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Once you've broken down your four fillets, you can always save the bones, clear out the
row and whatever guts may be left and you can actually use the bones to make a really
wonderful fish soup or fish stock, which will last for months in your freezer.
What we're going to do now, we're going to clear off our station a little bit and we're
going to actually take the skin off. For flounder, skin isn't really that tasty, not really the
best thing, so we really want to make sure we get the skin off.
When skinning a fish, it's kind of one of the trickier things you can possibly do, because
it's kind of counter intuitive with what you're supposed to do with a knife.
What we're actually going to do is we want to try and get all the skin off and not affect
any of the meat. The trick here is to actually make sure that you've got a good, flat surface
and you bring the fish all the way down to the edge of your surface, whether it's a cutting
board, table, or whatever.
You're going to take your knife and just come in at a little bit of a 45-degree angle, close
to the tail and just go in, down to the skin. You'll see what I've done is I've created
a little bit of a hook.
Now, what I can do is I can turn my knife 45 degrees in the other direction and just
get about two or three cuts in there, dropping the knife down to about a 20-degree angle.
I know it sounds a little technical, but it's worth it.
Once you get down to that point, hold the knife fairly still. The blade should be resting
across the board of the table. Using that little handle, just take your guide hand and
just saw the meat back and forth while pulling out to the side. By doing that, you'll start
removing all the skin and the meat will stay in tact.
Once you get a couple strokes down, you can get a little bit more of a grip on the skin
with your hand and, again, you should be able to take the skin right off. Those little pieces
at the top, that little mohawk, should peel right off. You can always use your knife.
Just take a little bit more off of that.
What you'll end up with is your nice fillet without skin.