Dear Friends
I had bought a bag of white fish fillets, I don’t even remember what kind. I poached one and it was disgusting: too oily, chewy, full of merciless bones. Yuck. I couldn’t eat it. 

Since I had crammed my freezer full of these, I decided to make a fish stock this morning and use up the lot. All the fish whole, including bones and skins, carrots, celery, onions, parsnips, bay leaves, bouquet garni, some white wine, dill.

I plan to simmer it for about five hours to dissolve the fish cartilage and then sieve it through cheesecloth, put it in the fridge overnight. My hope is that it will have a nice gelled consistency from the dissolved fish bones.

My only concern is the too oily, too fishy taste. I thought I might try making a consumme tomorrow. By adding two egg whites and a shell to the clear soup, simmering it and then filtering it one more time through cheesecloth.

To finish: a little lemon juice, a little dry sherry.

BUT I’d love to hear what other people have done with a too-fishy fish. Has anyone made a classic stock/consomme?

Shokat

Was it whole fish or fish fillets?  I’ve made stock out of the skin, bones, etc…

I don’t have much advice aside from serving the fish with plenty of acid and plenty of salt.  The acid is particularly good at offsetting an overly fishy taste.  Sometimes we use wine, lemon juice or tomatoes.  You could try a version of Snapper Veracruz, which is served with a somewhat spicy tomato and chile topping.  It takes a strong fish to stand up to that.

Reporting back to you:
I made the stock yesterday and this morning tasted it. Wonderful! But very strong taste indeed. I’m going to try some russian soup recipes: which have intense flavors with dill pickle, caper, onion, white wine, lemon juice, as well as tomatoes.

I was surprised that after 6 1/2 hours of simmering and overnight cooling the bones hadn’t dissolved into a gelatin. When I make chicken stock I have a nice gelled texture after overnight refrigeration. Hmmm!

To answer the question about the fish: I used whole with head and tail and guts removed, but skin and bones as well as fillets.

Shokat, This sounds like a good candidate for a bisque or cream soup. Milk or cream would temper the fishiness. The Way to Cook(J. Child) has several good chowders, bisques and a cream soup that is thickened with rice(no real cream) that would make good use of your stock.