Kentucky Fried Catfish Recipe

Hi, I am Betty, welcome to Betty’s Kitchen. Today we are making Kentucky Fried Catfish and I am going to get started by showing you what I have done. With the catfish that I bought at my store, I just got a pre-packaged version of catfish. And since we are going to just made today, I didn’t want a whole lot. So I have about three or four fillets here. And these have been soaking in milk for about an hour and also after that, they have been sitting out on the counter for about one minute to get them up to room temperature. And this is what they look like. I will just kind of dig in here and show you how they look.

This milk has the purpose of getting them good and moist and also it takes away some of the fishy flavor. So I am just going to go over here at the sink and drained that milk away, we don’t need it other than for its purpose that is already occurred. So we will just let those drain a bit, all I go to do something else. But my hands need to be washed. Never have a dish towel when I need it. So I got my fillets here and I just kind of draining a bit which is fine. We don’t have to be particularly wet or dry, just drain.

I am going to mix up a blend that is going to be the coating mix that we are going to use for our Kentucky Fried Catfish. And the main thing is going to be corn meal, so I have one cup of corn meal that I have measured out right here. And to that I am going to add some nice spices. This is going to be flavorful but it is not going to be over flavored. This is seasoned salt, give any brand that you like and you will need 1/2 tablespoons. I am just going to put that in since I know this are going to be mixed together and it would be a simple way to do it. And save on some dishes, then we have ground black pepper and I need one teaspoon of that.

You will see that these look peppery a little bit on the coating. And then just sprinkle it along here, we have onion powder. I need 1/4 teaspoon of onion powder, there we go and then the last thing for this mix is garlic powder. 1/4 teaspoon of garlic powder, now I put it in this measuring cup that was kind of tall and I got a nice teaspoon. So I could just do this around. I am not ready to fry yet that is not the part of this mixture, but when you get this mixed around. Just put it in a flat dish. Something like a Pyrex dish I think would be good because you are going to be coating your fillets. And you want them to be able lie down in this coating so just go ahead and put it some more like that. Maybe even an elongated dish or tray or something might be nice.

Just spread that out so it is ready to receive some catfish fillets. Now I what I need to do is take care of my oil. I have it over here already and I didn’t set my jar out but I have a large jar of peanut oil. And I used enough to make this about an inch off in my arm skillet, two or an inch and a half and a heavy skillet. And you are going to fry this on the stove. Now you could use a big fryer if you want too but the method that I am showing here is going to be on the stove. Because we done a bunch of deep fried stuff already. Now, don’t think we haven’t done anything like this.

So I am going to turn this on and it needs to get to the temperature of about 350 and I do have my thermometer right here. It is handy slash deep fry thermometer, so I will just keep checking to see even this is about ready. And then we will come back and coat our fillets and just dip them into our hot oil and they will fry them in no time at all. We will have catfish.

I am ready to start frying the catfish, not think that might get so I am going to take my jacket off. And show you where we go from here, your catfish fillets are drained, you need to salt them so the salt was sitting there. This is just salt. Take 1/2 teaspoon and sprinkle it over all of your fillets. I have three fillets so that is about right for three. And I am keeping an eye on the oil. It’s hot that it is not quite 350 degrees yet. And I will probably put this in with it a low of that because I don’t want to have it smoking or to burn anything. So just get this salted up and maybe rub it in a little bit, you can— then it is ready to take a fillet. And just coat it completely and roll it if you want too so it gets into every crevasse that might be there.

And I think I will turn this up just a little bit. And I am going to sprinkle just a little bit of corn meal into the hot peanut oil to see if it looks like it is going to cook. I think that will be fine, now this probably low— of rout really would have the maximum benefit that I am going to very easily and gently put this in. And let that stir frying, I will put one more fish in and just did two for you. I am kind of sure rest up later but again not to just cover this completely. Get in to all of those cracks and crannies. Wait for your corn meal mix because you want a nice coating and that milk provides a base for it is going to stick to.

But you got to let it work in and try to get it in there. There goes the second one and really I don’t have room for more. Because that is frying up really close to the top, you want to be a large skillet for doing this. I think I will turn it down just a bit because it is your frying nicely probably as you go away. And when they are beginning to get done, I will come back and show you how to check the ganmas. I am ready to take out my catfish if you prepare a raft like this if you have one over paper towel. That is good, if you don’t have that just put it directly on the paper towel.

Now when your catfish starts bubbling or quite a lot of it has stop, may begin to float up to the top and they are done. And you can— also kind of tell by the mask brown coating when they are done. So I am going to side it going to this blunt and lift it up, try to doing this much of the oil back into the skillet as you can. And then it goes right here, isn't that lovely? And then the other one I have to fix for you, right here and there we have the two that I have made while you are watching. Now I am going to finish up here because I have three and then I will come back and serve this up to you.

I just got my third fillet out of the stove and just got done. And I did mean to tell you that I cooked this for three to four minutes on each side. And you just need to turn it once, if you want— so you can turn it a second time if you want a little browner on one side. But we are ready to serve it this up, so let me just go for this right here in the middle. And you need some kind of flat spatula like this and then I am cutting off like I have already prepared. And it has some things that you have seen recently, you know I did a cheeseburger and fries casserole. And I have all of these waffle fries leftover so I will just fry them up in a deep fryer this morning.

So you have seen those but that is not I want to show you. You’ve seen this which is our company coleslaw. It is just a little different take on coleslaw, if you want to use it with this dinner. And then we have our nice piece of catfish and this is Kentucky Fried Catfish so I am putting this over here with my display. I have some cheese pie that I made recently and I actually it is being uploaded right now, I am having trouble with the YouTube Uploader. So I don’t know if you will see it today or not but tomorrow or the next day. We will see about that and then of course I always into that with a nice glass of iced tea.