Good Quality fish | Less qualified fish |
---|---|
Whole fish - Bright, Metallic and glowing colour Eyes - Bright and clear Gills - Bright red colour, presence of oxgen. Scales - Strongly intact, Bright Meat - Translucent, firm & elastic Ocean - Ocean smell or salt water smell |
whole Fish - Dull and pale Eyes - Sunken, cloudy and opaque Gills - Brown to dull brown Scales - Easily come off Meat - soft, dull & easily come off the bone. Odour - Fishy smell |
Cleaning the fish generally means, removing Scales, gut, gills and fins
Descaling: Butter knife is better than kitchen knife, start descaling holding fish at one end and descale toward opposite, best to start from the tail and all the way to the top, some fishes have smaller scales on the head and hinges of the fins goes unnoticed. You can de-scale inside the poly bag to avoid dirtying the area.
Degutting: Use kitchen knife for degutting, start from the anus right through the belly towards the jaw, slide your hand inside to remove the gut both the ends along with liver and air bladder.
Gills: Ripe off the gills at the connecting ends.
Fins: Chop the fins off using knife or Strong scissors, also chop of the tails. Thoroughly wash the fish in running water and cut the fish to your requirement.
Frozen fishes are available as whole (gut, fin and scales intact), Headless gutted, fillet format; processed in block or individually frozen. Few of the products available in the market place are Whole Fish, Fillet, Loins, steaks, cubes, and H&G (headless gutted)
Seafood can be kept in the coldest part of the fridge with ice surrounding the seafood for used within 2 days. Frozen seafood can be stored in the home freezers for a month. Storing the frozen seafood in deep freezers can be up to 6 months. Storage in Frozen cold store can be up to 1 year and above. Block frozen has better shelf life than the individually frozen.
Well cooked fish is moist and maintain delicate flavor, overcooked fish is dry and less palatable. When the appearance of the fish changes from translucent to almost fully opaque and just begins to flake easily, remove it from the heat source and let it rest for a few minutes. Cook fish until it reaches internal temperature of 140.f – 145.f. Cook 10minutes/inch at 400’f – 450.f. Cook fish 10 minutes per inch, turning it halfway through the cooking time. For example, a one-inch fish steak should be cooked 5 minutes on each side for a total of 10 minutes.