Black Pomfret

Very similar to white pomfret , This delicious fish provides light colored flesh with a very pleasant flavor - mild but not bland. There is a dark strip under the skin but it is not noticeably stronger in flavor than the light flesh. The flesh holds together very well for all forms of wet cooking and pan frying but flakes easily on the plate. Because the skin shrinks little it is an excellent fish for baking or steaming whole or pan dressed. It is a very good shape for cooking whole. this fish is a little different than most with hard keels, because the keel doesn't go all the way forward. If you don't intend to cook head-on you should cut the head off immediately (make cuts around the collar, then cut the backbone from the side) to make cleaning easy. If, as is often the case, you wish to cook the fish head-on, this can be done in such a way as to have a fish with two good sides. Make a cut from the vent to under the chin as for Cleaning and Filleting a Round Fish. Then pull out the gills using your long nose pliers. This will free up the innards enough so you can hook them partially out with a finger and then all the way out with the pliers. There will be a little bit of soft stuff left in the cavity aft of the vent on each side of the keel, but you can scoop that out with a finger. This is an easy fish to fillet, having a coherent and easy to follow fin/bone structure, Outline the fillet by cutting through the skin top and bottom. Cut down to the backbone from front to tail, then over the tail and work forward. When you get to the rib cage you can pretty much pull the fillet off the ribs, or cut them from the backbone with kitchen shears and pull them from the fillet. If you will be using fillets skin-on, cut away the hard skutes, just for the straight part at the tail. There are long centerline pin bones for the length of the body cavity that need to be pulled. farther back you can still feel them but they'll pretty much disappear in cooking, For details see our Cleaning and Filleting Deep Bodied Fish page.