My husband went salmon fishing yesterday with his dad, sister, brother-in-law and cousin….they limited out, so everyone brought home a good amount of fish. I prefer to have filets instead of steaks, but there is so much meat loss when when fish is filleted (sp?).

The group decided to have the bigger fish cut into steaks, and the rest filleted (sp?). Jim had heard from someone else that you can ask for the salmon skeleton to take home, cook, and pick the remaining meat off. He decided we would give it a try.

It ended up taking about an hour from start to finish….and that was with two of us. Jim ‘cleaned’ the skeletons (de-headed, de-tailed, etc.) and I would rinse them, lay them on the Weber Grill- they didn’t take long to cook up! Jim would then pick all the meat off….while I cooked the next batch. I think we filled the grill about 4-5 times. I didn’t count the heads, but I’m guessing there must have been maybe 8 skeletons?

And we ended up with about 10 cups of delicious grilled salmon pieces. We’re thinking they might be good to add to Caesar Salads, pasta dishes, maybe make salmon burgers or patties?  I packaged them in 2-cup servings so we can used them a variety of ways. 

Is it worth it? I think it was….it was a lot of work, and required a full scrub down of the kitchen and the BBQ too!  

Moral of the story:  there’s about one cup of lost meat per fish when a fish is filleted.