Pond Boss Forums INTRO New Forum Member Introduction Never been much for fishing, but maybe someday....

Carolynn is going to try smoking this batch of CC and see how they turn out smoked. She smokes quite a bit of stuff including cheese.

We have eaten lots of our pond raised CC. Funny thing is, I never cared for CC that much before raising our own. Our CC taste great.

Our favorite way of preparing them is cut them into nugget or finger size strips, coat them in dry corn starch, egg wash, then a mixture of 3/4 Panco bread crumbs and 1/4 cajun corn meal based fish coating we buy at the store. Second egg wash bath then dredge in the coating mix a second time. Then let the prepared double coated nuggets dry on a wire rack. Then fry them in an air fryer if you have one or pan fry or even baked is good too. She has done it all those ways but we like the air fryer best because it tastes like fried but with very little oil used and much less spatter mess on the counter.

Egg wash details are egg and a little bit of water and milk to thin it slightly with tiny amount of oil.

The ratio of the cajun seasoned corn meal based mix (that we buy at the store - various brands work) and the Panco bread crumbs kind of to taste depending on how spicy you like it. We like it very mild with just a hint of kick so use more bread crumbs and less cajun mix. More of the cajun mix will give more spicy and more corn meal base and more Panco will make the coating more crispy. If you don't want any heat at all substitute any commercial corn meal based fish coating mix like lemon or whatever flavor you like. We really, really like the Panco bread crumbs. They give the coating a very pleasant crunch. My mother-in-law (who eats lots of fish we fillet for her and FIL) has no teeth so she does not like the Panco because it makes it too crunchy for her. But if anyone has not tried the Panco bread crumbs give it a try as part of the mix in your fish coating.

We like a little home made tartar sauce made with Miracle Whip or mayonnaise, adding a touch of mustard to taste (gives it nice yellow color) and sweet pickle relish mixed up in whatever proportions look and taste right.

Fuzzy picture of the coated, air fryer fried fish below along with slaw, home canned pickled green tomatoes, hush puppies and some tartar sauce. Yumm. This fish could be either CC or BG.