Cooking Crappie

Cooking crappie is simple and delicious. Here's how I like to prepare my crappie.

I start by preparing a cooking station as seen above. From left to right, a zip lock bag, batter of choice, crappie fillets, milk and egg mixture, and a plate with a paper towel on top to hold the cooked fish. My personal batter favorites are Uncle Buck's Light n' Krispy Original found at Bass Pro Shops or Andy's Fish Breading found at Walmart. I actually did a blog on the Uncle Buck's batter last year which can be found here. The milk and egg mixture is simply 2 beaten eggs with about a half cup of milk. To the right, not pictured, is a cast iron skillet filled about 1" deep with vegetable oil at medium to medium high heat.

First, poor a good amount of your batter/breading of choice into the zip lock bag. For this batch I used the Andy's.

Next, grab a fillet, dunk it in the milk egg mixture, then toss it in the zip lock bag. Repeat until you have about a skillet load worth of fillets in the zip lock bag, for me this is typically 8-12 fillets. Ensure the zip lock is properly sealed, I've had a seal break in the past causing a big mess so be careful. Shake, twist, and tilt the bag around applying a liberal amount of the coating to the fish.

One at a time place the coated fillets into the hot grease and let the frying begin.

The size of the fillets and the temperature of the grease determines how long I cook the fish for. Typically 4-8 minutes (2-4 minutes per side) is the ideal cooking time. Monitoring the visual appearance of the fish is the best way, just wait until it turns a nice golden brown. Enjoy!

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