Talking Food with Cory Bahr: Hush Puppies

I'm Chef Corey Bahr and today we're talking hush puppies.

One of my favorite things in the South is a fish fry. But one of my least favorite things is a bad hush puppy and today we're going to teach you how to make the best hushpuppy ever. First off, we start with self-rising flour. That's about a cup of self-rising flour. Into that, we're going to add half a cup of self-rising cornmeal. You just fold that together very gently. Make sure it's incorporated.

We're going to add all our and dry ingredients. First, we're going to add some salt. This is about a teaspoon of salt.

Two teaspoons of our housemate Creole seasoning. You can use Tony's that's fine. We just use what we make here. We have about one jalapeno that's a diced. And we have about one medium yellow onion. This is Vidalia onion. We're going to use some of it right now. We're just going to combine that. I love a ton of onion. If you don't, you don't have to add it all. It's no problem. This is more of teaching you a process than a strict recipe. Into this, we're going to add one egg.

And again, we're just going to fold that in. Now here's the tricky part, you can't really measure the amount of milk you need to add. So we start with about half a cup.

We fold that in and what you're looking for is to make something about the consistency of wet sand. One of the mistakes people do, they make this they'll turn around and try to fry it right off the bat. What you have to do is make this mixture and all your liquid ingredients and let it sit for about 15 or 20 minutes and then that will allow all the flour and cornmeal to hydrate which will yield you a more fluffy and more delicious hush puppy. Secret time. When you're frying. About 350 degrees where you want to be.

You take your spoon, you dip it in your hot oil... right into your hushpuppy.

Just let it fall off your spoon, you will continue to do that. Just let it fall off. You can see now how these are puffing up and they look more like donuts than hush puppies and that's because you're gonna have a great light, airy interior and a nice crisp exterior. hush puppies will turn themselves when they're ready, you just give them a little nudge and they'll flip right over. They take about two to two and a half minutes per side 350 degrees. Don't rush them. Cook a small batch to begin with about that temperature and about that time. Take them out and taste and make sure the right. You know, if you need to add more salt, add more salt. If you need to add more spice, add more spice. This is really a base recipe for your imagination to take over. They look nice and done to me. We're going to take them right out onto a paper towel-lined pan. I always like to just lightly salt things as they come out of the fryer.

Just a little dab of kosher salt.

There you have it. My favorite hush puppies.