Buying a whole salmon

I was out food shopping one day, cruising through the fish department, and ran into an entire whole wild salmon for sale.  Hum.  I stood there looking at it, comparing it to the filleted salmon right next to it, and the price difference of each item.   The whole fish was $3.00 per pound cheaper than the fish that was already filleted. Wouldn't you seriously consider it for that kind of savings?  Or is it just me? 

I had some experience in filleting a fish many years ago and found out how difficult it was, so I really had to think about this.  Yikes, did I really want to get myself into that situation again?  In the end I could not pass up the savings and bought the whole fish.  I brought it home and begged my husband help me fillet it! 

I've gotta tell you it was a little overwhelming. And you have to have to certain amount of strength to cut through it all, and that's where my husband came in. He has the brawn, and I have the technique.  Between the both of us, we took turns at the fish.  It took a while :)  He cracked through the backbone so we could cut it down the center. 

Then we had to fillet the fish off the backbone, which is the most difficult part, and you can lose a lot of fish if you are not careful.  Then I starting pulling out the bones, and finally we cut it up into serving size pieces. 

In the end we ended up with 9 meals from this fish and since it cost me just under $42.00 which averages out to $4.66 per meal, which is $2.33 per serving. For wild salmon!  I am thrilled.  I can't believe that we get to eat wild salmon for this prices. 

I put the servings in zip lock bags and put them in the freezer. Now I simply pull out  a bag, put in a bowl of cold water to defrost, and its ready to make for dinner.  

There is no way on earth I will ever find that deal again but now I am so happy I decided to tackle it.  It just means keeping your eyes open and being open to something that is a little more work than you'd like.   With the prices of food these days I am willing to do a little more work to get the savings. 

I hope this will inspire you to go out and find a deal and tackle it.  Good luck!