Cajun Fried Flounder

Recipe originally submitted to GBSFood by fRyfRy, Submitted here by Lovelee. All typos and references to nonexistent pictures have been lovingly preserved.

Summary

Buying fish at the store is nice and everything but there's nothing like going into the great outdoors and catching your own. Fishing is fun and allows you to get very, very drunk. Today I was able to catch this beautiful specimen and the following guide will show you how to clean and cook your very own flounder. Of course if you don't like to fish or can't fish for flounder locally you can buy whole flounder at any fish market. Trust me, it's MUCH better and fresher tasting to do it this way than to buy some filet. Flounder have a strange meat to body size ratio. They're pretty much nothing but meat. Some people think flounder are too good to be fried. Well, they're wrong. They're fucking delicious fried. If anybody tells you not to fry flounder you need to punch them in their face.

First off, flounders are abominations of God. Nothing is supposed to look like this. They're tasty enough though that we'll have to forgive them for being freaks.

In case that isn't horrific enough for you, here's a closeup of the face if you can even call it that. He sure is pretty!

How to Fillet

The first thing you're going to need, obviously, is a filet knife. These are ultra sharp and ultra thin and bendable and that's all pretty important if you plan on getting a good filet off of a fish. First, make a cut down the middle of the fish. This will act as a guide.

Notice where I started the cut. An interesting thing about flounder is very little of their body is "head" and guts. It's simple to feel above the eyes and feel the skull. Below the eyes it's soft in a small area. That's the guts. Unless you're a skull and guts type of person, you want to cut around these.

Now, insert the filet knife into the existing cut until it hits bone and turn it sideways. Now press the side of the knife into the bone so the knife kind of bends a little bit and start moving the knife towards the edge. Just work it towards the edge and the meat should slip right off. You'll end up with something like this.

Now you want to repeat it on the other side. Notice how I curved around the part where the guts are. You can see just a little bit of blood right on the edge of the guts which means I got just about as close as possible. Again, it's really easy to know where to cut just by feel. The meat is nice and firm - the guts are soft feeling under the skin.

Now you want to flip the flounder over and do the exact same thing.

That's a skinny flounder, now!

Of course, now we have four beautiful boneless filets but they have skin attached to them. This just will not do. Lie the filets skin-side down on the cutting board and insert your filet knife parallel to the board. Hold onto one end of the skin and while pressing the filet knife down (it should be bent and pressed up against the board) just work from one end to the other. You'll end up with four nice filets like this, even if they are currently spotted with bits of scale and whatnot.

Now you'll want to rinse the filets under some running water in your sink. Just sit them down on a paper towel and pat them dry.

Ingredients and Procedures

Flounder is a very white, mild fish meat but I like to get rid of any lingering "fishy" funk. The way to do this is to soak the filets in milk. I usually just toss it in the fridge for about half an hour and drink beer or something.

You may as well go ahead and get your fish fry ready. I use Tony Chachere's cajun fish fry mix. It's just a bit spicy and crisps up perfectly. It's good stuff.

Now once your filets have soaked for a little while just pull them out of the milk and coat them evenly in the fry mix.

I personally use a deep fryer and preheat the oil to 375 degrees. I prefer peanut oil for fish as it has a very high smoke point. If you don't have a deep fryer you can easily pan fry these filets in a hot pan for around 8 minutes until golden brown. Deep frying is just easier though since I can dump them in the fryer and set a timer. Either way works.

Remove from the fryer and sit on some paper towels for a moment. Transfer to plate. Enjoy some delicious white, lightly flakey flounder meat in a crispy cajun exterior. Pick whatever sides sound good to you and maybe some tartar sauce and enjoy.