When: June 25
Catfish has a complicated reputation: beloved in the American South, dismissed elsewhere. The fried catfish of the Mississippi Delta is one of the great regional American dishes. Understanding why requires understanding the fish itself — and why cornmeal matters.
The southern catfish is one of America's great regional proteins — and one of the most misunderstood outside the South.
Catfish has been a food source in the American South since long before European colonization — Native American tribes throughout the Mississippi River basin fished for catfish as a primary protein source. Enslaved African Americans in the South developed catfish into one of the cornerstones of the cuisine that would become soul food, both because catfish were abundant and because they had access to fishing as one of few permitted forms of independent food gathering. The Mississippi Delta catfish industry is a more recent phenomenon. In the 1960s, Mississippi farmers — facing declining cotton prices — began converting rice fields and other low land to aquaculture ponds, farming channel catfish (Ictalurus punctatus). Mississippi now produces approximately 65% of the farmed catfish in the United States. The farmed catfish is milder and cleaner-tasting than wild catfish, which can have a muddier flavor (from the geosmin compound produced by algae in the catfish's environment). Most...