Seafood
Cooking Seafood
Tips for Fresh, Flavourful ResultsSeafood is a staple of Australian cuisine, offering a diverse range of flavours and textures. The key to cooking delicious seafood begins with proper preparation. Always select the freshest catch when shopping for seafood—look for bright, clear eyes on whole fish, firm flesh, and a clean ocean scent. Store seafood in the coldest part of your fridge and use it as soon as possible.Before cooking, rinse seafood under cold water and pat it dry with paper towels. Remove scales, bones, and shells as needed. For shellfish, ensure they are alive before cooking—discard any open mussels or clams that don’t close when tapped.Cooking methods vary depending on the type. Grilling and barbecuing bring out natural sweetness, especially in prawns and fish fillets. Steaming is ideal for delicate shellfish, while pan-frying creates a crisp crust. Always avoid overcooking, as seafood cooks quickly and can become tough. Seafood differs from red meat. The best result is obtained by gently cooking the flesh until it turns white. The flavour in seafood is within the cells and if these are broken by overcooking, you lose the flavour. A squeeze of lemon and a sprinkle of fresh herbs will enhance natural flavours. Serve immediately for the best taste and texture.With careful preparation and attention to detail, anyone can create mouth-watering seafood dishes at home.
Preparation
If you are fortunate enough to catch fish, you are most likely used to scaling and filleting the fish in preparation for cooking.
To prepare boneless fish fillets from fish such as Bream, Snapper ,Trevally, you will need a very sharp filleting knife, preferably with a long, thin flexible blade that is able to follow the contour of the bone structure closely without leaving flesh on the fish skeleton.
Remove all scales from the fish using a scaling tool or a knife if you don't have one.
There is no need to remove the internal organs of the fish before filleting, as proper filleting will remove the flesh without rupturing the internal organs. Scale the fish and rinse in salt water to remove the scales. We don't want the knife slipping on scales it encounters.
With the fish belly on your left and the head pointing away from you. Make a strong cut along the backbone of the fish down to the tail. The knife , if it is sharp enough, will cut easily into the flesh. Work the knife along the bone structure . At the tail end work the knife across the skeleton until it emerges at the anal cavity. Work the knife through to the tail and severe the skin so that this part of the fillet is now free. Make a cut around the gill case from just behind the pectoral fin to the place you initially started. You can than work the knife from the dorsal fins across the rib cage to produce a nearly bone-free fillet. Turn the fish over and around to repeat the procedure on the other side. To remove the little bones that run from the rib cage outwards to the flesh, feel these bones with your finger and make a cut either side of them as shown in the photos below.
This procedure takes a great deal of practice to get a very neat fillet without loosing any of the edible flesh.
Filleting fish this way reduces the weight to about 50%. You need to bear this in mind when buying fresh fish. Boneless fish fillets will usually cost at least twice as much as whole fish per kg.
Flathead is filleted differently, as the rib structure on these makes it difficult to retrieve 50% without incorporating the rib bones.
