How to clean a pike from scales and innards

A few know how to clean a pike. Firstly, it's the fishermen themselves. For them, this business is familiar and familiar for a long time. Secondly, these are their wives. They involuntarily have to master this difficult art.

The main stages of the process

In order to prepare a fish from a dish, it must first be cleaned. This rather tedious process consists of several stages:

1. Primary treatment. The fish should be thoroughly rinsed under a stream of running water to clean off debris and unpleasant mucus on the surface.
2. Removal of scales. This is the most time consuming part of the process. The carcass must be placed on the table so that its tail is on the right, and the head, respectively, on the left. Then, with a sharp knife, slowly scrape off the fine scales in the direction from the head to the tail.
3. Using the same knife, separate the tail and dorsal fin.
4. Blow up the belly's belly, making a neat incision in the head area and gradually moving to the tail.
5. Opening the belly, remove all the insides and remove the thin film located along the spinal bone.
6. Cut off the head and rinse the carcass once more.

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

Important details

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

1) To begin with, you need to remember that for this work you will need a large amount of water and a very sharp knife. As you know, the scales of the pike are very shallow and need to be washed off periodically during cleaning. In addition, the fish itself is covered with a layer of natural mucus. Remove it is not easy. This will require a lot of water.

2) Scraping scales from the surface must be smooth confident movements, holding the knife somewhat at an angle to the fish. This will greatly facilitate the work and prevent the dispersal of small scales throughout the kitchen.

3) It is necessary to cut the belly very carefully. Do not put the knife deep into the body of the fish. So you can damage the gallbladder and spoil the meat. A smooth incision from the head to the anus will be enough.

4) Extracting the inside, near the spine, you can see a thin transparent film, under which there are small blood clots. All this must be removed.

Having completed all of the above, we can assume that the secret of how to clean the pike is fully mastered.

Some useful tips

Scales in fish perform a protective function, but it is completely unsuitable for food. However, it should be noted that it contains a lot of quite rare and at the same time useful substances. Therefore, if the pike is used exclusively for cooking, then it can also not be cleaned. From here follow two ways of how to properly clean a pike:

1) Scales along with the viscera are removed before cooking.

2) Scales, together 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 is one more golden rule. To remove scales it is necessary only together with extraction of entrails. It is not necessary to separate these two processes, since they are fundamentally interrelated with each other. Sometimes fish with rather dense scales come across. In this case, the fish should be slightly steamed, dropping it for a short time into a container of boiling water. Well, of course, every mistress knows how to properly clean the pike, so as not to cover the entire room with scales. In addition to a sharp knife, you will also need a conventional plastic bag. The cleaning process will take place inside it, which will prevent the possibility of spreading the waste.

If you only need meat

Before you start processing fresh fish, it is better to determine in advance what will be cooked from it. For example, I want to make pike patties. In this case, only the meat will be needed from the whole carcass, and you can choose from two already known variants. Most often, mistresses go the usual way and process fresh fish. In this case, it is necessary to understand how to clean the pike for cutlets. Here the usual process is repeated step by step:

1. Rinse the fish under running water.
2. Clean the scales with a knife or a special scraper. To prevent the spreading of debris, the pike can be placed in the sink, pre-closing the drain hole and tying some water into it.
3. Follow the scales to remove the insides, and then trim the tail and all the fins.
4. Now with this gutted fish you need to carefully remove the fillet with a special knife. And small bones, which remained in the pulp, can be removed with the help of ordinary tweezers.

Now it becomes clear how to clean the pike for cutlets. It remains only to chop the fish pulp in a meat grinder. Skin, in principle, you can not shoot. It will be completely invisible in the general mass.

Cleaning in field conditions

To process fish at home is, of course, convenient. But what about those who decided to do it in nature? What fisherman does not want to cook an ear or fry a couple of pikes from fresh catch? For this, it must be prepared. And how to clean the pike from the scales right on the street without the usual conditions and tools? But fishermen are a people familiar with everything. Any of them can do it in just 2 minutes. For such purposes in the hiking bag, each of them always has a small device. You can easily do it yourself. To do this, you need a piece of board length of not more than 20 centimeters and a pair of metal plugs from glass bottles. The board should be cut lengthways to get a handle piece. In order not to injure hands during work, it is better to process and sand it with sandpaper. On the one hand, one after the other with the help of conventional nails fix the plugs. Such a simple device is easy to make a house in advance. But at the right time with his help you can clean even the smallest fish.

Simple and fast

Cutting the pike is a long and rather dirty process. But experts have come up with a way to clean the pike quickly and practically without debris. To do this, you will need: a cutting board, a knife and a fork for fillets. Now you need to do the following correctly:

1. Wash the washed fish on the board.
2. Cut the middle fin, and behind the front cut in the direction of the head.
3. After reaching the ridge, turn the knife and further cut along the ridge until the tail. It turns out exactly half of the carcass. Then turn the second half and do the same with her.
4. Each halve separates the ribs, gently cutting them with a fillet knife. Fish at this time can be held with a fork.
5. Now alternately, in each half, separate the skin along with the scales. To do this, a piece of fish should be placed on the board skinned down and gently cut with a knife, slowly moving it along the table.

As a result, two pieces of flesh of pike meat are obtained. And the fish is cleaned without dirt and without scales.

If the fish needs to be fried

To fry the fish, it must first be prepared. Nobody will put a whole carcass, with scales and entrails, in the skillet. In any case, fish must first be brought to the state of semi-finished product. This work can be done in different ways. Here you need to know how to clean the pike for frying, depending on the way it is cooked. For example, to make fish in batter, you will need fillets. You can get it using the method described above, and do not tire yourself with scaling. This will greatly reduce the time that should be spent on cutting 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 do scales, remove all unnecessary, divide the cooked carcass into portions, and then start the main process. In any case, the choice is always with the hostess, because it depends on it how well and tasty the dish will be cooked.