Salmon Beyond the Fillet: Using the Whole Fish
When you bring home a whole salmon, the two fillets are only the beginning. The collar, the belly, the frame, the skin, and the roe are all food, and several of them are better eating than the fillet you paid for. If you want to actually use your whole salmon, break it into six things: two fillets for the pan or the freezer, the collars for grilling, the bellies for curing or crisping, the frame for stock and chowder, the skin for crackling, and the roe if the fish is a hen. Almost none of that needs to go in the bin.
This matters more with salmon than with almost anything, because most people treat a whole fish as two fillets and a pile of waste. That is a habit worth breaking. The same respect we bring to a whole deer or any other game for that matter, belongs on the fish, and once you learn where the good bits are, you will feel a little robbed every time you buy a shrink-wrapped fillet and nothing else.
Start with the fillets, but do not stop there
Yes, take your two fillets. Pan-seared skin-side down until the skin is crisp, roasted, or portioned and frozen for later, the fillet is the workhorse and is fantastic. Cook it to just done, a touch translucent in the centre, the way you would treat a good backstrap. Salmon overcooked to the point where it’s dry flakes and visible albumen (kinda looks like cooked egg whites) is the most common way people ruin it.
But before you toss the rest of the fish, look at what you are throwing away.
The collar is the one of my favourite parts, and so many people never bother with it
The collar is the meaty, fatty wedge just behind the gills, on either side of the fish, where the head meets the body. In Japanese cooking it has a name, kama, and it is prized. It is the richest, most tender, most flavourful piece on the whole salmon, and in North America it usually goes straight in the garbage with the head.
Do this instead. Cut the two collars away, season them simply with salt, and grill or broil them hot until the skin blisters and the fat renders and the edges char. You eat them with your hands, picking the meat out of the folds. It is a cook's reward, the piece you stand at the counter and eat before dinner is even on the table.
Or, my favourite way to use the collar is to cure and smoke it. Absolute heaven.
Bellies, frame, skin, and roe
The belly is the fatty strip along the bottom of each fillet. You can leave it on, but if you trim it, it is perfect for curing into a hot smoked salmon, or crisping in a hot pan or grill with Japanese inspired flavours. Because it’s so fatty, high temperature cooking is preferred because it allows the fish to char and get super crispy.
The frame, the bones and head after filleting, is a stockpot waiting to happen. Simmer it gently with an onion, a bay leaf, and a little wine or vinegar for under an hour, strain it, and you have the base for the best salmon chowder you will make. There is real meat clinging to a salmon frame too, and it picks off easily once cooked. Nothing on that frame is waste. If you don’t want to make stock, make sure you at the very least do what we’d do in professional kitchens - take a spoon and scrape the meat left on the frame after filleting and use it for fish cakes. I promise that no matter how adept you are at filleting a fish, you can’t get all the meat and you will be surprised how much you can scrape off for those fish cakes.
The skin, if you removed it, can be scraped clean, salted, and baked or fried flat until it shatters like a chip. Crumble it over a salad or the chowder.
The roe. If you have a hen and she is carrying eggs, those skeins of roe cure into salmon caviar, ikura, with nothing more than a salt brine. It is one of the great luxuries of catching your own fish, and you got it for free.
Preserve what you cannot eat now
A whole salmon, or a good day on the water with several, is more than most families eat in a sitting, and the old coastal answer to that is preservation. I got into this on the podcast with Kevin Kossowan, talking about how the Newfoundland tradition is simply to salt your fish, and how salt cod built a whole culture on the east coast. Salmon takes beautifully to the same ideas.
Your options, from easiest to most involved:
- Freeze it right. Portion the fillets, get them well wrapped to keep air off, and freeze. Vacuum sealing or a tight double wrap makes a real difference to how it tastes in three months.
- Cure it. Gravlax is almost too easy: bury a fillet in a mix of salt, sugar, and whatever aromatics you like, weight it, and turn it for a couple of days in the fridge. Slice thin. This is a great use for a belly trim too.
- Smoke it. Hot-smoked salmon for the fridge, or a proper cold-smoked side for slicing, both preserve the catch and turn it into something special.
- Salt it. The oldest method of all. Heavily salted fish, kept cold, buys you time and gives you a completely different, deeply savoury ingredient for winter cooking.
Do not obsess over one fish
There is a bigger idea here, and it goes past salmon. On the BC coast we fixate on two species, salmon and halibut, and we ignore an ocean full of good eating: rockfish, lingcod, crab, herring, even the seaweed. Kevin made the point that people book a fishing trip and cannot imagine targeting anything but the one prized fish, and they miss the rest of what is right in front of them.
I am not telling you to stop loving salmon. I love salmon too. I am telling you that the same instinct that makes you value the whole fish instead of just the fillet is the instinct that opens up the whole coast. Use every part of the salmon, and while you are at it, catch and cook the fish nobody else bothers with. Both come from the same place, which is paying attention and refusing to waste what the water gives you.
Handle the fish well from the start
None of this matters if the fish was mishandled before it got to your board, so a quick word on that. The best salmon is the salmon that was killed and cooled fast. Bleed it right away by cutting the gills, keep it cold from the moment it comes out of the water, and get it on ice or in the fridge quickly. Hank Shaw's whole mantra starts with bleed the fish, and it is the same logic we bring to a deer: temperature and cleanliness in the first hour decide how good the eating is weeks later. A fish that sat warm in the bottom of a boat all afternoon will never taste as good as one you cared for on the spot, no matter how well you cook it.
Look at the flesh too. Bright, firm, and springy is what you want, with a clean sea smell. That is your sign the whole fish, collar and belly and all, is worth the effort that follows.
Break down your next whole fish this way
Next time you have a whole salmon on the board, work through it in order.
- Fillet both sides. Fridge or freeze the fillets.
- Cut the two collars free and set them aside to grill tonight.
- Trim the bellies for curing or crisping.
- If it is a hen with roe, save the skeins to cure.
- Everything left, the head and frame, goes into the stockpot.
- Save and crisp the skin if you took it off.
You started with what most people call a fish and two fillets. You finished with grilled collars for dinner, cured belly for the weekend, roe for a celebration, chowder base in the freezer, and crackling for the salad. That is what using the whole fish looks like, and once you have done it once, buying a lonely fillet will never feel like enough again.
