Don't Sleep on this Crispy Southern Fried Catfish Recipe (2024)

Catfish is a popular dish of the South and for good reason. Although it can be prepared in a variety of ways, including grilled, frying it in a cornmeal coating is the most traditional. And delicious too. Many recipes for fried catfish exist, but there are very few that can beat a few crispy, hot catfish fillets in a cornmeal crust. Our classic recipe, Southern style, will put dinner on your table in less than 20 minutes. You simply need to find the fillets, as the rest of the ingredients might already be in your pantry and fridge.

If you've been skipping catfish at the fish market, afraid of its muddy taste, don't turn it down again just yet. On the one hand, it is an affordable and nutritious fish, perfect to feed large families. On the other, the taste depends very much on where the fish fed and comes from. Not all catfish will have a muddy taste. Catfish is a bottom feeder, so it indeed eats dirt in the wild, but farmed catfish live in tanks without dirt, so farmed has a brighter flavor and is a fantastic source of nutrition. Most farm-raised catfish in the United States comes fromArkansas, Alabama, Louisiana,and Mississippi. Packed with protein, catfish is also rich in selenium, vitamin B12, and omega 3 and 6 fatty acids. A 3-ounce fillet of raw catfish has barely 100 calories, but 13 grams of protein.

Hush puppies, small onion-flavored cornmeal dumplings, are classic accompaniments for Southern-fried catfish. You can cook them simultaneously for a quick meal, but you are going to need a big frying pan. For a traditional fish fry, serve your fillets and dumplings along withtartar sauce, and coleslaw.