Hey dudes!
I am Hilah, and welcome to Hilah Cooking.
Today I am gonna show you how to make fried catfish with a cornmeal crust that is the
way my friend Shannon’s dad use to do it whenever he would go fishing and catch catfish
out of the Lake Travis, and they had fish fries, and I don’t if it’s exactly how
he used to do it, but this is my take on it, but that’s the first time I learned how
to love fried catfish, so thanks Shannon and Robin, and here we go.
All right, so I’ve got some catfish filets here, and I’ve cut them up into smaller
pieces.
You want them all to be like maybe an inch wide and however long, so this fatty dude,
I am gonna go ahead and cut him again.
Cut that little fat dude.
Okay, and then I am gonna marinate them for a little while, and in here I’ve got just
some milk with lemon juice, and some fresh parsley chopped up and I am gonna add a little
Tabasco and you could also use buttermilk if you didn't want to use the milk with lemon
juice.
You just give that a little stir, and then just to let it kind of let these soak in here.
Catfish can taste kind of muddy because it’s the bottom feeding fish, so this little soak
with a little bit of acid in there, like lemon juice or something, kind of draws some of
that out, and also adds a nice little flavor under the breading, and I am just gonna let
these sit at room temperature for maybe like 20 minutes, and I’ll get the oil heated
up and stuff, and get everything else ready, but you want to make sure that they’re not
like cold when you put them in that, in the fryer.
Okay, cool, so everything is covered, and we’ll just set this aside for a little while.
All right I got my oil starting to heat up here, and this is my breading mixture.
It’s just cornmeal, cayenne pepper, salt, and black pepper.
If you wanted to add other spices to it you can, but I don’t know I just like it pretty
basic, but a little bit spicy, and also if you want kind of more of a softer crust, you
could add just maybe like a quarter cup of flour, like, regular, old wheat flour to that.
I am going to get my little dish buddies, and you just want to kind of tap off the excess,
throw it in there, and get it pretty well coated, and then set it aside, and we’ll
just let it sit there for another couple of minutes while our oil is finishing up heating,
and just so the crust adheres a little bit better.
All right, so my oil’s heated up.
For fish pieces this size I’ve got it to about 365, and I’m just gonna lay it in
away from me so I don’t accidentally splash 365 degree oil all over myself, and I’ve
just got about a half inch of oil here, and I am starting with the ones that I breaded
first, putting those in, and I think I can fit one more little dude in here comfortably,
and we’ll just give them maybe like two to three minutes on each side and so they
are golden brown.
Okay, it’s been about two minutes, and I can see the golden brownness is starting to
creep up the edges of that first one I put in, so just very delicately flip them over,
and if you need to turn up the heat on your stove to keep the temperature hot, then do
that, just kind of keep a thermometer nearby and check it.
Oh man, these are gone to be good.
All right.
A couple more minutes.
All right, a couple minutes later, and you’ll know they’re done because they start to
kind of float freely off the bottom.
Don’t try to like force them up if they’re sticking a little bit because that means they’re
probably not done and you’re just going to end up pulling all the breading off, so
just whenever they’re kind of being little Free Willys in there it’s time to take them
out, and I am putting them on a rack on top of the paper bag, and anytime you’re frying
stuff, it’s gonna stay crisper if you can keep it a little elevated.
Don’t just put it right on your paper bag or your paper towels.
It will stay crisper longer for something like this where you’re going to have to
end up cooking in batches.
It’s a good idea.
All right.
Let these cool a couple minutes because they’re boiling hot, and then I’m gonna taste test.
Mmmmmm.
Well hello Mista Catfish.
All right, this has been cooling for a few minutes, it’s still like, hot to the bone,
but I am gonna cut, well, I am gonna cut it open and see what the inside looks like.
Ohhh, look at that!
Beautiful, tender, catfish, and I like to put a little bit of lemon on mine, so I’ll
go ahead and do that.
Okay, time to taste.
Mmmmmmm.
Mmmmm!
Mmmmmm.
Good catfish.
That’s yummy!
Wow!
Okay.
Wow!
Hope you guys try this.
This is delicious.
Okay, so if you want tartar sauce with it which is what we would always have when Robin
would cook.
I have good recipe for that on my website if you could check that out, and man!
Yeah, just serve this with some coleslaw and you’ve got a meal made in the shade or by
the lake.
Mmmmmmm!
Thanks for watching, and I will see you guys later.
If you have any questions, leave them in the comments and I will get to them ASAP.