How to quickly and correctly clean burbot

Housewives rarely use this type of fish for cooking, since not everyone knows how to clean burbot. While this freshwater fish has very tasty meat, suitable for preparing various dishes. Moreover, burbot does not have small bones.

Brief description of the fish

Burbot is the only freshwater representative of the cod family. In appearance it somewhat resembles a catfish or snakehead. His body is covered with a layer of mucus. Very small scales fit tightly to the skin, which is why many people believe that this fish has no scales at all. The color varies depending on the habitat - from light yellow to dark, almost brown.

The head is flattened, somewhat reminiscent of a snake. There is one whisker under the lower jaw. Burbot is a predatory fish. It has many small sharp teeth in its mouth, similar to catfish. It can reach impressive sizes and weigh up to 24 kilograms. Although such specimens are found only in northern reservoirs. In the middle zone, individuals weighing up to 2-4 kg are usually caught.

This fish can live and develop normally only at low water temperatures. Therefore, burbot is active, starting from the onset of stable cold spells in the fall and until the spring ice drift. The warmer the water, the less active it is. At temperatures above 15 degrees, burbot goes into deep holes next to springs and falls into torpor for the entire summer - until the water becomes cold again. Because of this feature, legends arose that this predator disappears somewhere from water bodies during the summer.

Burbot has white, dense and at the same time tender, fatty, slightly sweet and pleasant-tasting meat. There are no small bones in it. In addition, the large liver of this fish is not inferior in taste to cod liver.

How to properly clean burbot

Burbot is suitable for preparing almost any fish dish, but people are reluctant to use this fish because they believe that it is very difficult to clean. Although this is not particularly difficult. You just need to remove the skin along with the scales. This is done in the following sequence:

To make cutting burbot pleasant, it is better to immediately wash off the mucus from it. To do this, rub the fish with coarse salt and rinse with warm water.
Having placed the fish on a prepared surface (cutting board or spread paper), use the end of a knife to make a shallow incision in the abdomen from the head to the anus.
Carefully remove the insides so as not to crush the gallbladder.
Separate the liver (set aside for cooking). If you have milk or caviar, you can leave them too. Discard the remaining innards.
Remove the gills and cut off the fins - they are not needed. There is no need to cut off the tail, as it, along with the spinal bones and head, is useful for making broth or fish soup.
Make a shallow circular cut behind the gill slits.
Holding the strip of skin near the cut with pliers, carefully tighten the skin with a “stocking”.

Further actions depend on what dish you are going to prepare. You can separate the head and tail, bake the rest of the carcass whole or fry in portions. Or you can separate the fillet and prepare dishes from the pulp (minced meat or batter), and use the bones to make broth.

In order to remove the fillet from the carcass, you need to lay it on its side, then use the tip of a knife to make an incision along the spine just above the spinal bones from head to tail. The incision must be gradually deepened until the blade rests on the rib bones. You should work carefully so as not to cut them. Turning the blade parallel to the ribs, remove the pulp from them. Then, lifting the flesh removed from the front of the carcass, cut the fillet from the tail, cutting it with a knife along the spine and spinal bones.

Turn the fish over and remove the fillet from the other side in the same way.

You can first remove the skin from the burbot, and then gut and separate the fillet, but in this case it is easy to damage the peritoneum and it will be much more difficult to further process the fish.

It is easy to remove the skin from fairly large fish. It is difficult to clean small burbot in this way. Therefore, it is better to salt it and then dry it. But small burbot, hot or cold smoked, turns out much tastier.

We advise you to read the article about how to clean catfish