Cajun-Inspired Catfish Sandwich Recipe

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There's no cuisine quite as expansive as that of the American South. A melting pot of culture, the soulful food embodies the heart of what America is all about. Thinking about Southern food, classic dishes like fried chicken, collard greens, and grits come to mind, but that's only where the list begins. There's also Nashville's famously hot and tangy chicken, fluffy coastal buttermilk biscuits, Cajun and Creole gumbo and jambalaya, and some of the country's best barbecue. The cuisine is all-encapsulating, and a roadmap of the South's cultured history to say the absolute least.

One food you can't forget when talking about Southern cuisine is cornmeal-crusted catfish. Catfish itself sometimes gets a bad rap for its muddy, fishy flavor, a result of its natural bayou habitat. The truth is, good catfish is prepped to avoid unsavory flavor, the end result a flaky, flavorful fish like any other. In this Cajun-inspired catfish recipe written with Michelle McGlinn, the catfish filets are soaked in a hot sauce brine before being coated in Cajun-seasoned cornmeal and fried until crispy. To heat things up further, we pair the catfish with a spicy jalapeño slaw and a quick version of remoulade before nestling it between soft brioche buns. The resulting sandwich is quintessentially Southern — that is, a perfect marriage of many great flavors.

To soak, dredge, and fry the catfish, you'll need milk (or buttermilk), hot sauce (we like a Louisiana hot sauce for this), vegetable oil, cornmeal, Cajun seasoning, lemon pepper seasoning, salt, and catfish filets. You'll reuse some of those ingredients, but for the coleslaw, you'll need to add mayonnaise, Greek yogurt, apple cider vinegar, garlic, pepper, shredded cabbage, chopped cilantro, jalapeño, and scallions to your grocery list. Then for the remoulade, you'll just need Dijon mustard and lemon juice, and to build the sandwiches, some soft brioche buns.

Begin preparing the catfish: Stir milk and hot sauce together in a dish.

Add the fish and turn to coat. Marinate for 1 hour.

To fry the fish, first heat oil in a Dutch oven over medium heat to 350 F.

Combine the cornmeal, Cajun seasoning, lemon pepper seasoning, and salt in a large bowl.

While the oil is heating up, shake the excess milk from the catfish and dredge each filet in the cornmeal mixture.

Once the oil is hot, add the dredged fish and fry until golden brown and crispy, about 8 minutes.

Once fried, set catfish aside to drain.

To make the coleslaw, first stir together the mayonnaise, yogurt, vinegar, garlic, salt, and pepper until combined.

Add the cabbage mix, cilantro, jalapeño, and scallions and toss well to combine.

To make the remoulade, stir all ingredients in a bowl until fully combined.

To build the sandwiches, add catfish, coleslaw, and remoulade to the brioche buns and serve.

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There are a lot of mistakes you can make with catfish that lead to its infamously muddy flavor. Since catfish are bottom feeders, they sometimes reflect that muddy taste once cooked, but selecting high quality fish (like that from a trusted fishmonger) or even farm-raised fish is a good way to ensure that you'll have the best-tasting catfish possible. Next, a marinade goes a long way in packing a lot of flavor into a piece of meat, so that's why this recipe specifically calls for one. 

A catfish is marinated in buttermilk or milk to help reduce the muddy flavor. Part of this is because of the acid in buttermilk, which can be replicated with lemon juice, vinegar, or vinegar-based hot sauce; but plain milk is equally as effective in getting rid of fishy flavor because of its casein. This can be done up to 8 hours in advance, but if you don't have a day's worth of time for marinating, even just 20 minutes will do the trick.

Remoulade is a sauce most commonly found in New Orleans, drizzled into po'boy sandwiches and served alongside crispy crab cakes. The condiment comes from French cuisine. Though horseradish is a traditional ingredient and often used in remoulade recipes, the sauce is often instead mixed with ingredients like mustard, shallots, tarragon, and mayonnaise. Remoulade should always be a balance of tangy, savory, spicy, and creamy, though what you mix into the sauce can change.

If you do love the taste of horseradish, you can swap the mustard for it in this recipe for a bolder, more spicy remoulade. To make the sauce more herby, add chopped tarragon and chives. For a tangy version, add finely chopped pickles or relish, adjusting the lemon juice accordingly to avoid too much tang. You can even add chopped capers or anchovies to the remoulade for umami — or just a dash of Worcestershire for a similar taste.

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