Delicious Deep-Fried Seafood Platter

During Madison’s recent visit, I made a pan-fried seafood meal and I was anxious to make a deep-fried seafood platter.  I used the shrimp and scallops from our Joe Pattie Seafood haul and crappie from our normal source and our go-to breading recipe from Food Network – I made half a breading recipe shown below.

Deep-Fried Seafood Platter for 4 servings

Ingredients:

8 small crappie filets

16 16-20 shrimp, cleaned & butterflied

6 sea scallops

1 1/3 cups pale ale (Yuengling for me)

1 egg

4 teaspoons garlic powder

4 teaspoons onion powder

1 1/4 teaspoons seafood seasoning, such as Old Bay

1 teaspoons baking powder

1/4 teaspoons salt

1/8 teaspoon ground black pepper

1/2 teaspoon cayenne pepper

1/2 cup plus 1 tablespoons cornstarch

2/3 cups all-purpose self-rising flour, plus additional for coating fish

Oil for frying

Directions:

1. Prep the seafood.

2. Pour beer into a large bowl. Add egg, garlic powder, onion powder, seafood seasoning, baking powder, salt, pepper and cayenne, then add cornstarch. Whisk in flour until batter is smooth and like pancake batter (I made it a little thinner).

3. Heat oil in a fryer to 350 degrees F.

4. Lightly flour each piece of fish, then dip in beer batter and fry until crispy and golden brown, 5 to 7 minutes. (I fried the crappie first and kept it warm in the oven).

We served the fish with tartar and cocktail sauces and sided it with coleslaw.  My plate and I could only eat a couple bites of slaw.

The Verdict:

We all thought it was delicious and the coating was, again, tasty, light and crispy.  I decided the crappie and shrimp are great prepared this way but I prefer the scallops un-breaded and pan fried.  Even using just half a breading recipe I had quite a bit leftover so it would have done about half again as much fish.  Bev’s coleslaw was delicious made with a head of fresh, sweet cabbage from this week’s trip to the Mennonite market.

Photos can be enlarged by clicking on them and the blue words are links.

Have a great day and thanks for stopping by Almost Heaven South.

Larry

6/12/24 meal date