Mistresses rarely use this type of fish for cooking, as not everyone knows how to clean the burbot. While this freshwater fish has very tasty meat, suitable for cooking various dishes. Moreover, burbot has no small bones.
Short description of fish
Burbot is the only freshwater species of the cod family. By 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 believe that this fish does not have scales at all. The color varies depending on the habitat - from light yellow to dark, almost brown.
The head is flat, somewhat reminiscent of snake. Under the lower jaw one mustache. Burbot - predatory fish. He has in his mouth a lot of small sharp teeth, similar to catfish. It can reach impressive sizes and weigh up to 24 kilograms. Although such specimens are found only in the northern reservoirs. In the middle lane, individuals weighing up to 2-4 kg are usually caught.
This fish can normally live and develop only at low water temperatures. Therefore, burbot is active, beginning with the onset of stable cooling in the autumn and before the spring ice drift. The warmer the water, the less active it is. At temperatures above 15 degrees, burbot goes into deep pits near the springs, falls into a stupor for the whole summer - until the water again becomes cold. Because of this feature, there are legends that this predator for the summer somewhere disappears from the reservoirs.
The burbot is white, dense and at the same time gentle, fatty, slightly sweet and pleasant to taste meat. There are no small bones in it. In addition, the large liver of this fish is not inferior to the taste of cod liver.
How to properly clean the burbot
Burbot is suitable for cooking almost any fish dish, but people are reluctant to use this fish, because they think that it is very difficult to clean. Although there is no particular difficulty in this. You just need to remove the skin from it with scales. This is done in the following sequence:
- To make it nice to cut the burbot, it is better to immediately wash off the slime from it. To do this, the fish should be rubbed with large salt and rinsed with warm water.
- After placing the fish on the prepared surface( cutting board or spread paper), make a shallow incision of the abdomen from the head to the anus at the end of the knife.
- Carefully remove the insides to prevent the gallbladder from crushing.
- Separate the liver( wait for cooking).If there is milk or caviar, they too can be left. Remove the rest of the insides.
- Remove the gills and cut the fins - they are not needed. The tail should not be cut off, since it, together with the backbone bones and head, is useful for making broth or soup.
- Make a shallow circular cut behind the gill slits.
- Hold the strip of skin near the incision with pliers, gently pull the skin "stocking".
Further actions depend on what dish is going to be cooked. You can separate the head and tail, the whole carcass bake whole or fry portioned pieces. And you can separate the fillets and prepare dishes from the pulp( minced or in batter), and use the bones to make broth.
In order to remove the fillet from the carcass, it must be laid on its side, then with the knife edge, make an incision along the spine just above the spine bones from head to tail. The incision should be gradually deepened until the blade rests against the costal bones. Care should be taken 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 fillets from the tail part, pruning it with a knife along the spine and spine bones.
Turn the fish over and similarly remove the fillet on the other side.
You can first remove the skin from the burbot, and then eviscerate and separate the fillets, but in this case it is easy to damage the peritoneum and it will be much more difficult to carry out further processing of the fish.
It is easy to remove the skin from a fairly large fish. It is difficult to clean small burbot in this way. Therefore, it is better to pickle it and then wipe it. But much less delicious turns small-sized burbot of hot or cold smoking.
We advise you to read an article on how to clean a catfish
