cutting pike you need to be careful because it has sharp teeth.
When purchasing, you should pay attention to the gills, smell, eyes (should not be cloudy), elasticity.

Pike is an excellent option for preparing tasty and healthy food at home. If you follow all the recommendations, cutting will not take much time. Bon appetit!