Ingredients
- ¾ cup cornmeal
- ½ flour mixed with ¼ tsp baking powder
- ½ tsp salt
- ½ tsp pepper
- 1 tsp garlic powder
- ½ tsp cayenne pepper
- Catfish fillets (allow at least one 7-9 oz fillet/person)
- Vegetable oil—Enough to put 3 inches in a dutch oven type pan.
Mix the dry ingredients together. The fish should be moist to capture the batter—do not towel dry. Coat the fish evenly in the dry ingredients and drop in the hot oil (360 degrees). Do not overcrowd the pan. The fish will turn golden brown and float to the top when done. Remove and place on absorbent paper—a brown grocery bag topped with paper towels works great. Serve with hush puppies, cornbread and or sweet potato fries!!!
Results
This was my FIRST deep-frying experiment, and turned out pretty well. Chris and I both liked the catfish, but we also bought really fresh catfish from our local coffee shop (this is an AWESOME coffee shop). It wasn't fishy at all. In fact, one might say that the catfish itself didn't have much flavor. It was all in the batter. It was really moist and the texture was excellent.
One challenge I found was that it was really hard to maintain the oil at a constant temperature. It got hot really fast, but then the temperature plummeted when I put the catfish in it. I did them in two batches, and the first batch took about 5-8 minutes to cook, but the second batch took about 2 minutes to cook. It was pretty confusing. Also, my eyes are still burning from the cayenne vaporizing into the air.
1 comment:
I had just bought fish to fry when I saw this on your blog! WEIRD. I might try it with cornmeal now instead of flour (mine isn't super fresh catfish, but it will do).
As for your stove -- is it electric or gas? And how conductive (right word?) is the dutch oven you used? to help with the heat issue, you need something that will hold heat/temp well when you turn it down. I have the same issue when I do russian blini -- pan temp is important to that too.
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