Always ask where your Monkfish comes from, Scotland and the South West are the favourite landing ports here in the UK.
Scottish fishermen tend to leave the flaps on so you sometimes end up paying for waste, making it seem cheaper than the fully trimmed Monk from the South West (the flaps can weigh as much as 15 % of the total fillet weight).
Head-on
Never ask for ‘head-on’ unless you need it for a display as it is quite large and apart from the cheeks is again unusable and makes the fish very expensive.
Skinned
Always ask for Monk Fillet to be skinned and demembraned as some suppliers will leave the membrane on.
Fillet
Monk is easy to fillet as it comes from the shark family and has a cartilage type bone structure with no fiddly pin bones.
Pin bones
If your fillet has pin bones then it probably is not Monk but a similar specie from China or New Zealand called Star Gazer which would have arrived in the UK frozen.
