How to DEBONE a WHOLE FISH to Cook Over the Fire

I'm Jojo. I'm the executive chef of Saray in the Hotel Del Coronado and Lionfish in the Pendry Hotel downtown San Diego. We are going to be doing a Baja Striped Seabass. We're going to scale it, gut it, gill it, and then we're going to cook it over charcoal. First, we're going to scale it. We are doing a Japanese style of scaling it, so we're using a really sharp knife, getting in between the scales and the skin. So the reason why we do it this way is we realize what it does is there's a lot of moisture underneath all this right here, which you can see right there. What it does is it eliminates that moisture. When you put it on the grill and you grill it, because we're going to do it on a plancha that sits on our grill, it's going to get a little bit crunchier and it's going to make the skin nice and crispy. Because if you release all the scales, it's removing all the little moisture pockets underneath it. The trick to this is to have a really sharp knife. If you have a knife that's not really on the right edge either, it'll pierce the skin. Next, after we finish cleaning it all and scaling it, we're going to remove the guts. Go all the way through the head. I run my fingers along the inside of it. Just so we can get all of this right here. Then we grab a pair of scissors, cut right between the gills. I run my fingers along right here. Then what I'll do is I'll take one big cut through right here and remove the entire thing in one pull. Now it's gilled and gutted. The reason why I remove the gills with the guts is because we want to do a head-on presentation. It's going to be head-on, tail-on. We're going to go through the big part of the backbone right here. We're going to make an incision. We follow the incision all the way down. What we do is we run our knife along the backside of it just like if you're doing a normal fillet cut. Take it all the way to the backbone. Now what we're going to do is we're going to do a nice long cut that we don't miss any meat. Then we flip it this way. We do the same thing on the other side. Nice long stroke. We go through the back of the head. That way it lays flat on each side. Now it's a reverse pocket cut. What we do with the scissors now is we go through this backbone and we take it all the way to the front. If you look in between these backbones, there's these little knuckle joints. You can go through those joints with pretty much anything. See how it just went right through? The reason why we do it this way is because now it's technically semi-boneless. Once it's grilled, these bones you could literally pull out with your fingers. After that, you're going to have a completely boneless fish all the way from here back. The reason why it's semi-boneless, we left the tail on and we left the head intact. We let it sit in the walk-in for a little bit. It got kind of dry. A day overnight is better. I just hit it with a little bit of oil, salt, kind of rub it just a little bit. Get it nice and shiny. We got this grill custom made by a guy in Encinitas. His name is Phil and this thing is hot. So it's a six-foot grill. What we do is we have the plancha side. This is usually we pick up all the fish so we can get that crispy skin that everybody likes. We're using wood and charcoal just to give it some flavor. Obviously, everything grilled is always going to be better, especially if it's over charcoal or wood. We're going to put it on the plancha side of it so it gets nice and crispy. It's going to get nice and crunchy. You can already smell it. Season with a little bit of salt or a lot of bit of salt as I like it. What we have here is what we call our blitz. We have red wine vinegar, lemon juice, extra virgin olive oil, equal parts and then a little bit of ground dry oregano. So since we already seasoned it, olive oil on this side, this side we want to add moisture to it. We're going to add flavor by adding the red wine vinegar, lemon juice, extra virgin olive oil. I'm going to suck it all up. It's going to marinate. Since it's getting pretty hot, we're going to lift it up just a little bit. But this thing, like I said, this grill gets very, very hot. Now we're going to let it get nice and cooked. I enjoy cooking outdoors. I enjoy making a fire. I mean, vacations for me are usually get away, turn off my phone for a couple of days at least. It's usually nice not having any phone service. Me and my family, we like to get out into the wilderness and fish and cook over open fire. And I think this is what really strikes a chord with most chefs nowadays. They like being in kitchens, but being outdoors and kind of catching your own food and knowing how to do this is definitely going to help out. The whole just kind of like let it breathe, I guess. It kind of gives it all that smoke flavor. If you can see through the holes, you're having all the smoke flavor from the wood and the charcoal. You're getting a little bit of that flavor. You just have just a blank plancha. It's going to sear the same way. It's just, you're not really getting any of that flavor from the actual wood itself. Now what we do is we slide the fish onto the plate. Like I said, the tricky part. This is a plate because we do this inside of our restaurant at Soraya. So just like we have an herb bouquet right here with some lemon, we kind of keep this dish nice and simple to like really accentuate the fish itself, whether it be a rock cod from the local fishermen, whether it be the Baja Striped Sea Bass from Pacifico Aquaculture, who does a beautiful job with these striped bass. We just really try to keep it as simple as possible in this dish. Now what we do is remove all these bones from the rib cage. Like I said, because it's warm, pull them right out. Now it's completely boneless. Everything from here all the way up to here is completely boneless. Tail obviously has a bone inside of it. Head, you have a little bit of meat right here inside of the collars and the cheeks. And then right here is going to be what everybody loves, which is going to be the collar. We have a little bit of flaky sea salt for finishing. Just some chopped herbs. We have a little bit of parsley inside of here. Just some really nice extra virgin olive oil. Really nice extra virgin olive oil really makes a dish. Buying cheap olive oil doesn't really taste anything. Good extra virgin olive oil is always going to make everything better. I promise. A little bit of the flaky sea salt. Make sure you pinch it. It gets all nice and loose. We want people to come in and be able to have the experience of having an old fish without having it completely get messy. So we break them down table side depending on how many people there are with your party. If there's three people, if there's four people, we recommend a pound per person just because you saw the whole process of the gills, the guts, the scales, the bones. That all equals once you remove all that, it's going to be about 40% of the food. What we first do is table side, we present it whole before we scale gut and gill and grill the fish. That way you can see what fish you're getting. And then at the very end, we bring the fish to you completely cooked this way, but we serve it to you table side. So I leave the collars and I usually ask who would like the collars because I feel like the collar is a very wanted piece. Like me, if I go to have this dish, I'm going to want the collars because I want to pick through that meat. So what I do is I go back through this spine bone right here. Then you have the filet. Filet is completely loose now. This is a whole piece of meat. This person gets a filet. This person gets their filet. This VIP person who wants the collars, I'll give them the collars. We'll say that's my plate. Finish it with a little bit of lemon. It's good to go. So this is how we do our whole fish presentation here at Soraya.