Life Skills - Day 13

How to Fillet a Fish

So, before I was even finished with this challenge, I was ready to call it a failure. I didn't think I'd be very good at this, but it did not even start out well. For starters, do you know how difficult it is to find a fish that is not already filleted? That was an interesting and unexpected challenge. One grocery store suggested trying an Asian food store, and sure enough, they had frozen, whole fish. But, I had no idea what any of these kinds of fish were . . . I was expecting walleye, or perch, or some other Friday night fish fry tradition, but no . . . my choices were blue runner or milkfish. The blue runners were cheaper, so I got those. A pack of two for ~$2.50. My heart sank a little as I was checking out because the cashier was trying to be helpful and tell me how to cook it and he said to fry or steam it whole . . . not what I was planning to do with it. I asked him if I could try filleting it, and he said yes, so I figured I'd just wing it and see how it went. Upon further research, I discovered that blue runners are usually used for bait to catch bigger fish, and not usually for eating (uh oh), but I did find a few websites that said they were good for eating (this blog was particularly helpful, although I didn't really want to try his ways of eating it: Professor Fishheads), so again, I just decided to wing it . . . how bad could it be, right? I couldn't find a video on filleting a blue runner, so I tried what I figured was close, a video about how to fillet a blue fish (Blue Fish Filleting). With that minimal information, I just dove in, because I'm not really feeling well tonight (I think my first illness of the year is kicking in, boo) so I wanted to get it over with. Here are my images (don't continue if you got squeamish in biology class):

My "subjects"

The massacre (I tried skinning the first one, but it didn't really work. For the second one I left the skin on and cooked it that way . . . it was much better)

Eww . . . I think I missed out on quite a bit of meat :( I'm definitely not a professional at this.

I cooked it in a pan with lemon olive oil then added a little fish/chicken seasoning.

And the most amazing part? It was actually tasty :) I thought it would be fishy and kind of gross, but I liked it. Success (for the most part), now I can go to bed. Yes, it's 8:30 . . . here's to feeling better tomorrow.