by R. Renee Bembry

Created on: January 11, 2009   Last Updated: January 28, 2009

So you've gone fishing for the first time or an adventurous neighbor has caught more fish than he can eat and passed a few on to you. Whatever the case, you have a pile of fish that look strangely appetizing, but you have no clue how to cook them.

It's best to begin by removing the scales. Removing scales isn't as complicated as it may seem. You can de-scale fish by scraping away the scales with a scaling knife, scaler, or even a regular spoon. Scaling knives are smooth on one end and jagged on the other. Scalers are basically rectangular shaped pieces of metal with multi-sections of teeth attached to wodden handles. As far as spoons go, simply grab one from your dinnerware drawer, hold the mouthpiece with your thumb, and scrape the base of the spoon across the fishes' bodies.

Scaling fish can be pretty messy so you might want to cut away the bottom of a paper bag and scale the fish from inside the tubular portion. Another way to avoid scale messes is to scale your fish in a sink of water using the carrot scraping technique. Better yet, if you scale your fish outdoors you can practically forget about scaling messes. One more thing, some folks like wearing a glove on the hand that holds the fish to keep it from slipping.

After scaling fish, you must gut them by slicing their bellies open and removing the guts from inside. Like scaling, there are multiple ways of gutting. The basics are the same and pretty much go like this: (1) Lay the fish on its side atop a counter, or table, or cutting board. (2) Insert a sharp knife tip into the fish's anus. (3) Slit the belly open all the way to the tail in one direction and the head in the other direction. Keep the slit deep enough to pierce the belly but not too deep. You must blindly avoid cutting the guts because they may contain contaminants you don't want spilling into the flesh. (4) Cut the head between the gill covers in a downward motion until you feel the backbone. Do not cut the backbone. (5) Now hold the head area upward and cut the flesh away from the head to separate the parts. (6) Cut a v-shape in the head above the chin and with one hand pull the upper head while the other hand pulls the chin area in opposite directions. As the head pieces part, the stream of guts attached to the chin side should slide from the fish's belly as you pull the chin toward the tail.

After scaling and gutting your fish, you can cook it as is, or cut it into fillets first. If you choose to cook it as it, you can make preparation easy

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