Time: 1 Hour

Ingredient Availability: 5/5

Difficulty: 1/5

While a fish sandwich, whether it be in McDonalds Fillet-O-Fish form or Po-boy form, is nothing out of the ordinary, a catfish sandwich is something new to me. People close to me know that catfish is my favorite fish, so this recipe is up my alley. A lot of people complain about the flavor of catfish, but I quite enjoy a fish with a unique flavor, while most other mainstream fish outside of tuna and salmon don’t taste much different from each other. Instead of getting dedicated rolls to make these sandwiches, I just used some sandwich bread I already had. The main things I’ll be analyzing here are the fish and the tartar sauce.

Key Ingredients and Omissions:

None of the key ingredients in this recipe were left out. As mentioned, I didn’t use white bread rolls for my sandwiches, which I won’t hold against the sandwich as a whole. I also skipped the lettuce and obviously the hot sauce.

1. The catfish I bought was fresh, never frozen fish from Mississippi. My first choice honestly would’ve been a frozen individually packed bag, so I could spread out the use a little easier, but the quality should be better.

2. When looking at the ingredients list before shopping for them, I somehow missed the dill. I found that thyme, rosemary, and fennel are good substitutes, so I used a little of both rosemary and thyme along with some fennel seeds in the tartar sauce.

Tools:

• Dutch oven/large pot or deep frier

• Fry/candy thermometer

Cooking Review:

Making Tartar Sauce: 12 minutes

This step is very easy and straight forward. After chopping the pickles, I mixed all the required ingredients except for salt and pepper. Once mixed, then season with salt and pepper to taste. I actually seasoned with salt and pepper before and after mixing.

Coating the fish: 18 minutes

After setting up three bowls, one with just flour, another with a beaten and seasoned egg, and one with cornmeal and cayenne pepper, I coated each piece of fish (which I had cut in half) in that order. I let them sit while my frying oil came up to temperature.

Frying: 22 minutes

The frying step is pretty quick and straight forward. Once the oil was hot, I added two pieces of fish at a time and let them cook for 3-4 minutes on side one before flipping to cook for another minute or two. This is one of the few recipes where they frying time is pretty accurate. It’s pretty easy to get it right on fish, which cooks pretty quickly. I ended up having 4 batches to fry in total. Once all the pieces were done, I put some tartar sauce on two pieces of bread and put a fillet in between for me to eat.

Analysis:

Off the bat, I noticed how interesting the sauce was. I think the sweetness of the bread and butter pickles really help the tartar sauce stand out. Despite not having the dill, I think the fennel, rosemary, and thyme I added were a good substitute. Overall, I really liked the sauce. It could’ve used a little more acidity, though. The fish was very soft, but enclosed in a crisp shell of cornmeal. The only flavor I could really detect from the fish was the fish itself. As I said, I don’t mind the flavor of catfish, but it could’ve used more seasoning. In the sandwich with the bread and tartar sauce, it kinda works out, as you mostly get tartar sauce and fish flavor. However, if you wanted to eat the fish on its own, it’d be pretty bland and get boring fairly quickly. To make a long story short, the sandwich is pretty solid and deserves a 7/10. I think if the fish had some additional flavors that played off of the tartar sauce, this could’ve had a better score. If I were just rating the fish alone, the score would be lower.