Cleaning and Prepping Kingfish (Kanad): From Sea to Kitchen

Kanad is one of the best-eating fish in Kuwaiti waters — but only if you handle it right in the first 30 minutes after the hook. Kingfish (Spanish mackerel) is fast and oily: leave it warm and the flesh softens and the taste turns heavy and fishy. Here is the chain, deck to plate.

Bleed it, ice it, keep it out of the sun

Bleed it straight away: cut the throat or spike it, then cut behind the gills and hold it head-down over the side for a minute or two. Blood left in the muscle is exactly what gives kanad its strong taste.

Then gut it quickly and get it into a cooler — never let it sit on the deck in the Kuwaiti sun, where even 15 minutes softens the flesh. Crushed ice with a little seawater chills faster than block ice and stops the flesh drying out. On a long day, drain the melt water — warm water spoils fish.

Two cleaning methods: gut only, or gill-and-gut

• Gut only: cut from the vent up toward the head and pull out the guts. Fast, and fine if you will cook the fish within a day.
• Gill-and-gut: also cut out the gills. Gills carry bacteria and spoil first, so removing them gives a cleaner-tasting fish that keeps longer.

Either way, scrape the inside of the belly cavity, rinse with clean seawater — save the tap water for the kitchen — then dry the fish with a cloth.

Remove the dark blood line

Open a kanad and you will see a dark red-brown strip running along the spine, inside the flesh. Scrape it out with your thumb or a spoon: it is the biggest source of the strong taste people complain about. Trim away the dark meat along the lateral line too. What is left is firm flesh, white with a reddish tone.

Steaks, fillets, or skin-on for the grill

• Steaks: cut across the body into 2–3 cm pieces. Best for frying and machboos, and the bone adds flavour.
• Fillets: two long pieces off the backbone. Best for grilling and baking.
• Skin-on: leave the skin on for the grill — kanad flesh is soft, and the skin holds it together instead of falling through the grate.

Classic Kuwaiti ways to cook kanad

The favourite is grilled kanad: marinate in garlic, lemon, cumin, coriander and a little oil, then cook over medium coals, skin-side down first. Fried kanad (كنعد مقلي) is seasoned, floured and fried until golden. Kanad machboos cooks the fish with rice, tomato, dried lime (loomi) and spices. Some Gulf households dry or salt kanad so it keeps for the off-season.

Hygiene, storage and safety

• Use a separate board for fish, and wash the board, your hands and the knife with hot soapy water. Gloves cut the smell and keep small cuts away from raw fish.
• Cook kanad to about 63°C; the flesh should flake easily and look opaque.
• Fridge it if you will cook within two days; to freeze, vacuum-seal or water-glaze it and eat within 2–3 months — after that the fat turns.
• Keep the knife edge moving away from your fingers, let the bones guide the blade, and bag scraps for the bin, not the sea.

Before your next trip, check tide times for Shuwaikh and Shuaiba ports and the sea state in the B7R app, and use the seasons section to know when kanad are running. Log the size and date in the catch log, and after a few months your own pattern shows up.

Get B7R free on Google Play: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.q8dm.b7r