Breaking it Down – Grouper(Scamp)
Eugene L. 06.04.24
One of, if not my favorite fish to catch and eat out of the Gulf of Mexico is the Scamp (Mycteroperca phenax), one of the more commonly caught grouper species in the Gulf. This species stays a bit smaller than the Gag and Red groupers on average, usually under 20″ in length when you find them. While all the groupers make for great table fare, I’ve found that Scamp has an even better quality meat that is some of the whitest and tastiest you get out of the Gulf. Well, my buddy invited me to join him on a charter out of Destin with Captain Tyler on the First Light and it was a great trip with us catching a half a limit of Scamp, along with a ton of other fish. So I thought I would show you how to break one of these delicious Scamps down.
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Like the majority of the time we are starting with a dressed fish. This means I gutted out the grouper as soon as we got back to the dock. I left most of the belly intact just cutting it open enough to take all the guts out. I only gut them out this way so the fish travels better when I bring them back home, also make sure to bleed your catch as soon as you bring them up. This ensures the best quality meat. So like always the first thing we going to do to break down the Scamp is to take the head off. Take your knife and go from behind the pelvic fins up towards the back of the head at a diagonal angle. Follow along the collar of the scamp to not waste any meat. Do this to both sides of the fish, then you can pull back on the head to pop it off.
Once you pop the head off the Scamp put them aside on ice, I’ll show you what to do next time to get another great cut of meat off of the head. Now you have the head off of the Scamp trace along the dorsal fin with your knife with a shallow cut first to break the skin and cut through the tail all the way down to the bone. After you cut through the skin, try to keep your knife as flat as possible to the bones. That way you take as much meat as possible off the frame. If you angle the knife you might cut through the bones and into the other fillet. You want to feel your knife scraping over the bones ideally. Keep removing the fillet this way till you reach the spine and ribs.
Nest flip the Scamp over and trace the bottom of the fish along the anal fin and back toward the tail to break through the skin. Then repeat how you cut the top of the fillet off the frame till you reach the spine again. Then carefully start working the knife over the spine to lift the fillet off the bones. Then all you have left to cut through is the ribs and pin bones of the Scamp to take one side off the fish. The pin bones sit right above the ribs sticking straight out to the side. Going back to the top side of the Scamp, take your knife and push through those close to the spine. After you’re through the pin bones follow the contour of the rib bones with the tip of your knife. That way you can retain the belly of the fillet.
The rib bones end before the bottom of the fillet so you cut out before the bottom of the belly. Once you have the first side of the Scamp off just repeat the same steps to take the second side off the frame. If you don’t want to deal with going over the rib bones, you can just cut through them and leave them attached to the fillet. For this way instead of going back to the top of the fillet, just cut through the ribs and pin bones from inside the body cavity. Then you can just trim them off later right before you skin the fillets.
Now you have two skin-on fillets, trim out the pin bones, you can feel them if you run your finger along the center line of the fillet. Cut around both sides of them all the way to the skin. Once you’ve finished that take your fillet knife and start at the tail end of the fillet. With your free hand get a good grip on the tail of the fillet. Start your knife at a hard angle to get down to the skin, then flatten it out but still keep a little bit of downward pressure as you push your knife forward. Go all the way through and you should have a nice skinless fillet. Now to complete the deboning, grab the little bit of meat and pin bone that you already cut before and just pull or cut it off. And you are finished with filleting and skinning a Scamp grouper. For anyone wondering why I didn’t scale the grouper, there are two reasons. First no point in scaling a fish you’re going to skin, all the scales will be taken off with the skin. Second, the scales actually make skinning the fillets easier, they act as a hard backing to the skin and keep it tougher. That helps keep your knife from accidentally cutting through.
