How to Clean and Make Sun-dried Tilapia

How to Clean and Make Sun-dried (“Dinaing” or “Pinindar”) Tilapia

Although our fish farm is used predominantly to raise bangus and white prawns (p. vannamei), we do devote a small part of the farm to growing organic tilapia.

Newly caught tilapia

All male tilapia which grow bigger

 In my early years of fish farming (2006-2007), we bought a batch of molobicus tilapia fingerlings (5,000 pieces) from a supplier in Nueva Ecija at the Central Luzon State University. It’s a hybrid tilapia (cross between O. mossambicus and O. niloticus) that thrives or adapts well in brackishwater ponds (that is, it is saline tolerant). The molobicus when grown in brackishwater is said to taste better, grows faster and bigger, with higher quality flesh.

At that time, we also bought a new batch of niloticus. We were told that customers then were still unfamiliar with molobicus. With dark skin they may be mistaken for wild tilapia and shunned by customers. Being new to fish farming, we went ahead and  bought 5,000 pieces of niloticus (which have lighter colored skin). Over the years, they crossbred and we got the tilapia we have now.
 
From experience we also notice that brackishwater fish farms in our vicinity can’t help but have wild tilapia straying into the bangus ponds. These are often carried by floodwaters from overflowing adjacent freshwater ponds. The body of wild tilapia is colored black (for male) and greyish (for female). Both have reddish color at the tail (caudal fin) and the edge of its back (dorsal) fin. It's notoriously slow-growing but its taste is quite good.

The wild ones also crossbred with our molobicus and Niloticus and we got a  mishmash of tilapia species swimming in our ponds. Needless to say, quality has gone down a bit (in terms of growth rate) due to possible uncontrolled inbreeding, although taste has remained good.

Now we're planning to get a new batch of molobicus tilapia, for better breeding and productivity. We can do this after the end of the current cropping cycle when we totally drain our ponds and take out all the fish including tilapia (for an idea on how to do drain harvesting, click this).  

We’ll sell the market-sized tilapia, transfer the molubicus hybrids (juveniles and fries) and remove the wild ones. The new batch can then improve the breed of the existing hybrids.

We consider tilapia the fish for all seasons. It costs less compared to other fish, tastes really good, can be bought anywhere and anytime, and lends itself to easy cooking of various local tilapia dishes.

In addition, we feed our tilapia mostly with natural feeds (such as "tariktik" or rooted submerged aquatic plants, "lumut" or filamentous grass-green algae, "ipil-ipil" leaves, kangkong leaves), "trigo" (wheat) feeds, rice bran feeds, and some commercial feeds especially a few weeks before harvest.

In this blog post, we’ll show how to clean tilapia. My farm workers were planning to sun dry (“pindar” in Pangasinense) tilapia which they caught together with the bangus, so we’ll show how it’s done from Step 1.

1. Wash the entire tilapia batch to be cleaned to remove grime, other dirt materials on the surface of the fish. 

Newly washed tilapia ready for cleaning/cutting

2. Using scissors, cut off the following for each fish: tail (or caudal) fin, back (dorsal) fin.

Cutting off of back fin

 3. Cut off the pelvic and anal fins (tummy portion) and pectoral fins (at sides).

Cutting off of fins at tummy and sides

4. Cut off a portion of mouth (about a quarter of an inch from the end of the mouth). 

Cutting off part of mouth

Note that the above fins are often removed when tilapia is being cleaned for home consumption. But for other occasions, when presentation is important in the tilapia dish, there is no need to cut off the fins.
 
5. Scrape off the fish scales (“kaliskis) from the body using a sharp knife. Direction of scraping is from tail to head.

Scraping off scales

6. Slice the body of the fish into two at the spine (back or dorsal portion).

Slicing the body from the back or spine portion

7. Once the fish is sliced into two, pry open until butterfly shaped. Remove the guts (stomach and intestines). Remove also the gills (“hasang”).

Removing the guts and gills

8. Soak the gutted fish in a basin containing clean water.

Soaking in basin with water

9. Remove (push using fingernail) the blood attached to the spine or backbone. Note: if not removed, the fish will retain a fishy (“malansa”) odor and will spoil easily.

Removing blood in spine or backbone

10. Remove by hand the skin or tissue inside the upper part of the mouth to remove the source of slime-like oral mucus (so that the fish will not be full of mucus or spittle (“malaway”)).

Removing skin/tissue in mouth

Removing skin/tissue in the upper part of mouth

11. Wash the cleaned out tilapia thoroughly in water. Place in a small plastic basin.

Cleaned out tilapia in a small basin

12. Totally drain the tilapia to completely remove water before salting.

13. Sprinkle with salt. Note: depending on preference, additional spices can be applied like vinegar, pepper, garlic.

14. Spread the tilapia pieces on a large woven tray (“bilao”).

Tilapia in woven trays for sun drying

15. Place the tray (“bilao”) in a place where it can be exposed to direct sun, such as on the roof. In my farm, workers sun dry the tilapia for two days from 10 a.m to 3 p.m, when the sun exposure is as its maximum.  Also, hot sun rays are avoided by the pesky house flies, so no need to cover with nets.

Sun-dried ("pinindar") tilapia

 16. After drying, the sundried tilapia is ready to be fried and served especially for breakfast with fried eggs, and sliced tomatoes, onion, and salted duck egg with hot coffee. Happy eating!

For a complete list of Fish Pond Buddy blog posts on fish farm-related topics, please click the Index page.