How To Blacken Fish (Butter vs. Olive Oil Challenge)

Hi, just a few thoughts. Dry your fillets on paper towels to remove all excess water. I use avocado or grape seed oil from Costco in the pan with some butter to a high temp, add spices, fresh lemon, etc. dry white wine? Add fish and cook to the down side is well blackened and flip. Olive oil is actually a fairly heavy flavor and covers fish taste vs other oils. Love both alternative oils, deep fry fantastic and cheaper than peanut oil, same high flashpoint. Also, love half shell cooked fish. Try half shell redfish on the grill spiced anyway you want, low cal, never any left over!!

I’m sure you have tried it, but I cook all my blackened fish on the half shell. Im not sure why, it just seems to taste better to me

What is the name of your outdoor kitchen cast iron cooking disc?

Wrong place for this comment, but I’m hoping you have an answer, because there was no place to leave a comment on your most recent post about the “braid cutting pliers”. Please say it ain’t so, Joe. Saw your post about the split ring/braid cutting pliers at mid day on the first day of the post, and they are sold out. How can this be. Hope you get more in asap. Please keep me informed.

I have settled in on a tablespoon of clarified butter and good olive oil together in a cast iron skillet for this type of frying. Clarifying the butter raises its’ smoke point and rids the butter on impurities. If I’m doing more of a powered fish fry I’ll use peanut oil, enough to float the fillets, again in a cast iron skillet.

I use a combination of Olive oil and free ranged butter melted into the 100% pure virgin cold rolled olive oil from Costco

Use Advacado oil it’s more tolerent to high temps , and healthy, great taste.

I always use butter – unsalted. I have a cast iron skillet and an infared side burner that gets really hot. Love to blacken grouper, snapper and mahi!

Butter is best any day 😋

yes sir cast iron, that seasoning and butter is the only way my wife will fry it. you mention calories so is it possible the way she cooks is how i have gone from about 180 to 280 in only about 40 years. 🙂

My son and wife don’t like it charred so I cook it at a lower temp with butter and oil in the skillet. Butter for flavor and oil because when I do the second batch the butter tends to burn. Comes out still red from the seasoning but still as tasty. And you can cook it inside and not set off the smoke detectors! Lol

The type of butter is important. Personally, I always cook with unsalted butter because it doesn’t burn that quickly. Salted butter burns almost immediately, so it ruins the taste. A cast iron skillet should be white hot (not glowing) before adding the butter and fish.

You can also use a small self-igniting single burner stove, the kind that coast $25-$30 at Walmart and use butane bottles. I’ve also put my cast iron on a grill. Wish I could post photos.

Man I love blackened fish! Thanks for the cooking tips! I would love to get the best recipe for awesome hush puppies to make the perfect meal! Salt Strong Rocks!

Thanks for the cook-off and love that skillet! For those who want to try clarified butter, you can find it at most stores as “ghee”. We use it for a number of things instead of butter. Especially noticeable on popcorn since it’s pure fat whereas butter has water content that can make popcorn soggy. That’s a free side tip. :^)

Luke, you can cook for us anytime! Looks good, bro. Thanks!

Butter for sure. I also brush one side first, season and put on the griddle. Then before I flip them I butter the other side , season then flip. That seasoning is the best by far.

I enjoyed the cooking show. Butter all the way for me then drizzle more butter and lemon at the end. For those that don’t have a outdoor kitchen just fire the grill up and put your cast iron skillet on the grill

Nice comparison video Luke. You got exactly the results I would have expected; with the oiled fish sticking a bit and the buttered filets releasing. The “smoke point” of butter is ~100 degrees lower than olive oil – so the butter chars faster and releases quicker. At least that’s the way I understand it. I would also have expected that the taste would be not too much different at the low temps you used. Yes, I said “low” temps. If you had done the process at the higher temps used in the blackening process as Paul Prudhomme invented it I fear the oiled fish would have suffered taste-wise, but it would probably have released a little better.

I had the good fortune to live in the NOLA area when Paul had just opened his restaurant and I learned the technique from him. He used a dry unseasoned iron skillet, which he heated until it began to start turning white and when he dropped the buttered fish there would be flames! He always used relatively thin fillets of around 1/2″ thickness and the cooking time on each side was very fast; two minutes per side or less. The beauty of Paul’s process was that the intense heat seared the fish instantly and it always came out wonderfully moist and tender inside even though it was charred outside. There’s a pretty accurate recipe and description of his process at https://www.nola.com/food/2015/10/blackened_redfish_recipe.html

LOVE that massive iron griddle! Your outdoor kitchen must be the envy of anyone who sees it.

For me clarified sweet cream butter adds that perfect flavor, texture and bronzing to any black-
end entree especially fish,shrimp and scallops.

Nice.

Butter for the win, and I hate to throw a wrench in the works, but you gotta try Clarified Butter. With Clarified Butter you get a butter fat with complex flavors that can take temperatures up to 500 degrees. Great for searing meat.

That Paul Prudhomme is awesome. Zatarains is OK, but Chef Paul’s is an amazing combo.of spices.

Great video Luke, never tried Olive Oil but I use unsalted butter when blackening.

That skillet!!! :O