How to clean and fillet a sardine

Cleaning sardines isn’t difficult if you follow a few simple steps. After you’ve done a couple of them, it should take no more than a minute.

Begin by laying the fish on a board and making a small cut on the back, right behind the head and straight down through the backbone. Make another incision on the belly side just behind the front fins. Holding the fish under running water, gently twist the head from the body. If you do this right, most of the innards will come away with the head. Discard these.

Cut a slit the length of the belly and rinse out the inside. Lay the fish on its back on the cutting board and make two shallow parallel cuts the length of the backbone. You’ll want to be careful not to cut all the way through the meat.

Grasp the exposed backbone near the tail and pull up, using the fingers of your other hand to hold the meat in place. The backbone and larger ribs should lift cleanly away, leaving you a neatly butterflied fish.

Finish cleaning by scraping away the black skin along the belly and cutting away the rib endings on either side. There will still be some bones left, but these will be so fine they won’t be a problem. Do check to make sure all of the bones around the collar of the fish are gone. Finally, square up the top to make a neat double-fillet.