How to cut fish for sushi

I want to make 2 posts in the very near future: One about how to make a nice fish soup and the other about how to make sushi.

These two recipes depend on each other because for sushi you need the best parts of the fish and you need the leftovers for the fish soup. Therefore, when you buy a fish to make sushi or for any other fish dish, you can cut it according to these directions and put the remains in refrigerator bags and freeze them to use later.

One important note though: For sushi I strongly recommend you to find really fresh fish. Daily if you can. You can use salmon, tuna, mackerel, seabass or any other fish according to the sushi you want to make or whichever is available fresh to you. The techniques here are simple and applicable to almost any fish you choose.

In Istanbul you can go to a fish market, a supermarket or a fish shop to buy fish and fresh fish is available everyday. When you buy a fish you can ask the salesman to prep it for you. However if you are going to make sushi you need to learn to clean and cut your own fish. I usually buy the fish as a whole (except for Salmon, which I usually take one third) and ask them to pack in ice and not to clean it. I do all the cleaning at home. The reason: to keep the skin intact so that the fish will keep fresh and covered in sea water till the last minute. Fresh tap water is not really good for the fish.

Anyway, the fist thing you need to do is to remove the scales. You can do it with a fish scaler or the back of your knife. In both ways you will need to do it inside your sink or inside a nylon bag. Especially if you are new to it be careful because scales fly around and stick to everything and since they are transparent you may find fish scales around your kitchen even days later.

The second thing is to take the fishes guts out. If you have never seen how it is done I suggest you to watch your local fish salesman do it first. You need to make a perfect cut from the bottom fin to the jaw and hold the jaw and pull downwards until the whole digestive system is removed. I warn you that it is not a nice sight. Throw away whatever comes out and wash the inner sides until you see no more organs and scrub using an old toothbrush.

Here I put the photos of steps for cutting a seabass after that:



You should have a nice big cutting board in your kitchen (no matter if it is plastic or wooden) and a very sharp knife. I do not suggest laser knives and a sushi knife is the best but any big sharp knife will do.

First, lay the fish flat on the board. Hold the body with one hand and cut through one side under the first fin on the side. Turn around and do the same thing from the other side. Push to cut the main bone and you will have the head removed. You don't need the head for sushi so this part will go in the fish soup.

Second step is to insert the knife over the bone and cut from the missing head to the tail. This will remove the upper flesh from the main bone. Turn the fish around (this time the main bone will touch the board) and insert the knife once again over the bone and cut towards the tail. This will give you the second part of the flesh.

Now you can take the bone, remove the fins with a kitchen scissors or the knife. Then cut from the center into half. This nice center bone will also be used in the fish soup. Place the head and the center bone in a refrigerator bag and put in your freezer.

Till here, the steps are almost the same for every fish I wrote above. From here onwards there will be differences depending on the kind of fish you use and the type of sushi or sashimi you want to make. For example in seabass the only part with the bones is on the side of the flesh so you can insert the knife cut that part out and then remove the skin to get your perfectly ready fish parts without any bones in it.

I will refer to this post for the fish soup and the sushi/sashimi recipes but you can also bookmark it for most of dishes you will make with fish.