How do I take the pin bones out of a fish fillet?

Pin bones are the floating intramuscular bones of round fish — salmon, trout, cod, haddock, hake, sea bass. They are not attached to the skeleton, so filleting does not remove them, and a fishmonger who says a fillet is boneless usually means it has no rib bones. They stop about halfway down the fillet, so the tail half needs no work at all.

What you'll need

• Fish tweezers or long-nose pliers
• A folded tea towel (optional)

Step by step

1. Lay the fillet skin-side down on a board.Drape it over an upturned bowl or a folded tea towel if you want the bones to stand proud — arching the fillet slightly pushes the bone tips up through the flesh and makes them much easier to grip.
2. Find the line with a fingertip, not your eyes.Run a finger firmly from the thick shoulder end towards the tail, about a third of the way in from the long edge. You will feel a regular row of hard points, roughly a centimetre apart. They stop around the midpoint of the fillet.
3. Note which way each bone points.Pin bones angle towards the head end of the fish and slightly upward. That angle is the whole trick: pull along it and the bone slides out of its channel, pull against it and it tears a groove.
4. Grip right at the flesh surface.Take hold of the very base of the bone where it emerges, not the tip. Gripping the tip snaps thin bones and leaves the buried half behind, which is worse than not having started.
5. Pull towards the head, in one steady movement.Press the flesh down with your other thumb either side of the bone as you pull. That holds the fillet in place so the bone leaves rather than the flesh lifting with it.
6. Wipe each bone off as you go.On a tea towel beside the board. Damp pin bones stick to the pliers and you will spend more time flicking them off than pulling them.
7. Check by feel again at the end.Run your finger back down the line. Any you missed will still catch. On a salmon side there are usually somewhere between twenty and thirty, so a fillet that gave up eight is not finished.

Tips

• Ask the fishmonger to pin-bone it. It takes them under a minute and is normally free, and it is a fair request even at a supermarket counter.
• Very fresh fish grips its bones hardest. A fillet that has been in the fridge a day gives them up more easily, which is one of the few advantages of slightly older fish.
• Proper fish tweezers — flat, wide, blunt-tipped — cost very little and are far better than eyebrow tweezers, which cut through the bone rather than gripping it.
• If you are cooking the fillet whole and serving it hot, you can skip the job entirely and lift the bone line out after cooking, when the flesh releases it easily.

Common mistakes

• Pulling straight up — The bone is angled, so a vertical pull drags it sideways through muscle fibre and opens a visible channel. On a salmon fillet that is being served skin-side up, that channel is the only thing anyone will look at.
• Cutting the bone line out with a knife — It works, but it removes the thickest, best part of the fillet along with the bones and leaves a V-shaped fillet that cooks unevenly. Tweezers cost less than the flesh you would throw away.

Questions people ask