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Hush Puppies
I TABLESPOON FLOUR 2 TEASPOONS BAKING POWDER 2 CUPS MILK I TEASPOON SALT I EGG, BEATEN 6 TABLESPOONS CHOPPED ONION Sift dry ingredients together. Mix egg with milk and onion. Stir all together and beat. Drop by tablespoonfuls into kettle of deep fat where fish are being fried. Drain on paper and eat with the fish.
A fish-camp recipe in the strictest sense: the batter is cooked in the same fat as the fish, timed to come out with it. A few notes on proportions and frying.
- The batter is a cornmeal batterHush puppies are built on cornmeal, with only a spoonful or two of wheat flour for binding. No cornmeal appears in the ingredient list as printed, which looks like a dropped line; a cup or two of stone-ground yellow or white cornmeal is the missing element, alongside the tablespoon of flour, 2 teaspoons baking powder, teaspoon of salt, egg and onion given here.
- Liquid to feel, not to the letterTwo cups of milk will slacken a cornmeal batter considerably. Add it gradually and stop when the mixture drops thickly from a spoon and holds its shape for a second on the surface of the fat. A batter that runs will disperse into shreds.
- Fat temperatureDeep fat for fish is usually taken to around 350-365F. Cooler than that and the puppies soak; hotter and the outside colors before the crumb sets. A pan of fish will drop the temperature, so let it recover between batches.
- Size and timingTablespoon portions need 3 to 4 minutes, turning once if they do not roll themselves over. They are done when deep gold and they float high. Break one open on the first batch to check the center.
- CrowdingSix or eight at a time in a large kettle, no more. The original has them going into the same kettle the fish are frying in, so work in small batches around the fish.
- The onionSix tablespoons is a generous amount, roughly a third to a half of a medium onion. Chop it fine, or it will sit in pockets and steam rather than cook.
- YieldThis makes a couple of dozen or more hush puppies, enough for four to six alongside a fish supper. They are worth nothing reheated; serve them straight from the drain.
The name is traditionally explained as camp cooks tossing scraps of fried cornmeal batter to the dogs to quiet them, an origin story that is repeated everywhere and documented nowhere. What is certain is the pairing: across the American South, cornmeal fritters and fried freshwater fish have been cooked in the same kettle of fat at riverbanks and church fish fries for well over a century, the batter serving as both bread and a way to use the seasoned grease. The recipe belongs in an outdoor-cooking book precisely because it needs nothing a fish camp does not already have on hand -- meal, an egg, an onion, and a pot already at temperature.