Fried Fish for a Crowd
Erv Ohman
Ingredients
1 ½ cups Fry Krisp Batter Mix
20 fish filets
beer or water to mix
peanut oil – Erv likes the Shore Lunch Brand
Heat oil to 375˚
Using a five quart ice cream pail, add beer or water to Batter Mix, stirring well until it is a consistency of cream. If the batter thickens over time, add more liquid. Dump the fillets into the batter.
Using a tongs, pull fillets from the batter and drop them into the oil. Cook until after the fish stops bubbling, turns brown and floats to the surface.
Remove each fillet with the tongs and drop into a paper bag with three layers of paper towels on the bottom. The bag absorbs the excess oil.
Refrigerate left over fried fish and reheat in the microwave or toaster oven.
Erv Ohman is very particular about fish. He never orders it in a restaurant. He and his wife Iris experimented until they came up with fried fish that makes people ask for the recipe, that his kids request for Christmas dinner, and that is the best tasting fried fish people have ever eaten even when reheated in the microwave.
“We do it together,” Iris said. “I fish, he fishes, we filet ‘em together. I mix up the batter and he fries ‘em.”
“You don’t want the batter too thick,” Erv explained. “You want it thin, almost like milk.”
“More like cream,” Iris commented. ““If it starts getting too thick, you add more water or beer.”
Both Iris and Erv have been fishing all their lives, but they didn’t start fishing together until they were introduced one cold January night in 1975. “We started talking,” Erv said, “and we were still visiting, talking about our lives and stuff, when the paperboy came.” They both laughed. “We sat out in the car and talked all night.” Iris said. Erv gave her a diamond on Valentine’s Day and they were married in March.
“I couldn’t be any luckier than when we got together,” Erv said. “So many things alike. We travel; we fish; motorcycles.” The travel and the fish led to some very big fish fries down in south Texas where Iris and Erv spend their winters in a motor home.
The little community in which they live puts on fish fries. “We have 5 or 6 cookers and we maybe have 500 filets and 100 people,” Erv said. “We take some sunnies along,” Iris added. Not 500, although sunfish are Erv’s favorite fish. After much experimenting, Erv settled on the best oil for frying fish and the best temperature for his 2 gallon cooker. Iris found the best batter mix. They take five bags of batter mix and Erv’s frying tools and cooker with them when they leave Pelican for Texas. Together, they make the kind of fried fish that people eat hot out of the cooker and keep coming back for more.