Jeremy Smith breaks down how he goes about cleaning burbot, and then afterwards shares a simple and delicious recipe.
Cooking and Cleaning Burbot
Burbot are an awesome gamefish that are fun to catch, but also delicious to eat.
If you want to keep a couple burbot to eat you’ll need a sharp fillet knife, a pair of pliers or channel locks, and lots of paper towels.
The best eating size burbot are between three and six pounds. Cleaning burbot between that size range gives you a nice meat yield while still allowing you to release those bigger fish.
Cleaning Burbot
Step 1:
The first step is to cut around the collar of the fish. You don’t want to make a deep cut, the goal is to cut the skin away from the meat.
Step 2
Once you’ve made it all the way around the burbot, you’ll want to grab your pliers and begin pulling the skin off. Start at the head of the fish and pull the skin down towards the tail.
After you have removed the skin, you can remove the guts so it’s cleaner and easier to work with. You don’t have to, but it just makes things a little easier.
Step 3
The next step is to remove the fillets. It is very similar to other fish, except the ribs stuck out at a forty-five degree angle instead of curving.
Start with a cut behind the back of the head of the burbot. Cut down along the spine and remove the fillet.
Flip the fish over and repeat the process.
Cooking Burbot
There are a bunch of different ways to cook burbot. They can be deep fired, baked, grill, but one of the best ways to prepare burbot is to pan fry it and then sauté it in lemon butter.
Cooking it this way only requires a few ingredients.
Ingredients
- Butter
- Garlic
- Salt
- Pepper
- Lemon
- Oil
Start by cutting your burbot fillets into 1 1/2-inch sized pieces. Try to keep them as close to the same size as possible.
Next you’ll want to place the oil in a cast iron pan on medium heat. Once the oil is at temperature, you’ll want to season the meat with pepper and salt.
While that is cooking add a few pieces of butter and a couple cloves of garlic into the pan. As the butter melts spoon it over the pieces of burbot.
Once you have developed a nice golden-brown crust flip the pieces over and cook until it has a nice crust.
Squeeze a little fresh lemon on it an enjoy!
