GuruGrilled fish is a healthy source for almost anyone who wants great taste and beneficial to their bodies. It really doesn’t matter what type of fish as most have tremendous amounts of healthy oils, vitamins and protein. This includes the shark. Yes, shark!
With any shark, you want to clean the fish as quickly after catching as possible to avoid any fouling. I bet many of you didn’t know that sharks do not urinate.
Instead, they excrete nitrogenous wastes as urea, which is stored in their in the blood, and the nitrogenous wastes are expelled trough their skin. When a shark dies, the urea in their blood and flesh deteriorates into ammonia, which is why shark meat often tastes and smells of ammonia.
How to clean a shark
- Take the tip of a boning knife and make a puncture in the center of the head, ahead of the gills, with the knife sideways so that the blade is facing one side or the other. The correct spot for the puncture is where the harder part of the head sort of softens.
- From the puncture, continue the cut to one side, angling back across the top of the gills, then down just behind the gills toward the pectoral fins. It is easy to detect when the cut enters the abdominal area – the flesh surrounding it is quite thin. When at the abdominal area, try to avoid cutting much deeper than the belly flesh as not to puncture the internal organs to avoid a big mess to clean up. While cutting into the belly flesh, angle the cut toward the rear above the pectoral fins and continue the cut along the side, above the pelvic fins straight back to the end of the abdominal cavity, coming to the shark’s centerline behind the vent and ahead of the anal fin.
- Then, go back to the head at the first puncture, and cut away the other side in the same way. When this is done, the head, belly, and organs come away in one big piece leaving the usable meat — the upper rear torso with flesh and skin. Some anglers freeze the shark torso and fillet it out at a later time.
#SharkWeekGrill
Lauren Cook
