How to Make Grilled Catfish

Dan Hernandez: Standing next to me is Lucas Espinoza and he’s one of the cooks here, actually chef here at Berth 55 Seafood Restaurant in Long Beach. Now it’s located right next to Long Beach sport fishing. For you old timers, you’ll remember Queen’s Wharf, the same place. And what Lucas going to do for us today is a catfish. Now this catfish is brought in from Louisiana, already gill and gutted and it’s already opened up and stuff so it’s a great piece of fish.

And what he’s going to do today is show us especially what they have here where they actually would open the fish all the way up here.

Lucas Espinoza: Yes. We split on like a butterfly.

Dan Hernandez: Butterfly the fish.

Lucas Espinoza: Got it, right through.

Dan Hernandez: So compared with the traditional catfish where they plain and skin it --

Lucas Espinoza: Yes.

Dan Hernandez: They do it in different of types of fish.

Lucas Espinoza: Now we have to use a hammer and cut the head off. There you go.

Dan Hernandez: But once you’ve cleaned it all up, then you go ahead and add the spices to it.

Lucas Espinoza: Yes.

Dan Hernandez: Okay. We’ll go ahead and put it on the grill real quick.

Lucas Hernandez: Okay.

Dan Hernandez: It looks good. Okay Luke, you’ve already cut the fish wide open for us and this is what you call butterflied style?

Lucas Espinoza: Butterfly style, yeah.

Dan Hernandez: Okay, what do we need to do this in the grill?

Lucas Espinoza: We just need to put in the grill, put all the spices on it.

Dan Hernandez: So we put the spices on it first and then we put the butter on it or –

Lucas Espinoza: No, we’ll put it on the grill first this way. Then we put some butter. Okay. Not too much butter. Then we got the spices on it, okay.

Dan Hernandez: And this is your barbecue spicing?

Lucas Espinoza: Yes, barbecue spices.

Dan Hernandez: And this is a private one that you have all mixed in it.

Lucas Espinoza: Yes sir, then we have some pepper. Okay. Then we’ll cover it for about five minutes then we turn it over.

Dan Hernandez: So we actually put the cover on it?

Lucas Espinoza: Yes.

Dan Hernandez: And how long do you sit – five minutes?

Lucas Espinoza: Well, five minutes.

Dan Hernandez: Just like that?

Lucas Espinoza: Aha, just like that.

Dan Hernandez: And what does the cover do?

Lucas Espinoza: That keeps all the steam in there and the spices too.

Dan Hernandez: Okay while Luke is butterfly the catfish, it’s really all done, we got it right here and you go ahead and taste it and noticed we have cocktail sauce.

Lucas Espinoza: Cocktail sauce and some salsa.

Dan Hernandez: We have some limes and lemons and some stuff. Well I’m going to try a little piece of it.

Lucas Espinoza: Okay.

Dan Hernandez: It’s catfish.

Lucas Espinoza: That’s delicious, fair enough.

Dan Hernandez: I’d never had catfish before, this is delicious.