Grease Temperature

For as much as I like to catch crappie I probably only eat them 3 times a year. I release alot of fish as well as give them to friends or senior citizens who cannot fish anymore. When I do cook them I have never been satisfied that I was doing a very good job. I had fish on Super Bowl Sunday and i was not pleased with how they turned out. I cannot seem to get them to come out of the grease very crisp. They seem soggy to me. So if this is happening is my grease not hot enough? What temperature should I cook them at? And how long at that temperature? This is just silly that I cannot get my fillets to eat better. Also, I may be running into a problem by not dipping them in milk/egg before putting that batter on them. I dont know. Seeking help for whats probably easy for everyone else.:confused: :(

I do all the cooking at our houe and have for over 39 years. So I do know a bit about it. Most of the time if your crappie is soggy it is becuase your oil is not hot enough. It should be about 370 degree's. You will know when your crappie is done (Or anyother fish) when it is golden brown. Do not try and cook to much at one time as it will lower your oil temp and again make them turn soggy. If cooked right you should not have oily fish. It should be crispy on the out side and flaky on the inside. Take your oils temp and you will know when it is ready. Or buy one of the deep friers that have the readout on them.

As far as battering goes there are many way's to do it. You can roll the filets in corn meal and what ever or you can dip them in beer batter it dosen't matter. If the tempture is not right they will not come out well. Hope that helps a little. Ron

Sounds like your not cooking them long enough. MTM may also be right with the temp. Get it on 350-370 and leave em alone till they start to turn golden brown

I have always had better luck with peanut oil than vegetable oil. It seems the peanut oil is cleaner and burns hotter. I alwasy use the temp. setting at 375 degrees and will let them float a little while longer than most people do. Either way a good Louisiana fish batter fixed up with salt and pepper always works for me!

Heat peanut oil to 370 degrees. Have your filets in a bowl of ice water. They need to be cold. Put House Autry seafood breader mix in a paper grocery bag. Use 2 bags one inside the other so they won't spring a leak. The paper will absorb excess water and keep your breader from getting soggy. Put filets in bag 2 or three at a time - not too many at once - shake the bag to coat then shake off the excess breader from each filet and drop into the hot oil. When they float and turn golden brown they are done. Pull them out of the grease with tongs and let the oil drain off back into the pan. Then put them on a wire rack over a paper towel to finish draining. Don't put the filets directly on the paper towell or pile them on top of each other or they will get soggy. Enjoy!

I use Grandpappy electric cooker, I'm not smart enough to control temp.. Put fillets in warm water and allow to warm up, assuming you just thawed from freezer.
Lay fillets out on platter, pan, ect and salt and pepper. I add a little garlic powder.
Now use a commercial available batterer or the paper bags containing self rising corn bread mix. Put the fillets in the bag and tumble until battered well.
canola oil should be hot by now. Shake excess batter from fillet and add to oil. Add only enough so that all can float on the surface when they come up. When lightly browned take them up.
I would come eat with any of you. It's hard to mess up Crappie.
Hope this helps, the electric cooker makes me look good.

Sounds like your over loading the grease with way to many pieces at one time. that drops the temps.
I cook mine at around 360 degrees. The key is to drop the meat slow. lots of people try to cook way to many at one time. Now if your using 5 gallons of oil like my big cooker that is not a problem. but the small cookers you have to take it slow.
For breading all that I use is 2 cups self rising meal to one cup self rising flower. Salt, pepper, Dash or garlic powder, And a bag..

I cook for around 75 at a time each year and never have anyone turn it down.

Pete

I'm a professional chef.
Any clean oil will work.
Keep temp. around 360-365.
Don't overload.
Buy a candy thermometer-glass tube type-7 bucks.
Watch for debris accumalation in bottom of pan on a stovetop burner.
frozen fillets will float when done.
fresh fillets(depending on size)will take 4-7 minutes.
Probe style thermometer(6-10 bucks) will give you an internal temp of around 160 when done

And dry the fish before breading. Just put on paper towel for a couple seconds.

I thinkk everyone has the temp down...I like mine from 350-375 degrees...The filets will float when ready. If the filets are thick I like to slice them longways to make them thin so they will cook quicker.

The Themo. is key I think. Some people never use them, but I do.

And as someone else said, I only cook 10 pieces at a time, then hold them in the oven and just keep layering.

Mine turn out srispy everytime...

Just don't let the oil get over 400 if you do, do your french fries first, that will bring the temp back down quick.

one thing i do just before i cook my fish is warm em by running warm water over em just before i cook em. this knocks off the chill and keeps em from cooling your oil so fast as you drop em in. rain and shake and drop em in peanut oil heated to about 375. dont overload your oil and watch the temp. stop adding fish when the temp starts dropping . cut the gas up to help it reheat to cooking temp. if you dont go overboard in adding fish, the oil shouldnt drop too much. If it does give it more gas till it gets back to your cooking temp. oil not hot enough is your culprit and why they coming out soggy. if you dont have a thermometer for the pot get you one. its a must. on the other hand, if the oil is gettin too hot, cut the gas down or set the pot off the burner for a few minutes. i usually set the pot off till the temp stops climbing and drops back to where i want it. one feller who works in a fish camp told me they fried fish and put em under a heat lamp. then they dropped em back in the oil and refry em before they take em to the tables. i dont know how that works. ive never tried that.

I eat fish about 3 times a WEEK!! I'll drop 'em in at about 350 and just wait for them to float. PASS THE KETCHUP!!!!!!

another trick we have in south louisiana is take an onion quarter it up when you put your first batch of fsh in put a quarter of onion in . when fish is done take fish out leave onion in . as the onion darken take out and replace withe another piece this will help keep your oil from burning

Learned something reading this post. Thank you for your input. I need to get one of them probe style thermometers.

When I used my Presto Fry Daddy I found that if I dropped two fillets into the hot oil the oil temp would drop by 10 to 15 deg F. The small fry daddy has the heating element in the bottom on the base and there is only 1200 Watts of power. So the oil temp will drop pretty much when the fillets hit the oil. I start out with the oil heated to 375 and it will at time drop down to 350F. If I were to put in more than a few fillets it would drop even lower. And after the bottom of the fry daddy gets covered with breading it takes even longer to heat the oil back up to 375. After a few batches of fillets there is so much breading covering the bottom that I can't get the oil above 365 deg F. I have to use clean oil of filter the breading out of the oil and start over.

It takes about 15 minutes to heat 4 cups of peanut oil to 375 F. And after I pull some fillets out of the oil it takes another 5 minutes to get the oil back up to 375F.

Now last night I cooked some fillets and used the stove and a frying pan. I didn't measure the temp but it was pretty darn hot. The first batch came out great. I used fresh oil and there was no breading mix on the bottom of the frying pan. So the oil heated up quickly. I use med hi heat setting on the electric burner. I cooked the fillets for three minutes on each side and they were cooked thoroughly. I had enough for two fish sandwitches and ate a few extra fillets on the side. I still had enough fillets left over to heat back up to make two more fish sandwitches for lunch today. I cooked up three batches of fillets last night. The last batch was burned as I think the oil got too hot. Even though I took them out of the hot oil before they cooked for 3 minutes per side they still were not cooked thoroughly. Key to cooking is definately getting the oil temp just right.


I did some research on the Presto GrandPappy and found that it holds more oil and the heating element is rated at 1500 watts. My next door neighbor has the Presto Grand Pappy frier and we have cooked crappie fillets in it and they came out great. Since it holds more oil and has more power it cooks the fillets better. IMHO.

Bottom line is get the oil to 375 deg F and keep it there for the entire 4 to 6 minutes for each batch of fish fillets.

BTW. The candy thermometer is marked for cooking different types of meat. Fish is marked at 375 Deg F. So that is why I used that temp. Also the Presto Fry Daddy automatically maintains the oil at 375 deg F. It won't heat the oil much more than 375 deg F. But like I said after the oil gets filled with breading the oil temp can't heat back up to 375 F.

I like to make sure that I have a lot of breading on my fillets so I get a lot of breading falling off the fillets in the FryDaddy.


Now if you are cooking with gas heat the setup will be much different. I have not cooked fish using gas very much so I don't know how that works.

I agree with Slabinator, I keep all my fillets and whole fish in a bowl of ice water then pull them out, pat em dry and stick them right into the breading mix. They always turn out crispy outside and flaky in the middle.

I HATE to be the ODD ball OUT here Guys BUT I try NEVER to let My Oil get 300 degrees when Frying Fish , before I start the burner up I always strain the bottom as good as i can & Oil last a very long time , seems like when I let the oil get much over 300 for very long , I end up with dark oil & having the throw it away & buying new oil , ,, of course it would not do for every body to do everything the same way in life !!

I do my best to keep it between 250 -300 really 275 works GREAT for me , again, its just the way I do it , not right for everybody !!

One thing I have started using is the longer themometer I got with my turkey fryer. It keeps the dial up higher and doesn't get splattered with grease. The shorter ones tend to get covered up and hard to read.

The key to cooking crappie is to make sure that your temp is at 375' to 400',
if your fish is frozen be sure to thaw in cold water and drain, we use buttermilk self-rising white cornmeal, add about 1 tablespoon of flour to your cornmeal. What ever you do don't salt your fish add the salt to your cornmeal mixture. I use a deep fryer or electric skillet to cook in. Your fish will float if you are using a deep fryer, if you use a electric skillet turn your fish only once, and don't add but 3 large pieces, or 4 small each time you add to oil, I use veg. oil, I have found that wesson oil is the best to fry your fish in. To save your oil let it cool and store in the icebox until your ready to cook fish in it again. All ways cook your fries first. If you like a little kick to your fish add a little hot sauce to the fish while you have it in the water, be sure to drain all the water off your fish before you roll your fish in the cornmeal this is the key to crisp fish.;)

Hey

We own a small resturant and cook on average 100 pounds of filets a weekend, The temp of 360 or so seems to work well,
But we only use plain corn meal not self rising. It seems to not drop off in your grease as bad. Also we go to great pains to
dry all our fish well as the excess meal seems to make the fish greasy. Always allow your grease to come back up to temp before dropping others. Sometimes you have to turn the temp up a bit if it falls off to much, or add less at a time.

Rod

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Originally Posted by Allen42

I HATE to be the ODD ball OUT here Guys BUT I try NEVER to let My Oil get 300 degrees when Frying Fish ,

I do my best to keep it between 250 -300 really 275 works GREAT for me , again, its just the way I do it , not right for everybody !!

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No sweat,if thats what works best for you,stick with it.:eek: :eek: :eek:

I've always cooked fish at 360 using a calibrated thermometer...a really nice piece of equipment. Taylor makes a 10" model with a pot clip that has a calibration nut underneath. Periodically, you can boil some water, check your thermometer, and adjust the dial accordingly. One way to learn about recovery time of oil for each circumstance is to have a thermometer in the oil when you put the fish in. Put in a small amount of fish and see what the temp does. Playing around with this it's easy to figure out how many of what size fish you can put into your size pot without the oil going below about 345 before recovering. If I'm using the home oven top, I turn the heat all the way to high about 10 seconds before putting in the fish, then after the temp drops and begins to recover I cut it back down. Just my 2cents.

i neverused a thermometer i just git oil hot enough to make a sprinkle of corn meal sizle . put fish in oil cooktill brown . fresh oil want brown ral good . . never use a fork to turn fish alwayes use tongs .when one side gits dun the will turn eaisley or turn by them self .

I cook my fish at 375.

I have always been a fan of house of autry breader on my fish until recently when my lady fixed them for me.Let me start off by saying that her mother is japanese and this is there way of breading fish/seafood.First you put cayenne on the fish.The next step takes all the heat out of the pepper leaving a wonderful flavor .Take an egg and beat it in buttermilk.Dredge the fish in the buttermilk mixture then in flour.Now put it back in the buttermilk and then in panko[japenese bread crumbs].Fry at 375 till golden brown and i promise they will be wonderfull and very crispy...