I know a lot of people don’t like Catfish, but I don’t get why

Time: 50 minutes

Ingredient availability: 5/5

Difficulty: 1/5

Catfish is my favorite white fish and I don’t think I’ve had it any other way besides fried. I’m always open to a new recipe that might become my go to, so I decided to give this one a try. I’ll be comparing it in my mind to the catfish from Snoop Dogg’s catfish sandwich. I think this one should have a chance at being a better recipe overall, as there’s no bread to dampen the flavors. Let’s find out.

Key Ingredients & Omissions:

The only change I made, if it counts as a change, is replacing the catfish filets with ‘whole’ catfish. I only did this to save a little money, as the filets were $3/lb more expensive. Other than that, everything here is very easy to find. I don’t think anything should be left out.

Cooking Review:

Mixing and applying cornmeal coating: 20 minutes

This is extremely simple. Just combine all of the ingredients besides the oil and fish until well combined then evenly coat each piece of fish in that mixture. Once this was done, I set each piece of fish on a baking sheet so they’d be ready to drop into the oil, which I had preheating this whole time.

Frying: 30 minutes (6 batches)

The downside of getting ‘whole’ catfish instead of filets, besides the bones, is that they take up a lot of space in a skillet, so I could only cook one at a time. Each piece took about 5-6 minutes to cook and reach a minimum of 145 degrees. While the fish cooked, I went ahead and combined the remaining cayenne pepper and msg, which was sprinkled over the top of the fish once removed from the oil.

Analysis:

Honestly, this recipe was pretty disappointing. I kinda knew that the one teaspoon of salt wasn’t going to be enough, even with the addition of msg. The lack of salt resulted in very light and muted flavors. The main thing I could taste was the fish, which while isn’t exactly a bad thing since I like how catfish tastes, it just makes the 50 minutes prior seem kinda pointless. If I wanted just the taste of catfish, I could’ve baked the fish with a little salt and had something arguably more enjoyable. Now, I will say that I did enjoy the crispiness of the fish, which I probably couldn’t match in the oven. Other than that, there’s a little hat from the cayenne on top. That’s about it. The breading mixture just doesn’t add much beyond a crisp exterior. I think with perhaps a tablespoon of salt this would’ve been more impressive. As is, this recipe gets a 6/10 to me. It’s not inedible by any means or bad. It just does very little to take the ingredients and make something better than you might think they could be. That’s what a good recipe is to me.