Blue-Sky Catfish Sandwiches with Chow-Chow Tartar Sauce
Cornmeal-crusted catfish on a soft roll with plain cabbage and a tartar sauce built on chow-chow, the mustard-sharp Southern relish that carries the whole sandwich.
The parts that change whether this works tonight.
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- Servings
- 4
- Timing
- 35 minutes
- Equipment
- Not separately declared
- Make-ahead
- Not separately declared
- Holding
- Not separately declared
- Leftovers
- Not separately declared
- Dietary notes
- Not separately declared
- Method map
- 13 ingredient lines · 5 method steps
Pairing
Wine — A cold lager or Riesling. Mixed drink — Gin rickey, no sugar. Teetotaler — Chow-chow lemonade. Fried fish and pickle relish want fizz and acid.
Tools
Cast iron, which holds temperature when four cold fillets hit it at once. A shallow dish for dredging and a rack for draining. A clip-on thermometer if you have one; if not, a pinch of cornmeal and your eyes will do.
Ingredients · swaps in parentheses
Catfish fillets (tilapia or thin cod), buttermilk, fine cornmeal, flour, paprika, kosher salt, neutral oil, soft sandwich rolls, shredded cabbage. Tartar: mayonnaise, chow-chow relish (drained sweet pickle relish plus a pinch of mustard powder), lemon juice, black pepper
Magic
Toast the cornmeal in a dry skillet over medium heat, stirring, until it smells like popcorn and turns a shade darker, then cool it completely before mixing in the flour. Raw cornmeal tastes of starch. Toasted, it tastes of corn, and the crust ends up nutty and sweet in a way that makes the fried coating a flavor instead of a texture. Not feeling brave? Toast half and blend it with the untoasted half.
Gotcha
Catfish fillets are thick, and oil that is too hot burns the cornmeal to bitter black before the center is cooked. Hold the oil around 350°F. A pinch of cornmeal should sizzle steadily on contact, not erupt.
Chow-chow is the component most people outside the American South will not know, and it is worth a paragraph. It is a mustard-and-vinegar pickled relish of chopped cabbage, green tomatoes, onion, and peppers, put up at the end of the growing season to use whatever was left in the garden. Appalachian and Southern kitchens have been making it for generations, and every family recipe differs.
Folding it into mayonnaise gives you a tartar sauce with actual structure: turmeric-yellow, sharp, crunchy, and mustard-forward instead of the sweet beige paste that usually shows up next to fried fish. That sauce is what lets this sandwich get away with a soft bun and no other toppings besides plain cabbage.
Serves: 4
Time: 35 minutes
Ingredients
- 4 catfish fillets, about 5 ounces each
- 1 cup buttermilk
- 3/4 cup fine cornmeal
- 1/4 cup flour
- 1 teaspoon paprika
- 1 teaspoon kosher salt
- Neutral oil, for shallow frying
- 4 soft sandwich rolls
- 2 cups shredded cabbage
Chow-chow tartar
- 1/2 cup mayonnaise
- 1/3 cup finely chopped chow-chow relish, drained
- 1 teaspoon lemon juice
- Black pepper
Method
Where the time goes
- Make the tartar
- 10 minSoak the fish
- Mix the coating
- 3–4 minFry350°F
- Build
- Make the tartar. Stir the mayonnaise, drained chow-chow, lemon juice, and a good grind of black pepper together and refrigerate it while you cook.
- Soak the fish. Cover the catfish with the buttermilk and leave it 10 minutes. Longer is not better here.
- Mix the coating. Combine the cornmeal, flour, paprika, and salt in a shallow dish. For the magic version, toast the cornmeal in a dry skillet and cool it before mixing here. Lift each fillet from the buttermilk, let the excess run off, and press it firmly into the coating on both sides.
- Fry. Heat 1/4 inch of oil in a skillet over medium-high until it reaches about 350°F. Fry the fillets until the crust is crisp and deep gold and the fish is cooked through, 3 to 4 minutes per side. Drain on a rack.
- Build. Spread the rolls generously with tartar, pile on the cabbage, and lay the fish on top. Eat immediately.
How much sauce? Enough to reach every bite. Not enough to require structural engineering.
Ten minutes in buttermilk, not overnight
Buttermilk here is doing one job, which is giving the cornmeal something to grip. It is mildly acidic, so a long soak starts to break down the surface of the fish and leaves it soft and slightly mealy once fried. Catfish has a delicate texture to begin with and does not need the help.
Let the excess drip off before dredging. A fillet carrying a thick coat of buttermilk into the cornmeal makes a heavy, pasty crust that slides off in the pan as a single sheet, usually at the worst moment.
Fine cornmeal, not medium, not coarse
Fine grind packs tightly against the fish and forms a thin compact shell that stays attached. Coarse cornmeal leaves gaps, absorbs more oil, and tends to shed. The quarter cup of flour is there as glue, since flour hydrates and gets slightly tacky where cornmeal alone stays granular.
Press the coating on rather than dusting it. You want it adhered under a bit of pressure, and then you want the coated fillet to sit for a minute before it hits the oil so the surface can set.
Oil temperature is the entire fry
Too cool and the crust drinks oil and comes out heavy. Too hot and the cornmeal scorches while the middle of a five-ounce fillet is still cold. Three hundred and fifty degrees is the target, and cast iron holds it far better than a thin pan when four cold pieces of fish go in at once.
Fry two at a time. Crowding drops the temperature by fifty degrees or more and you spend the next two minutes trying to recover. Drain on a rack rather than paper, because a fillet sitting on paper steams its own underside soft while you are dressing the buns.
Assembly, and why the toppings stay minimal
Plain shredded cabbage rather than a dressed slaw. The tartar is already supplying acid, sugar, and mustard, and a vinegary slaw on top of it turns the whole sandwich sour and wet. Cabbage is there for cool crunch and nothing else, which is exactly the right amount of ambition for it.
Serve with extra pickles, lemon wedges, and more napkins than seem necessary. A good fried fish sandwich is hot, crisp, tangy, and slightly unruly, and that last quality is a feature rather than a defect in need of a skewer through the top.
Part of Recipes & Technique.
