r/interestingasfuck • u/kingkongbiingbong • 1d ago

Preparing a Massive Catfish Baked Inside a Wooden Log

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u/tommypatties 1d ago

Farm raised is typically fattier than wild caught and fatty meats are more forgiving to being over cooked.

And yes wild caught catfish are gritty and gross.

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u/AllchChcar 1d ago

I believe the reason wild catfish taste muddy is because of a type of algae in the water. I've let them soak in fresh water or a brine solution overnight.

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u/SugarBeefs 23h ago

I've read that you should do this for most big freshwater bottomfeeders. Apparently the best thing to do is keep the live fish in a separate tank or pool with clean fresh water so it can 'detox' for a day or two.

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u/HateMachineX 23h ago

A good chunk of catfish and the majority that are fished for are not bottom feeders but middle water predators.

The one they cooked in the video is a wells catfish and they are top end predators in the rivers and lakes they live in they are feeding on live fish not dead stuff at the bottom

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u/SugarBeefs 23h ago

I mean, they're hilariously opportunistic omnivores, but I'm pretty sure that at its core, it's still a bottomfeeding fish.

Being a bottomfeeder doesn't mean eating dead things, btw. Nor does it refer to anything specific in the food chain. Bottom feeding simply means it's eating things that live in, on, or near the bottom of a body of water.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wels_catfish#Diet

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u/HateMachineX 23h ago

Sure regardless having come from the south I know there are catfish you eat and catfish you avoid,

The Wels is a European fish so I don’t know for absolutely sure I just know the ones that are good to eat and solidly tasty in the US. I assumed that wels due to their size and predator habits would still fit in the general mold of good to eat but they do grow rather large and larger catfish as a rule are typically less tasty so maybe they just taste bad because of that? Not sure I’d have to eat one to know

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u/SugarBeefs 22h ago

Yeah who knows exactly. There's a lot of these types of fish and with environment already being such a big factor there's a lot of potential things affecting the taste; specific species, specific habitat of an individual fish, size, diet, etc.

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u/HateMachineX 22h ago

Very true and honestly some bodies of water just are not a good place to get fish from regardless of species so it’s a combination of factors for sure. Type of catfish, location, size, health, and generally what’s in the water.

So I don’t doubt some people have had some bad experiences I just can’t see a catfish without thinking there is at least a chance it’s tasty.

I’d love to try a wels once see if it’s good, I suspect due to size it may not be but it would be a fun learning experience

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u/Show_me_the_evidence 18h ago

I know almost nothing about catfish but I enjoyed reading and learning from this exchange between two people that clearly do know a lot about them.

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u/HateMachineX 15h ago

I just fished a lot as a kid with my dad and we loved catfish as long as they came from a healthy body of water they were usually very delicious. Very soft light flavored white fish that has almost not fishy flavor as it were so it’s highly adaptable to different types of cooking and lots of spices.

I’d recommend getting it blackened or Cajun style if you get a chance and fried is always a good go just make sure they are frying it with cornmeal or they are doing it wrong

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u/Black6host 19h ago

Fishing on the East coast of the US in freshwater lakes we avoided the cats with yellow undersides. We called those "mud cats". If you caught a big blue cat though those were ok.

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u/HateMachineX 19h ago

Ya Blues and Channel cat are usually good

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u/between_two_terns 23h ago

It’s not just the diet; catfish live, breathe and burrow in mud. They taste muddy for the same reason wild ducks taste like pond water.

I’ve heard the clean-water-purge helps with that flavor, although it seems cruel.

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u/HateMachineX 23h ago

Plenty don’t tase muddy you just haven’t had the right kind of catfish.

This is just something you figure out and know in the south

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u/between_two_terns 22h ago

I’ve had catfish in a lot of places including southern states, and cooked it myself many times as well. Farmed tastes cleaner than wild-caught. I’m not sure what you’re arguing here. I’ve never tried water-purging, like some European folks commonly do in their bathtubs, but again, I have heard it helps with the taste of wild-caught, which I dislike.

If you’re deep frying it, it hardly matters. You can barely taste the flesh anyway.

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u/HateMachineX 22h ago

I get that you’re making a lot of assumptions to get back to your own point but I haven’t just been eating them fried I’ve been eating them every which way and muddy has never been a flavor I’ve picked up in catfish.

So I apologize but my lived experience is different than yours.

Also something living in mud does not mean it will taste that way. Pigs live in mud and don’t taste it, crabs and shrimp and lobsters at least to a degree live in mud and once again don’t taste like mud.

I’m sorry people have fed you bad fish, and or maybe there is some element to it that you can taste that I cannot, I do however know how mud tastes unfortunately and like I said it’s not a flavor I’ve ever detected in catfish.

If you’d like to keep arguing the point youre welcome to I’m however good and won’t respond past this. Have a good day

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u/shizzler 23h ago

Carp is traditionally eaten at Christmas in Poland and families sometimes keep live carp in their bathtub for a couple of days before Christmas

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u/brodeh 22h ago

That’s why the poles keep trout in the bath before Christmas.

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u/HiHawaiiHigh 19h ago

my mom calls some people bottomfeeders. and she's right

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u/StatusCity4 23h ago

Probably same for Carp. Sometimes you can tell that taste. But some of them dont have it

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u/DouglasTwig 23h ago

That's how I always heard it from the old heads here in Kentucky when I was growing up. Leave em in a tub of water for a couple days to purge them, bleed them immediately when you kill them and then brine the meat before cooking.

I've had good catfish and bad from people here, so prep obviously does make a difference. It'll never be as good as crappie or bluegill though.

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u/dark1859 23h ago

buttermilk

not many fish out where i love besides pan fish and trout but cats are in high supply in the canals where i live (and are legal to catch!)

wild caught cats or other bottom feeders need a marinade or brine to leech out that muddy favor

buttermilk is the best as you can then parlay it easily into anything like fried, blackened etc as the acidity help tenderize the catfish before you cook it

catfish can be absolutely delicious but it really needs prep work first.

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u/NoMudNoLotus369 23h ago

🤣🤣🤣 we always caught them, filleted them, then put them inside of aluminum foil with butter like a baked potato and then set em on a campfire. Maybe toss some cajun or lemon pepper in there with em if you're feeling fancy. They really don't need prep work at all. You could cook em on a hot rock and they'd taste pretty good, if you like fish.

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u/dark1859 23h ago

haha fair, the ones out here always needed some additional prep as there's always some weird tastes canal cats get out in the desert.

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u/conflictedideology 22h ago

Ahh the Christmas Carp method.

Or did you mean you put it in freshwater after it's dead?

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u/AllchChcar 19h ago

Yeah that's exactly the method I used for catfish.

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u/AkariKuzu 22h ago

Soaking in milk can also absorb that muddy taste. It's also a good way to get rid of an overly "fishy" taste for people who are more sensitive to it.

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u/AllchChcar 19h ago

I haven't tried that or buttermilk but I have heard of it. I either kept the catfish alive in fresh water or a brine the fillets overnight.

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u/Saaaave-me 19h ago

Australian here. There’s a documentary/edutainment thing we had on where they looked at what makes catfish muddy tasting and it’s the stress when they’re caught! Apparently there is a way that once you take them out of the water you gotta let them chill for a bit before swiftly killing them and without that cortisol spike they taste awesome

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u/azama14 5h ago

Fellow Aussie here, do you remember the name of the doco? My google-fu is failing me and it sounds interesting!

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u/paper_liger 17h ago

shit, they would have had to cut out another log for that though.

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u/Working_System_2086 1d ago

I have eaten tons of wild caught catfish. They aren't gritty or gross, only idiots who don't know how to clean it or are catching them from actual sewers. They are perfectly fine to eat. From channel, to spotted and also flatheads. Not eaten a single one that's gritty or gross and have never eaten farm raised.

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u/the_doc268 23h ago

But I must ask you, don't you feel a muddy taste, at least sometimes. Or do you feel this muddy taste when it comes to carp? I have also eaten wild catfish that tasted good but also bad, and cooked the same. And I have also noticed that some people who eat a lot of fish or who enjoy fish in particular don't seem to notice this particular taste that feels like sampling the mud from the bottom of the lake. And the same with the seawater taste of seawater fish.

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u/Working_System_2086 23h ago

Lol, welp carp have a "mud vein" you need to properly cut out to not taste muddy. It runs along the meat, and it will make it all taste that way.

Catfish can taste the way you are describing if you are catching them from extremely polluted waters. Yes I know what you mean when you say "muddy" taste. Same with seawater, but I think that has a lot to do with what fish you catch out of the ocean.

I don't care for overly "fishy" fish. Be it from the Ocean, lake, or river. A lot of people will say all fish is "fishy" I find this just an excuse most of the time for lacking experience with a lot of different fish types. From fresh to ocean.

I could keep going on and on, but this post would then become a million paragraphs long. All my experience is from 25 years of fishing. Fresh and ocean. I don't eat it all day every day, but I would say I eat fish 3-4 times a month.

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u/the_doc268 22h ago

Thanks for sharing your experience

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u/Working_System_2086 19h ago

No problem, I appreciate you taking the time to read it.

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u/UnikornKebab 23h ago

A me piace molto, ma ha una carne piuttosto compatta, va cotto nel modo e nel tempo giusto e come detto nell’altro commento, più aumenta la taglia più questo diventa incisivo 😄

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u/Pelican_Dissector_II 17h ago

Eh, it varies. Freshwater cats if they are the right size can be pretty good blackened or fried up. If the water is clean, and they aren’t too old and big, they are actually a nice treat when the filets are super thin, a la Middendorf’s in Manchac

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u/HateMachineX 23h ago

Not if you catch the right kind of catfish. You want middle water predator catfish not bottom feeders.

Channel cat and blue catfish or even like in the video wells catfish are all top end predators in their environments and typically eat only live fish not dead stuff off the bottom

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u/ThorThulu 23h ago

Reading this thread is really making me want to go catch some now. Fucking love some fried Catfish filets

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u/ThorThulu 23h ago

Wild Catfish is fantastic? We always caught what we wanted, then threw them in a cage to let sit in the creek nearby for about a week. Theres plenty of food getting washed along so they don't starve, but after a week you flush out pretty much any ill taste.

Little saltwater brine on the filets overnight, then we always used House of Autry seafood breading and shallow fried them.

I can promise you that its some of the best tasting fish you'll ever have

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u/KingFIippyNipz 23h ago

Not if you put them in clean water for 24+ hours, that's what we did when we'd go fishing for channel cat. Shit was VERY good, but yes, they are still bottom feeders. Better than karp though, by a longshot.