How To Prepare Salmon
You can prepare salmon in much the same way that you might prepare any other fish for cooking. However, salmon are somehow special and demand special attention. Anyone who has shopped at Seattle's world famous Pike Place market can't have missed seeing the way they prepare salmon there. It's a cross between circus fun, stage theatre and shopping. Your salmon will taste all the better for it too.
At Pike Place market you start by ordering your salmon from an array of similar fish displayed at a stall. The man serving you will instantly pull up the huge fish and throw it high in the air over to a man at another stall who catches it deftly. The man serving you then yells, "Follow your fish!" You only have one option; to follow your fish as it gets thrown from stall to stall, being gutted at one, skinned at another, filleted at yet another, and so on. By the time you actually get to buy and hold your salmon, you are a bit out of breath, but laughing at the sheer enjoyment and fun of it all.
For most people, learning to prepare salmon is a whole lot different, but it can still be fun too in its own way. Start by getting together the few tools you will need. You need to have a good serrated knife, a filleting knife and a sturdy chopping board. We'll assume that you have your fish in a semi-prepared state of being already gutted with probably the head cut off.
Start by skinning, or de-scaling, your fish. Do this at a sink, but be prepared for the scales to flick everywhere, so clear the area well so that it can be more easily cleaned afterwards. You need to skin the salmon from the tail to the head, which is going against the grain of the scales, loosening them more easily. Use a sharp knife held at about 45 degrees to the line of the salmon's body. Use short sharp motions, de-scaling a small area at a time. Move steadily from one end to the other, a strip at a time, until the salmon has been de-scaled. Then thoroughly wash the salmon to remove all loose scales.
If the head is still attached, cut it off now by holding the body of the salmon firmly on the chopping board and cutting sharply down with the serrated knife just behind the gill flaps and through to the other side. Remove the head and discard it. Now it's time to fillet the salmon. This is the part where you prepare salmon to a stage that will be more familiar to those who only eat it.
Using a sharp filleting knife, start at the head end and insert the length of the blade just above the backbone of the salmon where the head was removed. Run the knife steadily down towards the tail, making sure that it runs along the backbone, thereby cleaning off all the flesh. Do the same with the other side and you will have two near identical salmon fillets ready to cook. It's really quite easy to prepare salmon. Just be careful and methodical, and above all, enjoy eating the result.
