ling skin on?

Does anyone ever cook their lings with the skin on? I always fillet my lings with skin off. I think it would be easier to steam, bake or pan cook with skin on since they don't have scales.

They do have scales, they are just extremely tiny, and very difficult to get completely off, but if you pour hot water on the skin, they release. They are very small and feel almost like course dust. I imagine though if you steam the fish, you could easily peal the skin off when it is done. I have baked them in the oven and the skin dries up and comes off easily as one big shell. If you do get a few scales that stay with the meat, they are small enough that you probably won't even notice. Make sure do scale/scrub the fish to get the slime and misc. parasites off.

Good luck

I usually just gut and steak them, skin-on.  They make perfect serving sizes, and the skin keeps the meat really moist and is super easily removed afterwards.