How to clean the crucian?

Fish is a healthy and tasty product. But before treating yourself to fish dishes, you will have to spend time on an unpleasant procedure for cleaning fish. For its various types, there are peculiarities and tricks to significantly facilitate the process.

Training

Crucian, and any fish, it is better to clean as soon as possible after capture. If this cannot be done right away, then it is better to send the fish to the freezer, wrapped in polyethylene. So it will not lose moisture, and after thawing it will be easy to clean. If the fish is still alive, they stun it with a blow of a kitchen hammer on the head. Further, in the gap between the head and the fins, a deep incision is necessary to drain the blood.

It is much more convenient to clean large fish. Of course, you don’t have to choose when fishing - which one you got, this one you got. But when buying in a store, it is worth giving preference to large specimens.

So that the crucian carp does not constantly slip out of the hands, you can clean it with fabric gloves. But if later there is no desire to wash them and get rid of the fishy smell, then it is better to purchase a cutting board with a special clip for the fish or simply “nail” the crucian carp to a wooden board by sticking a knife into the tail area.

Scale Removal

Before you clean the fish from scales, you must carefully cut the fins so that they do not prick. This is convenient to do with scissors. The tail is trimmed later, because it will still help when cleaning the scales. The scales themselves are removed in the direction from tail to head with a blunt knife, a peeler, a fork or a special device for cleaning fish. Cleaning a crucian is not so difficult - its scales are not strong enough to hold and cleaned quite easily. If the fish is large, then it can be freed from most of the scales even with your hands, without fear of breaking or damaging the nails, and only in the area of ​​the tail, fins and abdomen will small pieces have to be removed with a knife.

Tip

Scales will be cleaned even easier if you pre-douse the fish with boiling water.

So that the scales do not scatter throughout the kitchen, it is better to clean the crucian under a stream of water, in a sink filled with water or in a basin with water.

Removing the guts

Then the tail is cut from the fish, washed with water and the process of cutting begins. Carp is carefully cut along the abdomen and remove the black film and all internal organs. In this case, it is important not to tear the gall bladder to the fish. Otherwise, crucian carp will have to soak for a while from bile or rinse with water and sprinkle with salt, so that subsequently the dish does not bitter.

So that the bones in the already cooked fish are not pricked, cuts are made on the carp on both sides of the body with a step of half a centimeter. They can be vertical or diamond-shaped. So the bones are partially incised and softened due to the ingress of oil or broth on them during cooking.

Useful Tips

1. If the fish is not planned to be cooked headlong, it must also be cut off along with the gills.
2. If crucians have an unpleasant smell of mud, then before cutting, cleaning from bones and cooking they are soaked for an hour or two in a weak saline solution.
3. To prevent the cutlery from smelling of fish, immediately after cutting and cleaning they must be rinsed with cool water and soap. If the smell still remains, you must repeat the procedure, but first wipe the dishes and appliances with heated salt.
4. To get rid of the fishy smell of the house, in addition to banal ventilation, you can boil water with the addition of vinegar or heat coffee grounds in a frying pan.
5. If the crucian carp does not go immediately after cleaning to the pan for the fish soup or to the pan, then it should be stored in the freezer, wrapped in plastic wrap so that other products do not absorb the fish smell. For the convenience of subsequent cooking, it should immediately be cut into portions.
6. If the fish was bought for frying, before that it is recommended to leave it for a while on a colander or dryer, so that the excess water, which made cleaning so easy, is now glass. Otherwise, crucian carp will turn out to be stewed rather than really fried.

Crucian carp is a simple but no less tasty fish, if cooked correctly. It is possible to simplify and speed up the process of preparing dishes from crucian carp, knowing how to properly clean fish from scales and entrails, especially since there is nothing complicated about it.

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