Silver Pomfret

The flesh of this fish is mild without being bland. Good eating except that it's kind of a bone problem fish, at least in the 5 to 6 ounce size.

There are only a few small scales, just enough to be kosher. It is a fairly easy fish to fillet, but use your kitchen shears to cut off the hard keel under the body cavity area and I recommend cleaning by removing the head before filleting. A 5.7 oz fish yielded about 3.2 oz of fillet skin-on (56%) and 2.6 oz skinless (46%). The skin shrinks quite a bit when fried but this isn't the easiest fish to skin either - fortunately a few small patches left on won't hurt.

I don't recommend steaming or baking this fish whole. It comes out looking pretty ugly due to shrinkage even if you cut a couple diagonal slashes through the flesh, and then there's the problem of the bones, especially the ones from the fin margins.

Removing the head, dusting with flour and frying (pan or deep) works better because the fin margins are crisped and stay intact with all their little bones. You can pull away the fins before serving or you can eat the fish as-is, turning it over after side 1 has been eaten.

Just dust the fish with flour because a heavy batter will interfere with deboning. See the instructions for Yellowstripe Scad for details on how to handle this sort of fish.