How do I take the skin off a fish fillet?

The move that makes this easy is counter-intuitive: the knife barely moves. You hold it at a fixed angle and drag the skin out from underneath it. Get the angle wrong towards the flesh and you leave a fat layer of fish on the skin; get it wrong the other way and you cut through the skin halfway along.

Safety

What you'll need

• A long flexible filleting knife, sharp
• Kitchen paper or coarse salt for grip
• A board that will not slide

Step by step

1. Set up so nothing can slide.Damp cloth under the board. A board that moves while a sharp blade is travelling towards your fingers is the actual hazard in this job, more than the knife itself.
2. Lay the fillet skin-side down with the tail end nearest you.The tail end is thinnest, so it gives you the easiest start, and working away from yourself keeps the blade travelling away from your body.
3. Cut down to the skin about a centimetre from the tail end.Straight down through the flesh until you feel the blade meet skin, then stop. You are making a flap you can hold, not cutting through.
4. Take a firm grip on that flap.Fold a piece of kitchen paper over it, or dip your fingertips in coarse salt. Wet fish skin is genuinely impossible to hold with bare fingers and losing your grip mid-cut is how people cut themselves.
5. Turn the blade almost flat, tilted very slightly down into the skin.Perhaps five to ten degrees off horizontal, edge pointing slightly towards the skin rather than up into the flesh. Erring towards the skin costs you nothing; erring towards the flesh costs you the fish.
6. Pull the skin, do not push the knife.Hold the knife still at that angle and drag the skin taut towards you with your other hand, adding a small back-and-forth sawing motion with the blade. The skin peels off against the edge. If you push the knife forward instead, it wanders.
7. Keep the skin under constant tension.Slack skin lets the blade ride up into the flesh. Pull hard enough that it stays flat against the board the whole way.
8. Check the skin when it comes off.A clean job leaves the skin translucent with almost no flesh on it. A thick opaque layer means the angle was too shallow — tilt further into the skin next time.

Tips

• A partly frozen fillet — twenty minutes in the freezer — is much firmer and considerably easier to skin than a fully thawed one.
• Do not skin fish you are going to pan-fry, roast or barbecue. The skin holds the fillet together, crisps into the best part of the dish and protects the flesh from the pan.
• Do skin fish you are going to poach or steam, where the skin never crisps and goes slimy and grey instead.
• Salmon skin removed cleanly and cooked flat and hard between two trays makes very good crisps. Do not throw it away.
• For a whole flat fish like a Dover sole, the skin comes off differently — nick it at the tail, get a grip and pull it off in one piece with no knife involved at all.

Common mistakes

• Using a short, thick or blunt knife — You need length to run the whole fillet in one pass and flexibility to follow the board. A blunt blade will not start the cut at all and skids sideways off the skin, which is where injuries come from.
• Skinning a fillet you are about to fry — The skin is the structure. Without it, a cod or salmon fillet in a hot pan tends to curl, break up and stick, and you have thrown away the crispest part of the dish.

If it doesn't work

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