Fillets or cutlets for bigger fish ?

[Pickles]

Hey Raiders, How do you prepare your bigger species of fish for the table - do you prefer for cutlets or fillets? And why ?

I dislike playing with any food and hate bones in fish, so fillet (and with exception of kingfish, skin) everything. 

Edited April 28, 2022 by Pickles
Additional information

[noelm]

I do both, but boneless fillets tend to be my "go to" now and then I might cutlet a fish, but I only do the part near the tail so I get full round cutlets, then fillet the "shoulder" part. Bones in fish is often a turn off, people get this idea that the second you get a bone in your mouth you are going to choke to death!  If you think about how a fish is "made" (their anatomy) the bones are easy to locate and eat without drama. Some fish I skin, some I prefer the skin on, just depends, Kingfish, Tuna, Marlin, Salmon and so on, always skin, Whiting, Bream, Flathead, skin on for me.

edit.....I guess I should add, not all fish are suitable for cutlets, bigger cylindrical shaped fish are suitable for cutlets, Kingfish about 6-8kg are best, bigger Jewfish too.

Edited April 29, 2022 by noelm

[Isaac Ct]

I will fillet smaller bream, snapper, whiting etc. But bigger models I will fillet and bone. if the skin is edible I will scale them and eat the skin as well. With little experience with pelagics, I would fillet, skin and debone. And depending on the species would depend on how I would eat it.

[wazatherfisherman]

Fillets always for me- cooking for others that don't eat fish often, you don't want them to get any bones and some people aren't very well versed with eating around the bone or whole fish either.

 I fillet Hairtail, Dory, Kings etc and skin larger Kings and cut the red meat out. I don't bother taking the skin off Hairtail either- it comes off easily after cooking if someone doesn't like the taste.

Fillets over cutlets for me also because I usually cut most fish into small sections, but admit I love Kingfish, Jewfish and Swordfish (bought!) cutlets

[Rebel]

Fillet.

[PaddyT]

Fillet-hate bones-but the collars of bigger fish are an exception

[Restyle]

i found it a real pain to cook a big jew, its all different thickness. Ill defiantly tryout cutlets with the next big jew but besides that i do enjoy a good fillet 

[noelm]

Big Jewfish are best cooked in smaller pieces (in my opinion) rather than a big piece 2" thick in one place, and 1/2" thick in another. Cutlets are good, they look good on a plate, pretty simple to cook, and the bones are rather large, that said, a boneless piece of fish is always nice. People often get confused with a "fillet" thinking the term means boneless, but in fact, it's merely a side of the fish, unless it's been purposely boned, it will still contain the belly/rib bones and the centre lateral bones.

[bessell1955]

Cutlets are my go to!

[Fab1]

On 4/29/2022 at 6:52 AM, Pickles said:

Hey Raiders, How do you prepare your bigger species of fish for the table - do you prefer for cutlets or fillets? And why ?

I dislike playing with any food and hate bones in fish, so fillet (and with exception of kingfish, skin) everything. 

Must be nice to have choices in life.I just want a bigger fish!!!!😫

[JonD]

Bigger things like broadbill, marlin and tuna I cut into fillet sized steaks. Big fish like jewfish I tend to fillet normally but in the thick sections I will fillet the fillet by slicing it down to around 2cm fillets. So up the thicker part of the body where where the flesh is say 6cm thick I will slice three fillets and when I get further down to where its 4cm thick I will get two fillets. I found that some of the deep drop species seem to be slow at getting heat to penetrate the flesh when cooking them, so these are great for reducing fillet thickness.