Fried Catfish

Throwing this out there as I was talking with a coworker about the steps required to fry up some catfish. Since I already wrote it all out, I'll put it out here in case anyone else is wanting to try a fish fry! The text is lightly edited from its original format (read: a texting conversation)

Alright so first get your oil set up and to temp. I don't think it matters TOO much what type of oil you use, we tend to either use peanut oil or corn oil, but veg oil or canola oil also works.

Temp differs depending on the breading that you're using, I generally go to about 375F since putting the meat in will drag the temp down to ~350 which is the Goldilocks zone. I would recommend cutting the fish into smaller chunks to make them easier to fry and eat.

Also don't put too much oil in whatever vessel that you're frying in. Idk if you have a gas stove or electric, but a boil over + grease fire is possible if the pot / pan is too full over an open flame. Keep it to half the height of the vessel or less.

Breading for us is always a little different but GENERALLY we have 3 bowls. Flour, then egg wash, then breading. Wipe the fish off and get it as dry as you can, then get it thoroughly coated in flour, transfer to egg wash (probably two or three whole cracked eggs mixed with small amount of either milk or water), make sure its fully coated, then finally transfer to breading bowl and make sure that's FULLY COATED lmao. NO UNCOVERED SPOTS!

The breading stage is where you can get jazzy with it. A good base is just using panco breadcrumbs and some salt, you'll get a very nice super crispy texture that works really well with fish. The one that $wife and I made most recently was a hodgepodge of flour, cornmeal, and like, 7 different spices. I'm going to try using Masa for the breading at some point, I think that would turn out well.

You can't fry the whole amount at once so go in batches, it'll take a different amount of time depending on how small the chunks are. Make sure you let the oil come back up to temp before dropping in a new batch once the old one is done. If you don't, the temp will drop too much and the breading won't be as crispy

If you don't have a thermometer to measure the temperature, there are ways to eyeball it, but I don't know that rule of thumb. That's more of a food youtuber thing, I think.