15 min., baking 25 min.
Crispy grilled catfish - a recipe that leaves no one indifferent. I had read that this is how catfish is cooked in the southern part of the United States. Almost all their recipes use peeled catfish. I myself have never tried peeling the skin of a catfish, but it turns out that it is not so difficult.
INGREDIENTS
- 1 catfish (less than 1 kg)
- 50 g. melted butter
- 4 tbsp. ground breadcrumbs
- salt, ground pepper mixture
- a mixture of dried chopped vegetables (carrots, celery, onions, etc.)
ORDER
The skin of the catfish is very slippery and it is best to use small tongs to hook it, which my husband lent me from his toolbox. When you peel the skin off the catfish, you can see how nice and pink the flesh is.
So, first I skinned the catfish. I used a sharp knife to lightly cut into the skin around the catfish's head and tried to peel off a small piece of skin. I squeezed that edge of the skin firmly with the working forceps and held the fish firmly while peeling the skin.
The skin peels easily enough and very cleanly, but it takes a lot of strength to hold the fish with one hand, because it is slippery, and with the other hand to peel the skin firmly with the tongs. The catfish came out of the skin after about five minutes of work.
I then removed the catfish's head and washed it and dried it well with a paper towel.
I mixed the dried fish with chopped dried vegetables, salt and pepper.
I melted the butter and spread it well over the catfish.
I sprinkled the breadcrumb mixture over the buttered catfish. I tried to get as much breadcrumbs as possible to stick to the catfish by pressing them against the meat with my hands.
I placed the fish in a grill on hot coals over direct heat. Make sure that the tail is in the lower heat zone and the rest of the fish is in the hotter zone of the grill. I cooked the fish for 10 minutes on each side.
When the fish was done, I moved it away from the coals so that it was next to the coals instead of above them and let it cook completely for another 5 minutes with the lid of the grill on.
Once the fish was cooked, I put it on a plate and the flesh separated easily from the bone. The fish was served with an autumn salad made from the last of the local tomatoes.
Delicious!
P.S. You can also cook catfish like this in your home oven, the flesh is juicy and separates from the bone very easily.
Recipe source.
