How to debone herring quickly. How to quickly clean herring from bones. How to remove small seeds

How to remove bones from herring? Cutting salted herring for preparing salad and serving.

Despite the fact that stores sell ready-made fillets and preserves, many housewives prefer to clean the herring themselves. This is because assessing the freshness of whole fish is much easier. Herring is sold by weight from barrels and cans and individually in vacuum packaging. Fresh fish should have firm, dark red gills and clean, undamaged skin. There should be no plaque on it. The presence of “rust” on herring indicates its low quality or unsuitable storage conditions.
Herring is a perishable product, so as soon as it gets into your kitchen, it must be gutted, removing all the insides.

How to properly clean and fillet herring from bones

High-quality fillets can be obtained at home. To do this, you will need a convenient cutting board, a well-sharpened knife with a thin blade and a pack of napkins or paper towels. Every experienced housewife knows how to properly clean herring from bones.
To do this you need:

Wrap the cutting board in cling film. This will help protect the surface from odor and dirt. Instead of film, you can use paper towels or newspaper
Place paper towels on the countertop, which will be needed to remove films and blood from the abdomen.
Make two even cuts: longitudinal along the back and transverse at the head
Gently pull the edge of the skin from head to tail. Do not make sudden movements, otherwise the skin will tear.
Remove the fillets from the backbone and rib bones. Thin and small bones can be removed with tweezers

Herring fillets can be stored for no more than two days. Since fish has a strong odor that is quickly absorbed by other foods in the refrigerator, it is recommended to store it in an airtight container. Metal containers are not suitable for herring; it is better to use plastic, glass or enamel containers

Have you started herring under a fur coat? Cutting herring for salad

If the herring was purchased for salad, you can clean it in another way. In this case, the ridge is removed first, and then the skin. Once you have prepared your work surface and sharpened your knife, rinse the fish in cold running water. Then dry it thoroughly using paper towels.
How to cut herring for a fur coat? First of all, cut off the tail, fins and head. Make a neat cut on the abdomen and remove the insides. If after this there are a lot of giblets and films left, rinse the herring again.

Important! Don't forget to dry the herring after rinsing it in cold water.

Gutted fish must be wrapped in cling film and lightly beaten. Do not hit the fish on the work surface; use a wooden mallet or rolling pin. This will help separate all the bones from the fish, including the smallest ones. Next, placing the fish belly down, press on it so that it opens like a book. Turn over and pull out the spine. Now divide the carcass into two separate fillets, and remove the skin from them with your hands. Remove small bones using tweezers.

For those who need it faster! Cutting the herring in one motion

If you save time, you need to cut the herring in one motion. First prepare the workpiece. Cut off the fins and remove the entrails. Don't forget to dry the belly and get rid of intestinal films. If this is your first time cutting fish this way, do it over the table. If unsuccessful, the fish will not fall to the floor.

To make the trick work, you need to make a cut of about one centimeter on the tail.
Then take the herring and make a circular motion towards yourself so that the carcass describes a circle around its tail. Movements must be confident
With a sharp movement, tear the herring into two halves
You will be left with two bellies and a backbone with a loin.
Separate the fillet from the bones

To make everything work, hold the fish’s tail as tightly as possible

What to do with herring milk: can you eat it?

When cleaning the fish, milk may remain. Unlike caviar, many housewives throw them away because they don’t know what to do with them. Others, having learned that this is the sperm of males, refuse to eat them. However, this product deserves attention because it has many advantages.
Herring milk can be fried in batter and added to a salad or used as a filling for a fishburger. They are often placed in fur coats, in addition to fillets. In Finland they don’t ask whether herrings eat milk. Here they are added to the fish soup along with caviar. Using a blender, you can make a paste from the remaining milk. Just add a boiled egg, raw carrots and butter.

Ways to beautifully serve peeled herring on the table

Thinly sliced salted herring fillets can be a good snack. It is served with pickles, pickled mushrooms, black olives and black olives. Fillet is also used for canapés. Small pieces of herring and boiled potatoes are threaded onto a skewer with an onion ring between them. The set of products for this appetizer can be anything; for piquancy, you can add an olive or pickled champignons.
If you are in doubt and don’t know how to serve herring, make sandwiches with black bread, butter and herbs. A taste familiar from childhood can delight guests and remind them of family feasts in their parents’ home. An alternative can be rolls, which are made with or without filling.

How to quickly peel herring: video

Use the video to quickly peel a herring:

Having decided to treat her family or guests to salted herring, the housewife will wonder how to clean it. Herring is not served to the table uncleaned. You can make delicious cold appetizers from salted fish: salad under a fur coat, minced meat, rolls, or simply eat it with boiled potatoes, cut into pieces and sprinkle with sunflower oil. Before preparing any dish from herring, you have to remove the bones and often remove the skin.

Preparation

For cleaning salted fish, it is better to have a separate cutting board, but you can wrap it in regular cling film and work on it. You cannot clean fish on newspaper, as the paint sticks to the product and, consequently, to the stomach. Medical gloves will help protect your hands from unpleasant odors.

To work you will need:

sharpened knife;
tweezers;
plastic bag.

Cleaning Methods

There are several ways to clean salted herring.

For beginner housewives

The fish is removed only from the bones, leaving the skin. This is how the herring is prepared for serving as a cold appetizer, by cutting it into pieces and sprinkling with chopped fresh or pickled onions or herbs.

The fish is gutted, washed, and the head and caudal fin are cut off.
The thumb is placed next to the dorsal fin and buried 2-3 cm into the back.
The finger is moved to the tail and the carcass is divided into halves.
The ridge is removed by hand.
Small bones are pulled out with tweezers.

In one motion

This is how herring is cut in the Far East when there is a lot of fish to process. First, the carcass is gutted and the head is separated. Then:

The fish is taken by both hands by the caudal fin.
They wave their hands so that the carcass makes one revolution.
Hands spread to the sides.
In one hand there will be two halves of a clean fillet, in the other - the back with all the bones.
The ridge along with large bones is removed from the back by hand.

The result is three pieces of pure flesh: the back and two fillets.

Hi all! Today we will talk about how to cut herring from the bones.

There is nothing complicated in this whole procedure. If we imagine everything in the form of an algorithm, it will look something like this:

Defrosting
Removing fins
Removing the entrails
Removing the head
Flushing
Removing the top fillet with bones
Layering
Removal of the vertebral bone
Cutting rib fillets
Skin removal
Cutting into pieces

As you can see, the process is not quite complicated. The only thing is, since we clean fish, and even herring, a fishy smell remains on the cutting boards, knives and hands, which is not entirely pleasant.

To avoid this, put a plastic bag on the board. In addition, you need to take a knife with a thin blade; it will be easier for them to cut fish. As for the peel, it is easier to remove it by hand. This is best done starting from the tail. Having plucked it, pull it gently towards you, trying not to tear it.

Cutting herring step by step with photos

We start by placing the fish on the board and cutting off the fins, tail and head. The main thing is to cut it correctly. To do this, we will place the knife behind the large fin and make an oblique cut, getting under the gills. Cut to the middle. Then we turn the knife in the opposite direction and cut off the head from the side of the other gills.

You can, of course, do it in an easier way. We cut the belly of the herring along the entire body and take out the milk.

The main thing in this operation is not to damage the gallbladder. Otherwise, all the fish will be bitter. By the way, this must be taken into account when cutting any fish.

After this, cut off the head and tail using the usual straight motion.

You can then wrap the fish in film and tap it lightly on the table. This will help pull the bones out much easier.

We open the gutted fish, pushing both halves apart and take out the ridge.

And finally, cut the fish into two halves and use tweezers to remove all the small bones.

How to quickly peel herring

Using this method, you can separate the fish from the bones a little faster.

To do this, also pre-prepare the carcass: clean it, separate the fins, head and tail.

Now use a knife to make a cut along the ridge. We put our finger into this cut and begin to carefully separate the fillet. Having separated it, put it aside, and remove the bones from the other half. After this, we once again inspect for the presence of small seeds and also remove them with tweezers.

Small bones are often located deep and difficult to see. To do this, carefully probe all the fillets with your fingers and remove any bones found. As soon as your fingers stop probing these bones, you can finish this procedure.

Having decided to prepare a dish of salted herring, the housewife certainly asks the question: how to clean the herring. And this is quite logical - no one will like the crunch of bones in a salted fish appetizer. By the way, there are a great many recipes with salted herring. This includes the famous herring under a fur coat, mincemeat, and fish rolls. So it's time to learn how to separate bones from meat and cook fish fillets in minutes.

Why clean the herring yourself?

The first step in a recipe for any salted fish appetizer is to clean it from the bones or immediately recommend taking ready-made fish fillets. But really, maybe it would be better to just go to the nearest store and buy fillet in oil or mayonnaise? Then you don’t have to learn how to properly peel a herring! I opened the jar, cut the fish - and the bottom layer of herring under the fur coat is ready.

Not a bad option. But homemade fillet is still better. There are several reasons for this:

When buying a whole fish, you can smell it and check it for freshness “by eye”.
Unscrupulous producers may use low-quality, and sometimes even “lost” fish to prepare fillets.
There is an opinion that to remove the smallest bones from fish, chemical compounds are used in which it is soaked. As a result of this treatment, the bones literally dissolve. Large producers have repeatedly denied such information, confirming their words with a video of the fillet production process. However, unscrupulous manufacturers who do not value their own reputation may well use this method.
Buying a whole salted herring will be much cheaper than buying ready-made fillets.

Before you start peeling salted herring, prepare a sharp knife. If a kitchen knife becomes dull, it should be sharpened. This must be done, since a convenient, impeccably sharpened knife is the first rule that allows you to quickly clean herring.
Often you have to clean the fish shortly before guests arrive and there is simply no time to wash your hands after cleaning. And the smell of salted fish is very corrosive. To be sure to solve the problem of unpleasant odor, wear plastic or thin rubber gloves to avoid getting your hands dirty. To protect your clothing, be sure to wear an apron.
Although each type of food should have its own cutting board, there is nothing pleasant about a board that smells like fish. Therefore, protect not only your hands, but also the cutting board from the smell and particles of fish fillet. Place a thick layer of white paper or cling film on it. After completing the procedure for gutting the salted herring, the paper (film) can simply be removed from the board, wrapping the entrails, bones and other waste in it, and discarded. The next step should be carried out on a new, clean sheet of paper. After cleaning the fish from the bones, the paper should be discarded, and the board should be wiped with a sponge soaked in dishwashing detergent and rinsed with warm water, rather than scrubbing off the specific fishy “aroma.”
If the measures listed above did not help on your hands or there is fishy amber left on the cutting board, sprinkle them with lemon juice.
If the fillet is not used immediately, store it in the refrigerator wrapped in cling film.

Two ways to turn herring into fillet

The salted herring has been purchased - it’s time to learn how to clean the herring. There are 2 ways to do this. The fundamental difference will be the moment of separation of the bones from the meat. In the first option, the fillet is slowly and carefully separated using a forward movement of the thumb along the ridge, freed from the skin, and in the second option, the ridge and rib bones are separated from the meat in one movement. The second option looks more impressive. It is usually used by professional chefs. Let's take a closer look at both options.

Preparing the herring before directly separating the bones will be the same for both options.

Wash the herring under running water.
Cut off the head.
Cut the belly from the head to the tail.
Remove the lower fins (ventral and anal). After the fish is cut along the belly, they are easily removed.
Remove the giblets from the cut belly. If the herring turns out to be a female, you can put the eggs in a separate plate. You can make delicious sandwiches with it by spreading the bread with butter and placing salted caviar, freed from the press, on top. The remaining offal, including milt (if a male is caught), should be thrown away.
Gutted herring must be washed. Dark films should be carefully peeled off with a knife. After making sure that all the insides have been removed, you should rinse the fish again and then move on to the next step.
At the very bottom of the belly, on both sides of the gutted fish, a strip of meat should be cut off. In this place there are small bones that cannot be removed otherwise; they can only be cut off along with the meat.
Make a cut along the ridge from the head to the tail. Cut out the dorsal fin along with the small bones where it attaches.
Use a knife to pick up the skin and remove it from the herring carcass. It is convenient to do this from top to bottom.

The herring is prepared. Now comes the fun part - separating the meat from the bones. In the first option, you should do this:

Cut off the herring's tail.
Take the herring in your right hand (for left-handed people - in your left). Place your thumb on the ridge at the base, placing it under the meat, and begin to move your finger towards the tail, moving the meat away from the skeleton. When your finger reaches the tail, remove the fillet portion completely from the rib bones. The result should be half a clean fillet and half meat on the backbone and ribs.
Separate the meat from the backbone and rib bones from the other part of the carcass in the same way.
If there are bones visible to the eye, usually there are not many of them - 3-4 long bones, no more, remove them.
Fish fillet is ready!

In the second option, which allows you to quickly get the fillet in one movement, you need to do the following:

Grasp the fishtail with your hands: with one hand on one half, with the other on the other.
Make a circular movement with the fish in the direction “away from you” or “counterclockwise”, and when the herring approaches its original position, tear it into 2 halves, pulling the tails in different directions.
The result is one half of a clean fillet, with which you only have to cut off half of the tail. And from the other half you should take out the bones, holding the ridge, and also remove the rest of the tail.
If any bones still remain, remove them.
Salted herring fillet is ready!

Be sure to try peeling the herring with your own hands (or your husband’s hands) and make sure that it is not as difficult as it seemed at first. Don't save time on cleaning herring by buying preserves. They are significantly inferior in taste and quality. The health and well-being of loved ones is much more valuable!

Often at the table many people refuse herring, despite its merits and taste. The reason for this is the abundance of bones in fish. But having chosen for yourself an acceptable way to clean the herring quickly and easily, you will be able to enjoy it more often and not be in quiet horror before preparing the “Herring under a fur coat” salad.

The following culinary tools are used to clean herring from bones: a sharp knife, kitchen scissors and a cutting board. Below are step-by-step technologies for different options for cleaning fish from bones that will help any housewife cope with the task.

Classic cleaning method

This is a proven way to get beautiful and neat herring fillets. To do this, it will be enough to use a sharp knife and a cutting board.

Preparing the carcass and cleaning it is carried out as follows:

Cut the spine at the base of the fish's head. Gently and slowly pull your head towards you. It will easily separate from the carcass and most of the entrails will follow it.
Using a sharp knife, rip open the belly and remove the milk or eggs with caviar.
Using the same knife, scrape off the black film and entrails that could not be pulled out along with the head.
Next, remove the fins (ventral, anal and spinal). Cut off the tail.
Make a longitudinal cut along the ridge almost to the bones, cutting through the skin and meat. Carefully remove the skin so as not to damage the fillet.
Turning the carcass with its belly towards you, feel the ridge and, without sudden movements, separate it first from one part of the fillet, and then from the other.
Inspect the two resulting halves of the herring fillet and, if there are bones left in it, remove them.

A simple method from Grandma Emma

A former school teacher, and now a famous Russian-speaking culinary blogger from Germany, advises deboning herring in this way:

Using kitchen scissors, cut off the head and tail of the fish. Make a longitudinal cut along the back and cut off the belly.
Remove all the insides and remove the skin from head to tail.
Moving along the ridge, separate the meat from the bones using your thumbs. If bones remain, they can be removed using tweezers. The herring fillet is ready.

Simple and fast way using a plastic bag

It often happens that the fillet just doesn’t want to separate from the bones. In this case, a method using a regular plastic bag will come to the rescue.

The flow of work in this case will be as follows:

Make a longitudinal cut along the belly of the herring. Gut all the insides, remove dark films from the inner walls of the abdomen.
Place the fish in a bag and pound it with the wide side of a kitchen knife. Beat without fanaticism, but it should not be simple pats.
Remove the herring from the bag. Cut off the head and tail, remove all fins and easily separate the backbone and bones from the meat.
Lastly, remove the skin, so the fillet will retain a more accurate shape.

Removing the fillet from the tail

In previous methods, the fillet was not separated from the bones, but the bones were pulled away from the meat, but perhaps it will be easier for someone to do it the other way around.

In this case you need:

Prepare the herring carcass. It should be left without entrails, fins, head and skin. It's better to leave the tail. Rinse the carcass under running water and dry with paper towels.
Place the prepared herring on a cutting board. At the base of the tail, use a knife to cut and separate a small piece of fillet.
Then, with one hand, press the backbone by the tail against the board, and with the other hand, pull the meat away from the bones until the fillet is completely removed.
Repeat the same procedure with the other half of the fillet.

Punching method

This cleaning method does not require a knife or scissors. The entire process of separating bones is done by hand. But pressing has a disadvantage: a lot of bones will remain in the meat. They will then need to be removed with tweezers or your hands.

How to clean herring by pressing:

Rinse the gutted herring without entrails, fins and skin in running water.
Take the carcass in your hand so that your thumb is on top of the back and all the rest are inside. Next, squeezing your fingers and using squeezing movements, separate the meat from the bones. First one half, and then the other. The fresher the fish, the easier it will be to clean it.

How to clean herring from bones in one motion?

Does it seem like something fantastic to receive salted herring fillets with absolutely no bones at lightning speed? But this is not as difficult as it seems at first glance, although it will require some sleight of hand and dexterity.

Before making this same movement, you need to gut the fish, cut off the fins, separate the head from the carcass and remove the skin.

If everything was done correctly, then in one hand there will be half a clean fillet with a small piece of the caudal fin, and in the other hand there will be a fillet with bones. You need to cut off the rest of the tail from the first half, and separate the ridge with bones from the second.

This quick method has one drawback - there is a high probability of getting an unattractive, perhaps even torn fillet. If aesthetics are not important, for example, the fish will be used in a salad, then this method can be safely used.