Buy a salmon fillet from the supermarket and there’s a fair chance it still has a row of pin bones running down the thickest part. They’re thin, a bit bendy and point diagonally into the flesh, so you rarely notice them until someone’s picking one out of their mouth at dinner.
Ordinary tweezers from the bathroom cabinet can technically do it, but they’re short, the tips are pointed and they slip on wet fish. Pliers from the toolbox are worse. What you want is a pair of proper fish bone tweezers, which have wide, flat, squared-off jaws that grip the whole bone rather than pinching one point of it.
The Kwizing pair is a solid choice, made in Japan by RCI Global. They’re stainless steel, about 4.75 inches long, and the jaws are angled so you can get them flat against the fillet. The body has a non-slip grip, which sounds like marketing until you try holding anything with fishy fingers. They go in the dishwasher, which is what you want after handling raw fish.
How to get the bones out:
- Find them first. Lay the fillet skin side down and run a fingertip slowly along the thick middle from head end to tail end. You’ll feel the tips as little bumps.
- Curve the fillet. Drape it over an upturned bowl. The curve pushes the bones up so they stick out more and are easier to grab.
- Pull at an angle, not straight up. Grip the tip of each bone and pull in the direction it’s pointing, which is usually towards the head end. Pulling straight up tears the flesh and leaves a ragged hole.
- Hold the flesh down. Press the fish either side of the bone with your other hand so you only pull the bone.
- Keep a glass of water nearby. Dip the tweezers in it to drop each bone, rather than trying to shake them off onto a board.
A side of salmon usually takes a few minutes this way. The same tweezers work on trout, mackerel and sea bass fillets, where the bones are finer and even harder to see.
They’re a single-purpose tool, and if you only eat fish fingers they’ll just sit in a drawer. But if you cook fish once a week, or buy whole sides for a dinner party, they’re worth the drawer space. Nobody wants to be the host whose guests are quietly spitting out bones.
