Breaded Oyster Po’ Boys are a Cajun favorite of fried oysters stacked on toasted French bread with all the fixin’s.
Breaded Oyster Po’ Boys
by Sue Lau | Palatable Pastime
Anyone who knows me well understands and knows my infatuation with fried oysters. They are my favorite, over and above any other type of oyster, hands down, including baked and raw.
Maybe it’s the crisp breading. (Can we say the word aloud?) Fried. But as Fat Tuesday arrives, and we celebrate our decadence before humbly entering into the Lenten season, I can feel justified shouting it from the rooftops: “Fried is good!”
Now I don’t advocate fried foods for every meal. It just isn’t practical. But for a special occasion sandwich, in my mind, this one is it. And I have posted another Po’ Boy sandwich before (Oyster of course!) and you might wonder if this is the same (it’s not).
I know a number of ways to make this, all equally good. The other recipe uses a Cajun style fry batter with a quick and dirty remoulade sauce. This one uses cracker crumbs, and the sauce is not quite remoulade, but a spicy sweet Cajun-spiced tartar sauce. Either way, the results are good. How can anyone *not* love oysters? They are a food of love (aphrodisiac) and deservedly so. We love ’em. Enjoy!
And for your day, remember….laissez les bons temps rouler!
~Sue
Breaded Oyster Po' Boys
Ingredients:
- 1 pint fresh oysters, drained, or 8-9 large oysters, shucked
- 3 crusty French bread sandwich rolls (sub/grinder/poboy sized), toasted in oven or toaster oven
- shredded lettuce (amount to taste)
- sliced ripe tomatoes (amount to taste)
- cooking oil
Breading:
- 1 cup finely crushed saltine crackers
- 1/4 cup all-purpose flour
- 1 tablespoon low-sodium Cajun spice
- 1/4-1/2 teaspoon black pepper
- 1/4 teaspoon garlic powder
Po’ Boy Sauce (yields 1/4 cup):
- 3 tablespoons tartar sauce
- 1 tablespoon thousand island dressing
- 1 teaspoon Cajun spice
- 1 teaspoon fresh lemon juice
- 1/2 teaspoon Louisiana hot sauce
Method:
- Stir together ingredients for the cracker coating in a small bowl.
- Stir together the ingredients for the Po’ Boy sauce in another small bowl.
- Shred lettuce and slice tomatoes.
- Drain oysters; roll them in cracker coating and set on a plate.
- Heat oil in a large skillet to hot but not smoking.
- While oil heats, cut a V-shaped indentation into the tops of the rolls and pull out some of the excess bread inside (don’t poke holes in the bread, k?)
- Toast the rolls in a toaster oven or regular oven heated to about 400F for a few minutes, until crisp.
- When the oil gets hot, take each oyster and roll it in the cracker crumbs again, then place in the oil.
- Do each one this way, not loading the skillet too fast, and giving them space to cook; cook each one a couple minutes on each side, or until they are golden and firmed up (but not hard or overbrowned). Drain oysters on brown paper or paper toweling.
- To build sandwich, place tomatoes along one side, fill bottom with shredded lettuce, top with several oysters and a drizzle of po’ boy sauce, and top with the other piece of roll.
From the kitchen of palatablepastime.com
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I love me some fried oysters. We come from the simplest is best school of thought – we simply dredge the drained oysters in seasoned flour and pan fry quickly so they don’t dry out but still hve a nice crispy outside. Fat Teusday is a perfect day for a po’boy.