Other versions may be wetter, and those also have merit, but these are so good and so fast, I doubt I’ll stray much from this recipe in the future. They are not scooped and dropped right into the oil, but are rolled into balls, roughly the size of a whole walnut, by hand, then slipped into the hot oil to cook. This version has a very thick batter, almost more of a dough. Styles abound, of course, with regional and sub-regional variations, and you can gussy yours up as much as you want-but there’s really no need to push these tasty bits into any new territory.

In fact, the version we’ll present here-based on a recipe from -is so simple, it doesn’t even have any egg in the mix. They are made with a simple batter that is simply seasoned, usually with a little cayenne pepper and garlic, and studded with chopped onion. What are hush puppies?įirst, we should talk about what we’re talking about: hush puppies are cornmeal fritters. These simple sides are easy to whip up and well worth the effort, but there are one or two thermal tricks that can help you ace hush puppies from the get-go, even if you’ve never had them before. Now, granted, I haven’t spoken to every catfish-loving person in or from the South, but the fact that so many people from so many parts of the South all agreed on the same thing says something.Īnd, since we recently published a piece on fried catfish, we thought we may as well help you out with the hush puppies.

Every Southerner I have talked to about it, and I mean every one of them, has told me that the proper accompaniment to a catfish fry (or any other fish fry for that matter) is hush puppies.

Hush puupy