Catfish Cakes

Hey, Jimmy Kennedy with Go outside.

We’re here again on another one of our favorite lakes in northern Vermont. It’s not even Lake Champlain this time. It is hot today. It’s about 90 and it’s August. And it’s hot even for us here in Vermont.

And since it’s August, it’s also National Catfish Month. And in that regard, I want to show you one of my favorite catfish recipes. It’s going to be catfish cakes. You think of catfish cakes as kind of like a crab cake or any fish cake.

But there’s just something about the white, delicious, flaky meat of this catfish and a few simple ingredients we have. It makes it so, so, so good. You’ll you’ll see. And if you have seen me in our video, you probably know catfish has been a huge part of my life.

I’ve been either or catching, cooking, eating and selling catfish for as long as I can remember. And looking forward to see what comes next and some some more great recipes. We’ll get to it. Let’s get some farm-raised catfish straight from Mississippi.

And this is a little rub we made up. Probably put the recipe right on the website. And the National Catfish Month came about largely in part due to the or mainly due to the farm-raised catfish industry in the south.

It’s been a huge boost to the economy and it’s been a great food source, healthy food source for people all over United States and even the world. And I know I enjoy eating this as a kid. I had this on the table two or three times a week easily.

And it’s still my favorite fish to cook with and to eat. I have some close seconds. But this is still a number one. So what I’ve done, I put a little Old Bay and a little bit of our rub. Next ingredients in here.

I have mayo, Dijon mustard and a couple of eggs. We just went out and exact amounts to be on the website. But you’ll be able to eyeball this after you’ve done it a few times. You’re just trying to get a little mixture ready for this thing.

And you can use salt, pepper, whatever you want. It’s all good. Make it your own, whatever you like. Some Worchestershire. I love that stuff. We got that mixed up.

The next thing we got to do is cook the catfish and you can grill this. You can bake it, broil it, whatever you want to do. It doesn’t matter. Once you cook it. We’re going to cool it a little bit and then we’ll mix it and form it into cakes and cook it.

So let’s set that aside and we’ll get the cooking this stuff. You can use oil for this or butter. We got some Cabot salted butter and stuff. So tasty. Just going to heat that up good and hot.
The catfish, is only going to take a few minutes to cook.

Once it’s cooked like I said, we’ll just sit inside and flake it, let it cool a bit add it to our mixture and form it into cakes.

They’re good to go. All right. Catfish is nice and done. I love cooking in the cast iron, but like I said, you can grill it, broil it, bake it, whatever you want to

do. Poach it.

Okay. Yeah, sounds pretty good. Turn that off a minute. All we do now is just flake this up and just get it nice and broken up. Will make us some catfish cakes. Smells really good, too. I like to let this cool a little bit because you put the mayonnaise and mustard in it right now, it’s

going to it’s going to be a little much. So I’m going to set this aside and come back to this in just a couple of minutes. Right. Looking good. OK, this is cool down a little bit. It doesn’t take much.

It cools pretty quick. Now we’re going to add our mixture from before mayonnaise, mustard and eggs, a little bit of old bay, some Worcestershire. Get all that stuff in there. Set up a spoon. it’s going to look really wet, but it’s still kind of warm too .

Mix it up really well and then we put in some panko, and these are a panko breadcrumbs. You can use straight up breadcrumbs, you can use corn flakes are really good, crushed up saltines, anything like that. It’s going to just kind of give it a little bit of a binder.

Put those in. Oh, yes. Tightens it right up. And then what I’m going to do is I’m going to set this into Grizzly and the cooler. We got a few bags of ice and we’re going to let this cool down, really cool down, and then we can form it in the cakes and cook it up.

It’s a few different steps here, but this is a great, great recipe. And it really didn’t take that long either. Just have to let it cool and then you go about something else. All right. So this is nice and cool.

We formed a couple of cakes and all you do is you just kind of work it with your hands. Work it. Work it. Go get your hands dirty. Make pretty little cakes like that right there. You can also make really small ones, too.

These are like appetizers, you know, if you want to do that. These are like dinner size. And I want to make three of these and see the rest for later. And then all we do is just we’re pan frying this in the same cast iron pan.

I mean, the fish is already cooked and then take long. You just want to brown it and you’ll see these things are super great. All right. All right, we got a nice high heat pan– same pan that we cook the catfish in.

Go back in with these catfish cakes.

These things are smelling so good already. Like I said, this fish is already cooked. So all we’re doing is brown and that’s on both sides. Then we’ll plate them up. Once you’re done, you can use cocktail sauce, tartar sauce, romelade sauce, anything you want on these.

And they really don’t need much. One of my favorites is the Squirt a Lemon and some some chili oil, like that. But use your imagination. That’s all it is to it right there, folks, beautiful catfish cakes a little squirt, a lemon on there, put a little

bit of chili oil. Need to try this at home. The recipe is on the website, and I think you got like these. Use any fish you like– catfish is my favorite. But you can use anything you like, any fish, even salmon.

It’s all good. Enjoy. Go outside. Time for the good part now to enjoy these. And like I said, you can use anything you own in your romelade or cocktail sauce. It’s a little chili. All a little bit of lemon.

And we will enjoy these great catfish cakes in honor of National Catfish Month. But like I said, also, you can use any fish you want, but catfish is highly recommended.