Blackening is not a sauce and it is not a batter. It is a dry crust. A heavy coat of seasoning goes onto a dry fillet, the fillet goes into butter in a pan that is hotter than you think it should be, and in about five minutes the spices have toasted into a dark, peppery shell with the fish still white and flaking underneath.
Catfish is the Southern choice for it, and it is the right one. It is firm enough to flip without falling apart, mild enough that the seasoning is the flavor rather than a fight, and cheap enough to feed six people on a Tuesday. US farm-raised catfish is on the counter all year, which is the whole reason this recipe keeps showing up on Southern tables in late fall when nothing else is coming out of the water.
Two things make or break it. The pan has to be genuinely hot before the fish touches it, and you want a window open and the fan on, because a properly blackened fillet smokes. That smoke is the point. It is also the reason a lot of people do this on a side burner outdoors.
We are using Boudreaux T's, our USDA Certified Organic Cajun blackening blend. It is deliberately mild, so you can coat the fish properly instead of rationing it, which is what gets you a crust in the first place.
Alongside it: collards that have sweetened up after the first cool nights, and North Carolina sweet potatoes at the peak of their harvest. The full recipe is below.
Cast Iron Blackened Catfish with Boudreaux T's
Catfish fillets under a heavy coat of organic Boudreaux T's, seared hard in butter in a cast iron skillet until the spices toast into a dark crust. Five minutes of cooking, start to finish.
Ingredients
For the fish
- 4 catfish fillets, about 6 oz each (or any firm white fish)
- 2 1/2 to 3 Tbsp Boudreaux T's organic Cajun blackening seasoning
- 4 Tbsp unsalted butter, divided
- 1 Tbsp neutral oil, such as avocado or grapeseed
- 1 lemon, half juiced and half cut into wedges
On the table
- A small handful of chopped flat-leaf parsley or sliced scallion
- Hot sauce and extra lemon, for the people who want it
- Flaky sea salt, to taste at the table
Instructions
- Open a window and turn the extractor fan on before you start. A properly blackened fillet smokes, and that is not a sign anything has gone wrong. If you have a side burner on the grill, this is the recipe to use it for.
- Pat the catfish fillets completely dry on both sides with paper towel and run a finger along them for pin bones. Wet fish steams instead of crusting, so this is the step that decides whether the rest works.
- Lay the fillets on a plate and coat both sides generously with the Boudreaux T's, pressing it on with your fingers. Thick fillets will take a heavy coating; thinner tail pieces need noticeably less. Let them sit while the pan heats.
- Put a heavy cast iron skillet over medium-high heat and leave it alone for a full four or five minutes. It needs to be properly hot, not warm. A drop of water should skitter across it and vanish.
- Add the oil and 2 tablespoons of the butter. The oil keeps the butter from burning outright. When the butter has stopped foaming and is just beginning to smoke, the pan is ready.
- Lay the fillets in away from you. They should sizzle hard the instant they land. Cook 2 to 3 minutes without touching them, moving them or looking underneath. Leave them be and let the crust form.
- Flip once. Add the remaining 2 tablespoons of butter around the edge of the pan and cook another 2 to 3 minutes. For fillets thicker than an inch, turn the heat down a little after the flip so the centre catches up before the crust goes bitter.
- The fish is done when it is opaque all the way through and flakes with gentle pressure from a fork, around 145°F. Catfish goes from perfect to dry quickly, so pull it a shade early.
- Move the fillets to a plate or a board and squeeze the juiced half of the lemon over them. Let them rest a minute; they keep cooking in their own heat.
- Scatter the parsley or scallion over the top and bring the lemon wedges and the hot sauce to the table. Spoon any of the dark butter left in the pan over the fish.
The pan has to be hotter than feels sensible
This is the whole recipe. Blackening is the seasoning toasting against hot metal, not the fish burning. A pan that is merely warm gives you pale, damp fillets with raw-tasting spice stuck to them. Give the skillet four or five honest minutes over medium-high before anything goes in, and use cast iron if you have it, because it holds that heat when four cold fillets land on it. A thin pan drops temperature the moment you load it and never recovers.
Be generous with the blend, and here is why you can be
Two and a half to three tablespoons for four fillets sounds like a great deal of seasoning, and it is more than you would use on almost anything else. Boudreaux T's is deliberately mild, which is what lets you coat the fish properly rather than dusting it. A thin coat will not crust. If you are cooking for a table that runs from grandchildren to grandparents, this is the version that suits everybody, and the hot sauce sits on the table for whoever wants it.
Which fish to buy
Catfish is the traditional choice and the best value. Buy US farm-raised if you can; it is cleaner-tasting than wild and it is available year round, which is why this is a dish you can put on in the dead of winter. Fillets around three quarters of an inch are ideal. Anything firm and white works just as well — grouper, snapper, drum, or whatever came off the boat — and so does redfish, which is what Paul Prudhomme blackened when he made the technique famous in New Orleans in the early eighties. Tilapia and flounder are too thin and tend to fall apart on the flip.
What is actually in season right now
The fish is farmed and available all year, and we are not going to pretend otherwise. What is genuinely in season is everything you put beside it. Collards are at their best right now — they sweeten after the first cool nights and the Carolina fields are cutting through the winter. North Carolina sweet potatoes are at the peak of their harvest this month, and a split baked sweet potato with butter is the easiest thing in the world to put on a plate next to blackened fish. Fall cabbage makes a sharp slaw that cuts the richness of all that butter, and the last of the field peppers are still around for a week or two.
Rice is the New Orleans answer and it is a good one. For a Carolina plate, The OG Mashed Potatoes or Crispy Smashed Potatoes both work, and the smashed potatoes can go in the oven while you cook the fish.
Feeding a crowd
Four fillets is one skillet. Do not crowd the pan trying to fit six — the temperature drops, the fish steams, and you lose the crust entirely. Cook in batches, hold the finished fillets on a rack over a sheet pan in a 200°F oven, and wipe the skillet out between rounds so the spices from the first batch do not burn into the second. The fish stays good for about twenty minutes that way, which is long enough to get everybody sat down.
The day after
Leftover blackened catfish is better cold than it has any right to be. Flake it into a slaw, put it on grits with an egg, or do what New Orleans does and build it into a sandwich — our New Orleans-Style Blackened Fish Po' Boy is that exact idea with lettuce, tomato and mayo on French bread, and it uses this same blend.
What is in the jar, and what is not
Boudreaux T's is our USDA Certified Organic Cajun blackening blend, made in small batches by our family. No MSG, no fillers, no anti-caking agents. The seasoning is gluten free and kosher, and so is the fish — this one is a genuinely gluten free dinner as written, so long as whatever you serve alongside it is too (cornbread and most hot sauces are worth a label check). It comes in the 5 oz resealable pouch, which stores flat and is easy to pinch from one-handed when you have got a smoking skillet going and no spare attention.
More fish to put on the table
Oven Baked Blackened Salmon is the same blend done in the oven on a sheet pan with vegetables, for a night you do not want to stand over a pan. Tidewater Shrimp and Grits and Captain George's Fish Stew are the ones to make when it turns properly cold, and Lemon-AID Paper Fish is the gentle, no-smoke end of the same cupboard.