HOW TO CLEAN A FLOUNDER

This is a "How To Do It" post and may not be that interesting for my regular readers ... or maybe you have always wondered about flounder fileting ... hmmmm?

I posted about floundering here.

This is the follow up.

First, catch or gig some nice LEGAL flounder.

Using a sharp, filet knife, make an incision down the spine from head to tail.
Then slide the flexible, very sharp filet knife along the ribs on either side of the spine to release the filet from the ribs.
Do this on both sides of the fish.
The underside (white) side of the flounder will yield thinner filets than the dark top side, but you don't want to waste that meat.

Here's the flounder flipped over with the two filets already off of the dark top side.
When your filet is free of the ribs, just take your knife and cut it loose from the edge.

You may like the skin on your filet, in which case, YOU will have to scale this fish. I did not show scaling, because I skin, rather than scale my fish.

Here is a skinned filet and the skin.

(Note: Do find yourself a better work surface than the battered picnic table I show in these photos. It was all that was available at that location)

The finished product, a skinless, boneless, delicious filet of flounder.

You should get 4 filets per fish.
If you can't get useable filets from the white underside, then the fish was too small and you never should have taken it.
Really big flounder will have cheeks that are worth extracting too.

The finished, fileted, flounder frame is not trash.
You are looking at the source of an excellent fish stock.
Just stew it until all that floundery goodness has leached out and turned plain ol' tap water into a delicious fish broth.
I use mine in my Minorcan Clam Chowder.

You can freeze the frames and make stock whenever you need it.

If you filet carefully and also make stock from the frame, than nothing is wasted, except the precious spark that made this a live flounder a few hours before.

That is the thinking predator's lament I suppose.