Dressing and Filleting

Appears in
Professional Cooking

By Wayne Gisslen

Published 2014

  • About
Although most of you will work with ready-to-cook fish products, you should know how to clean and fillet whole fish.
  1. Dressing.

    Figure 19.2 illustrates how to dress a whole fish.

  2. Filleting.

    There are two basic shapes of fish: flatfish (like flounder and sole) and round fish (like cod and trout). They are filleted differently. Flatfish have four fillets; round fish have two. Figures 19.3 and 19.4 show the two methods for filleting these fish.

    After a large fish, such as salmon, is filleted, it may be necessary for some recipes to cut the fillets into thinner slices, or escalopes. Figure 19.5 shows this procedure.