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Pike Filleting 101: Out With the Y Bones!

Jun 01, 2021
Hello, my name is Rob Olson, I am the CEO of the Manitoba Wildlife Federation and today we are here to learn how to fillet and clean my favorite fish, this is a northern

pike

, a much maligned fish, people call them slime balls, solution arcs. I don't get any respect in the fish world, but this is an amazing fish and probably the most underrated eating fish we have in Manitoba right now, so it's a great fish. Let's learn how to clean it right now and it's. A little complicated, but once you learn this special little trick, you will love catching these fish and they will love eating you.
pike filleting 101 out with the y bones
The first thing I'll say about Phil eating a

pike

and really any fish but especially a pike because they're so slimy, you have one hand that you're going to hold the stuffing knife with and then you have the other hand that you're going to use to manipulate the fish, you don't want the knife hand to get slimy, well, what we What we're going to do is we're going to cut this piece of meat off the side of the pike called the fillet and we're just going to peel it off the carcass of the pike just like that, okay, the first cut we will make.
pike filleting 101 out with the y bones

More Interesting Facts About,

pike filleting 101 out with the y bones...

It's right behind the head, right behind the gill plate, here in the flesh, not in the hard part, not in the heart. Gill, just behind the gill plate and behind this fin, you want to make a straight cut down and cut until you feel the bone and you'll be able to feel it, it's extremely obvious and I can feel it there now, it's hard and when you hit that bone, the first cut is made once we get to that bone, which is the spine, we're going to turn our knife from side to side like this and we're going to follow that spine all the way to the end of the fish keeping our knife parallel, you know, not like that, not like that , essentially parallel with the fish and we'll take it all the way to the tail, so here's the second cut from the bone to the spine, turn the knife. on the side and just slowly cut back and forth and you will feel the bone relax if you cut too hard you can cut through the backbone okay which will in a sense ruin your steak if you cut too much you go shallow you are going to miss the meat and it's just about feeling it's about feeling the spine it just takes practice I can feel it there once you start a little bit and then you take your hand off the hold the head and I start putting it on top of the steak that gives you control it helps you with the sensation - it helps you feel feel the fish and feeling the bone a little bit helps you control I kind of wrap my thumb around and obviously you grab it behind the knife and you always cut away from your body so if you slip or push with force, the knife will go here where there is no way to cut or hurt you, so you always cut. away from you at all times, you just want to move the knife back and forth, it helps you work through the

bones

, just move it back and forth sometimes, when you get to these they both open back to the tail of the pike, sometimes your knife wants to go under the fin, what you can do there is just make a little incision like this and just cut a little bit like this, cut down just to get a little place for your knife to start there so that it rises above the fin.
pike filleting 101 out with the y bones
Can you continue and you will know that you are in the right place? If your knife is basically right on top of the fins. If you were under the fins, you'd know you were in the wrong place. side of the spine, so keep cutting all the way to the tail, be patient, don't get impatient now and cut and miss this meat, nice and slow, nice and easy all the way to the tail and then go ahead and cut it. like this and there's a great pike fillet, we're going to cut it with this twist in the center because you just get in the way and it's got a little bit of cartilage in there, you can see the cartilage here, it's kind of a round point. just go ahead and push your knife in, make sure there's nothing on the other side when you push it in and just go ahead and cut it off, you're just losing a little bit of belly meat there, but that part is right in the way that the first set of

bones

will be removed, there are two sets, the first is easy and the same for all fish, like

filleting

a pike perch, is the st. it can be the same thing on the ribcage and if you run your knife slowly along that ribcage you can feel the bonus and you can see them running like this, you can see the lines of bones that we want to cut under them as close as possible. as possible so as not to waste meat and essentially think of it as removing the ribcage so that the first cut is right along the top edge; you want the upper back facing you and the belly facing away from you and just go ahead and take your knife and start cutting very carefully along the top edge and any discolored meat or anything like that, make sure you get it together also, so start cutting like this so the top edge is now a little bit freer there and then what I do is I get on top and you run the knife down and just gently pull out those bones that your fingers are on top to give you control, the knife is under the blades and you can really provide amazing control that way and you go nice and slow, nice and careful, nice and easy, and you can see the knife there, you can, it tells you how deep you are, don't go too deep , just keep working the knife under those bones, some people prefer to do that.
pike filleting 101 out with the y bones
Cut this excess skin from this belly, this type of skin from the body cavity. I don't mind it, I don't find it to have a strong or different flavor, but some people do, you can cut it if you want and there's the ribcage cut out. so the first step is to get rid of those bones, now we are almost boneless, so now the ribcage is gone, now we have annoying and challenging lie bones, they are called Y bones and it is an extra set of bones that the pike has which which makes him kind. They're unique and a little frustrating for most people, which is why I think a lot of people just pass by these things and don't want to eat them.
Now you can see them here on the tip of my knife, you see these little white specks. that's the end of the bone that sticks out there, it sticks out like this kind of straight line, they run down and they curve and come out at the top of the back, they're curved, they have a weird shape that makes them a little tricky the first cut What we're going to do is along the side line, so if you look towards the center of the fillet there's a clear white line here that's unmistakable and what we're going to do is put our knife there. and really a lot of this is just using the tip, so stun the knife up and use the tip and just go ahead and run the knife along the lateral line until you get to a boat towards the anal vent, okay?
Okay, because this piece of tail has no bones, there are no Y bones and no bones here, which makes it a beautiful piece of meat, but go ahead and cut right along the lateral line. Now you want to cut down to the skin and you'll be able to Feel your own knife feeding into the skin and then you can take your fingers and open up that section to see if you're right on the skin. We're here, no, so that's the first cut, the second cut that we're going to make. Now we're going to go around these bones in a Y shape, so think about it since we have a cut on one side.
Now we are going to make a cut on the other side and go around them. What you want to do is start at the fat end of the fillet use your tip and go ahead and cut off maybe a quarter of an inch like you don't face them you don't know you could get caught in them stay about a quarter away inch away and you'll know. you're deep enough because you're going to hit them because I bought it to fill it up a little bit, they twist and come out like this so the tip of your knife will go through it and you and you'll be able to feel it.
You can feel the knife ticking against them if you hold your finger on the blade like this, where it's blunt and safe, and you run the tip as you cut, you'll feel the knife ticking along the bones and you know. you have hit them, if you push too hard and cut hard you will go through them which you don't want to do because you will end up with bones and then you will go back to the point where we said the bones ended up there now you have a second cut to the bones this is the trickiest part this piece of meat right here on the top of the back is a nice boneless piece.
I call it the backstrap of the pike and what I want to do is let those bones know what we're getting to now, they're running in this direction, okay, so what you can do is turn your knife and just use the tip and just follow them, run your knife along those bones that we're following. them there and you will feel them with the tip of your knife what it is about is feeling at this point we can cut this piece right away or you can leave it attached and have a whole steak my family prefers a whole steak, okay, so which one is it? that's why I do it this way, so I'll leave it, but you can cut this piece right now.
It's a nice piece of meat, but I'm not going to make that second cut, we're almost done with these. nasty bones And back to the lateral line, if you open it up and take a look here, you can see kind of a white line along here, okay, that's where the bones essentially start, you basically want to cut about halfway through Whether you can see the line or not, about halfway down that piece of meat, start from the front and start cutting. Now what you want to do is look ahead, here, you can see the bones here, there, right there, and you can feel them. the tip of your knife should go through and make sure it's under them and you can clearly see that it's under those little white bones right there and just run the knife through if you feel like it's cutting into the bones, it will do that a little bit as well. superficial, you have to twist your knife and go down a little more, it's all about feel, it's all about practice and you will be very fast and good at it, just keep moving forward and that will then come off and value your strip of bones And, like this that with what has been removed now, this fillet is officially a boneless pike fillet and just a little bit of me is missing.
What we have to do now is essentially skin this meat, remove the skin and I call it scraping, scraping as much as cutting. here are some keys: the snaffle has a sort of narrow thin tail part that points towards you with a thicker end at the end of the snaffle facing away from where the knife starts, hold it down with your fingers. Start with your knife in front and begin cutting back and forth. No, the key here is that you don't want your knife to be flat like that because you'll tend to miss me. Okay, you don't want to be straight up and down and cut through the skin you want to be at a little bit of an angle but a 45 and just wiggle it you're almost scraping you can feel the skin feels leathery it's hard it's hard to cut so it's pretty forgiving and keep scraping and as you go your fingers stay behind the blade you want your fingers to go up along the skin because you're holding the skin down it wants to slide because it's slimy against the table so keep cutting like this and keep moving fingers forward, keep cutting and rolling, roll the fillet forward, missed it up a little, keep scraping, have a little angle on the knife as well, just keep rolling the flay forward and it widens at the end so you can start expanding your strokes. a little bit up a little bit down a little bit keep rolling up a little bit down because it's wide here and what we're going to do in Manitoba you have to leave a little bit of skin attached so that the conservation officers can identify the fish, we have I have to leave a little bit, basically a square inch enough so they can tell what species you have, so I leave a little bit of skin attached and right at the end I move on. and cut off a decent little piece of skin so they can tell when that fish is in the bag when I transport it home, which is a pike and there we have a perfectly boned pike fillet, one of the best fish to eat in Manitoba, especially in the outside. cold water in winter and spring, they are excellent, so instead of throwing all these fish all the time, give Pike a chance.

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