Valorization of Filleting Waste of Epinephelus chlorostigma from Fish Freezing Industry for the Development of Value Added Edible Product

Fish and fishery products are rich in protein. With the growing world population and increase in awareness on health benefits of fish consumption, there is an ever increasing demand for high quality fish protein diets and this could also be met through maximum utilization of fishery resources. In practice, fish is preserved by different methods like freezing, canning, salting etc. The preparation steps like dressing and filleting for almost all the processing methods are inevitable and remains same. Particularly, larger fishes are filleted, frozen and cold stored till they are sold out in domestic or international market. As a result of filleting, about 50% of the weight of the total raw material weight is lost in the form of waste and usually discarded. The filleting waste includes fish frame along with head and internal organs containing a bulk amount of meat (attached with frames and head) which may be made edible by recovering (Kim et al., 1996).