When cooking in the kitchen, you should wash some things, like your cutting board, cookware, and utensils, with warm soapy water.

Others, like fruits, vegetables, and fresh herbs, just need to be rinsed thoroughly to remove bacteria from the dirt (or from handling during harvest and storage before they reached your fridge).

Raw red meat and poultry shouldn’t go anywhere near running water. The only thing you accomplish by rinsing them is spreading harmful bacteria around your kitchen and onto yourself, increasing the risk of cross-contamination and food poisoning.

So where does raw fish stand in all this?

To prepare raw fish for cooking, rinse it under cold running water and then pat it dry. This will reduce the strong, fishy odor that’s typically caused by surface deterioration.

This applies to whole fish and fish fillets, whether freshly caught or store-bought and refrigerated.

“Rinse cleaned whole fish and precut pieces thoroughly in cold running water,” American culinary writer Harold McGee says in Keys to Good Cooking, “scraping away any residual blood or organs from the belly cavity, then blot it dry.”

“Strong fishy smells come mainly from deterioration,” he adds, “and should wash away.”

Considering that, before Keys to Good Cooking, McGee wrote On Food and Cooking, widely regarded as one of the best books ever written on the science and lore of cooking, I trust his expertise.

Why Does Fish Need to Be Rinsed Before Cooking?

Fish are cold-blooded creatures that swim in oceans and rivers, where the average temperature is well below room temperature.

According to The Columbia Encyclopedia, the average temperature of the ocean is 39°F (3.9°C), which is about as cold as the back of the lowest shelf in your refrigerator.

This means that fish taste best when they’re caught and cooked fresh from the water, and start to deteriorate as soon as you put them in your fishing bucket and let them sit.

This also means that fish flesh—due to its enzymes and the surface bacteria that feed on it—will spoil much faster than red meat or poultry, even when refrigerated.

Serious Eats editor Sho Spaeth recommends keeping fish fresh by surrounding it with ice cubes or ice packs when refrigerated. If you research this topic yourself, you’ll find many experts who offer similar advice.

Related: Is Fish Considered Meat?

How to Rinse Raw Fish in the Sink

Raw fish can harbor harmful bacteria and parasites that may cause foodborne illness.

The key to rinsing raw fish for cooking is to do it safely and properly. When rinsing fish, you’re trying to accomplish two things:

First, you want to rinse off any surface residue that has built up on the fish. This residue includes deteriorating proteins and bacterial growth.

Second, you want to do this without splashing that residue all over yourself and your kitchen, along with any harmful bacteria that may be on the surface of the fish.

It’s best to rinse fish in an empty sink under a gentle stream of cold running water, holding it near the bottom of the sink without the two touching (you don’t want to transfer bacteria from your sink to the fish).

Blot the fish with a paper towel that’s sturdy enough not to leave behind bits of paper on the flesh, then carefully place it in a preheated skillet to which you’ve already added a generous amount of olive oil.

Remember to wash your hands and sanitize anything you touched, either by washing with warm soapy water or by wiping down with 70% isopropyl alcohol.

(I prefer to wear disposable gloves when handling raw fish and wash my hands thoroughly afterward.)

What If You Don’t Rinse Fish Before Cooking?

Simply put, you’ll probably end up with fishier-tasting fish!

Fish should smell like the ocean or river it came from. Even fish that live in muddy water shouldn’t have a strong, unpleasant fishy odor.

That fishiness comes from the bacterial growth and deteriorating proteins on the surface of the fish, which you can easily remove with a quick rinse under cold running water.

Nothing terrible will happen if you don’t rinse the fish. But your fish won’t taste as good as it would if you took the time to rinse it.

Final Words

The question “Should you rinse fish to prep it for cooking?” has a clear answer: “Yes, you definitely should.”

Unlike raw red meat and poultry, fish benefits from rinsing because it removes surface residue, reducing the fishy odor and improving its taste.

For food safety reasons, the U.S. Department of Agriculture recommends cooking fish to an internal temperature of 145°F (63°C) as measured by a food thermometer.