First Smoked Catfish (w/ Q-view)

seboke · Jun 13, 2008

Cowgirl inspired me yesterday with a nice stringer of catfish she posted. Not having time to go catch my own (strapped to a dental chair for three hours today), coupled with no guarantee of bringing any home, the next best thing was pay someone else to catch em and clean em! Being on sale, it cost me less than the gas would have to get me to my catfishin' pond and back!

Got these fillets for $2.99 a pound.

Brined for 4 hours. Brine was a mod to the salmon brine I did a week ago. Could not find a "catfish" brine.

1 gal Water
1 cup Kosher Salt
1 cup Brown Sugar
8 crushed cloves Garlic
1 small onion, rough chopped
1/4 bell pepper, rough chopped
1 tablespoon Jalapeno hot sauce
1/4 cup teryaki sauce
1 teaspoon bay leaf flakes

Fillets in the brine

lightly seasoned each fillet differently. One each of:
-Old Bay
-Caribbean Seafood Blend
-CBP
-Garlic Power
-Red Pepper Flakes
-Creole Seasoning
-CBP, garlic powder, salt

Seasoned fillets waiting for the fire to get just right

Burned down oak logs to coals, added a small amount of hickory chunks every 30 minutes for the flavor. Maintained average temp around 220. Smoked for 2.5 hours.

Juicy, flaky and delicious!!! The bottoms (where the skin was) were a bit slimy, and the thinner parts were a bit salty. Maybe cut the brine salt a bit next time. Though it didn't stop me from eating a second one while I was posting this! And I know what's for lunch tomorrow!

pineywoods · Jun 13, 2008

Looks great

cowgirl · Jun 13, 2008

Seboke, that looks so goood!!! I'm gonna give it a try with some of the catfish I brought home.
Thank you for posting this!

capt dan · Jun 13, 2008

Dang brother, them fillets look mighty fine for sure. Like ya said, only thing better is catching them yerself!

monicotti · Jun 13, 2008

They look yummi

ronp · Jun 13, 2008

They really look great, gonna look for a sale on them. Getting the sale fliers out as I type. Nope, 4.99 a pound, oh well, I'll keep looking next week.
Thanks for the QVIEW.

richoso1 · Jun 13, 2008

I've only had fried catfish, and I mean about 15 lbs. a year. I'm dying to smoke some, thanks to your Q View!

seboke · Jun 13, 2008

Thanks Patty, with your little catfish store out back, and ya sure can't beat the price, figured you'd have done this often!

seboke · Jun 13, 2008

This is what it's all about in my book! Throw out some tasty Q-view of something not so common, and get some of the vets in here itchin to give it a try! I think that's more of a compliment than the "looks tasty" comments!

I was joking about the store bought fillets being cheaper than the gas it would have cost to go catch my own. Thinking about it more, I paid $13.01 for 4.3 pounds of fillets. Where I do my cat fishin is about 20 miles away. 40 mile round trip, $4.00 for gas now, 15 MPG in my truck = 2-1/3 gallons = $10.67 just for the gas to the pond. Now pay myself for the effort of skinning and filleting, then having fish skeletons rotting in my garbage in the garage till Sunday - and it's like 100* in there, I'll estimate $100 for that (cause I HATE cleaning catfish). Then throw in buying the worms or livers or both for bait.... MUCH cheaper to fish in the seafood dept! But really, I'd still prefer to have been able to catch my own!

crockadale · Jun 13, 2008

Gerat job Ken, Who would of thought to do cat fish. Will be looking for em when I go to the grocerey tonight.

seboke · Jun 13, 2008

Thanks croc. I read thru every hit from my "catfish" search looking for methods. My search produced a bunch of off-the-wall returns. Finally figured out most of the returns were from posts being made by username "catfish".

Your custom stick burner - you come over here and get the one we talked about?

flyin'illini · Jun 13, 2008

Nice thread. Another item I now want to do.

Agree on catching them yourself but I like to keep it simple now.

jbchoice1 · Jun 13, 2008

great looking cats... mmmm. need water to go down, fish to come home.

walking dude · Jun 13, 2008

nice.............will be catfishing as SOON as the waters go down, and i know how i am going do em

walking dude · Jun 13, 2008

i also BOOKMARKED THIS..............thankx dude.........tho i plan on taking the skin off then i do this............i can see leaving the skin on bass and salmon.......but not catfish

kajun · Jun 13, 2008

mmmm looks delicious!

seboke · Jun 13, 2008

Hope I didn't confuse - they were skinned fillets, just the side that had the skin - the side I had down for the smoke - had that brown film, turned out a bit slimy. These fillets were bigger than the 12-14 inch channel cats I usually catch, have noticed over the years the bigger/thicker the fish/fillet, the bigger/thicker that brown layer is. It did flake off pretty good, kind of like skin-on salmon fillets, but not quite as easy.

seboke · Jun 15, 2008

Gotta love leftovers!!

waysideranch · Jun 16, 2008

Yum............................

rw willy · Jun 18, 2008

That looks great

First Smoked Catfish (w/ Q-view)

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