Except for some of those grotesque fish that live in the very depths of the ocean, a catfish has got to be one of the ugliest fish in the world. When I lived in Idaho, no one ever ate a catfish. We fished for trout, which are (as fish go) a beautiful fish. Catfish are pretty much a southern custom, although they are found just about everywhere. Not only are they ugly, they are horrible to clean and cook. I well remember my first experience with cooking catfish. I was 19, newly married, and my husband had told me that catfish were good to eat. After a long day of fishing, we came home and he set about cleaning the fish. Those catfish were not even DEAD yet ! ! (they had been out of water for hours by then, and any other fish would have long since died .) While the catfish laid there and gulped for air, my husband took a big hunting knife and hacked off their heads. The heads laid there and gulped for air. I could not even watch anymore, so I left the room until he said that the fish were all cleaned and fileted, and ready to flour and put into the frying pan. I am not kidding about this.......when I put the catfish filets in that frying pan, they were squirming and flopping around ! ! That is when I screamed and ran out of the kitchen. It was years and years before I would even THINK about eating a catfish after that ............
They sure taste good though. I hadn't actually tasted a catfish until I moved to the Rio Grande Valley of Texas, but I had them several times during the years that I lived there. Many years ago, before Algore invented the Internet, I ran a computer BBS. Another of the local BBSs was run by a children's home, and I learned that the same children's home ran a restaurant, where they employed several of the kids who had graduated from the home, turning eighteen, as well as some of those who were under eighteen, on a part-time basis, which was an interesting thing for a children's home to do. The children's home was far out of town, and on the way to nowhere in particular, and their restaurant was adjacent to it, yet it was always busy, and their main dish was catfish.
Catfish are so wonderfully good! As many catfish as Ken and I have caught, cleaned and eaten without them squirming and flopping in the pan I can't imagine them doing that, though they do tend to flop and "talk" while being cleaned. Are you sure you weren't frying frog legs?
When I was extremely young, we lived dead on the Mississippi River. One of our neighbors, an older lady, was on the bank one morning and she had a squirmy burlap bag in her hand. I asked what she was doing with it and she told me she was "Cat Fishing." I told her I always used stink bait and left it at that and went into the house. It was about 3 or 4 years later that I figured out what her version of cat fishing really was. Every now and then though, my wife and I do fry up a few fish. We bought a "fry daddy" and now I can do the restaurant thing that I am used to. My wife likes to pan fry but I use the deep oil method with spicy corn flour. Personally, I think she's a tad shaky with the hot fryer so she let's me think it's a man thing and I let her do her pan thing because it's probably the way her mom did it. Either way, diversity is almost always good, at least that's what she told me, so I believe it sometimes and all the time when she's looking. By the bye.......I still use stink bait, and I may have just stepped in it.
There was a closed restaurant across the street from the Seattle Rescue Mission in Seattle, Wa. One of the things I dearly wanted to do was to open the restaurant and give the guys who were close to graduating the programs at the mission a small job to train them to work in restaurants. I didn't have the wherewithal to do it in the end. The mission was doing well but they couldn't really see the validity in owning a small cafe that would do what I explained. It's a shame really because it would have given something to new, clean homeless folks who needed a little training to get a job. And, especially because the main product in Seattle was Salmon, and I wanted to do a southern/ Cajun theme including fried catfish.
I have never been much of a fish eater except for red snapper but here in good ol' Thailand, I was having a few (perhaps more than a few) beers with some of my Thai friends and I mentioned that I was a bit hungry. A few minutes later one of my friends hoped up and went to a food vendor and came back with the ugliest catfish in the world. It has been fried whole on a charcoal stove and served on a big stick.that went through the head and out the tail. I figured I'd have one bite out of respect but I devoured that thing and when I was finished there were only bones, skull and tail left. It was delicious! Out of respect for Yvonne, I will not go out and take a picture...no sense making a friend queezy!
I tend to do both--deep fry and pan fry. It all depends on exactly how much fish I plan to fry at the time. If it's just a pan sized amount then that's where it goes; but, most times, it's considerably more than that and it gets deep fried. Overall, I think I like it deep fried best. Right along with the home fries and the hushpuppies. And I tend to mix me up a nice batch of cole slaw in between the dropping in and taking out of the fried goodies. You can't beat it with a stick.
Ugh, I hate catfish too. In all my life, I have only tried to eat catfish once. Tried is the word, as the damned thing didn't want to die even after staying without water for hours. Given that I couldn't find it in me to flat-out murder it, and because I thought that it had won its right to live by resisting for that long, I let it free in the nearest river. Needless to say that people fishing there were looking at me like a lunatic after seeing what I had just done with the fish. As for their appearance, I don't mind them being ugly.
I have never met a catfish....dead or alive. I did find a video on how to remove the muddy taste from a catfish.
I like catfish okay but would rather have other kinds. I always use the deep fryer. I coat the fish with corn meal mix rather than plain cornmeal. Sometimes adding some spices but usually not.
This Fried Cat Fish Dinner from the other nite was pretty yummy. Tonight has Candied Salmon on the menu.
YES.......one of my favorite. Never had candied salmon though. I can't even imagine how it would taste.
I love catfish. When I worked with Los Fresnos EMS, I always liked covering for Port Isabel EMS on Fridays because there was a restaurant there that had an all-you-can-eat fish fry on Friday. While it included other types of fish as well, the catfish was my favorite. I never heard of candied salmon, however.