What To Do With This Collar?

Over the past several seasons, the sport boats have been including the collar of your fish when they clean your catch. Most folks that I know simply discard this delectable part of the fish as they just don’t know what to do with it.

The collar contains some of the most delicious, tender portions of meat that you will find on the fish. It definitely isn’t the most pretty or appealing part, but with some quick fixing, it is some of the best. For the full story on where these particular yellowfin came from, check out the full report here.

Preparing The Collar

For preparation, I like to be sure to clean any straggling parts that may still be attached to the fish. This could include blood lines, gills, etc. As I mentioned, though this is a prized part of the fish, most folks simply toss it.

Once I get the fished cleaned up nicely, I will open it up and give it a slice down the middle. This will open it up similar to a chicken.

Once I make the slice, it should sit open and look a little more presentable.

As you can see in this photo, there is a ton of meat still left in this section. These were collars off of roughly 15 pound fish, so not huge by any means.

The Marinade

At this point I will begin my marinade. For this particular recipe, I chose Kikkoman Teriyaki Baste & Glaze. This one is the Honey & Pineapple flavored sauce. This is a thick sauce that works well for this recipe. I also like the Soy Vay – Veri Veri Teriyaki as you may have seen in some of my previous recipes.

What I like to do is stick my fish into a 1 gallon ZipLock bag to process my marinade. If you do this a lot, and I do, you can find some good bulk buys on Amazon for the 1 gallon ZipLock bags.

As I had mentioned, this sauce is pretty thick. I used about 1/3 of the bottle and about 1/2 cup of water in the bag. Once all of the ingredients are in the bag, give it a couple of good shakes and massage it in a bit. Tip– be sure that you don’t have any holes in your bag. Your spouse wouldn’t appreciate the mess, and it’s pretty darn sticky to boot.

I like to give my fish as much time as I can to marinade fully. But just giving it a good coat of the sauce is fine as well if you happen to be limited on time.

The Grill

Go ahead and fire up your grill about 15 minutes prior to cooking. Get it nice and hot.

Now that you have given your fish some time to soak up the flavors, I lay the fish on the grill skin side down for cooking. For thicker cuts, I will give the skin side down a good 10 minute or so. Then I’ll get out and give them a quick flip. Be careful as this fish is very tender and will already most likely be falling off the skin at this point.

I give that second side a quick grilling, more for grill marks than anything, but a little additional heat is good as well. Probably no more than 5 minutes on the flesh side down.

Dinner Time!

Now that your fish is all cooked up, carefully remove it from the grill and stack it high.

Once you pull your fish off of the grill, you will most likely have some of the most tender fish you have ever eaten. This stuff is just plain delicious.

So the next time you get home and see the collars in your fish cleaning bag, don’t throw them out. Grill them up for some of the best eating fish you will have.

For more recipes and fishing trip reports, please be sure to subscribe to Davey’s World.
Happy eating!
Davey

What To Do With This Collar? – Quick Recipe