http://www.worldseafishing.com/tips/prepareskate.shtml
How to Become a Better Angler
By Mike Thrussell
If there’s one thing I can’t stand it’s fish being killed for food and then wasted through bad preparation.
This applies more to skate wings than any other fish. Anglers constantly tell me that their skate tastes of ammonia, and it will if you don’t prepare it properly.
Here’s the correct way to prepare skate wings for cooking.
A soon as you catch a skate you want to take for eating, then humanely kill the fish with several sharp blows between the eyes with something heavy.
Take a sharp knife, not a filleting knife but a strong bladed type that will not bend when pressure is applied. Make sure the knife is extremely sharp. Steel is best for this.
1. Turn the skate over on to its back tail towards you and hold the tail with a rag to protect the hands. Draw a straight imaginary line running from the front of the wing, just to the outside of the gills, and down to the bottom of the wing adjacent to the tail. Put the knife through the base of the wing at the start of the imaginary line. Now cut away from you and upwards through to the side of the gills and further through to end of the imaginary line just slightly to one side of the nose.
2. The knife will inevitably hit the thorns on a thornback and you’ll need to cut round these as the root of the thorns is ultra tough. There is also hard cartilage around the middle of the wing where it joins the body and this again takes some getting through. Repeat to remove the opposite wing.
3. Now, the most important part. Place the cut wing on something flat with the wings cut edge towards you. Put the point of the knife in just underneath the skin at one end and slide the knife across the flesh at a sideways angle just underneath the skin to separate it from the flesh. Do this across the whole wing slowly until the skin at the front can be lifted upwards. Hold the skin in the left hand and repeatedly slice away underneath it along the whole length of the skin further back across the wing until you get to within a couple of inches (5cms) of the extreme outer edge of the wing. Turn the wing over and repeat.
4. If you now look at the white flesh underneath the skin on both sides you can see this forms a half moon shape. With the knife, start at one end and cut out the shape of the half moon tight to where the skin is still attached. You will know have a half moon shaped wing of just flesh and wing cartilage with no skin attached. Just like you buy it in the shops.
5. Preferably, place this in a plastic bag inside a freezer box with ice blocks until your return home. Once home, place the wings in fresh tap water with lots of salt added and place it in the fridge for 24 hours. The skate is now ready for cooking. The flesh is white and has no ammonia taste. The ammonia is in the skin. Also there is no slime as again the slime comes from the skin.
6. I’m no Rick Stein, but you can bake it in silver foil with a little butter and black pepper, fry it in light hot oil, grill it with some light seasoning on top, or my preference is to risk the cholesterol and fry it in good old beer batter until golden brown.
Enjoy!
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Roger