Cajun Hush Puppy Recipe

This super easy Cajun hush puppy recipe has just a few ingredients and will be on your table in minutes. The lively spices mean you'll never again have bland hush puppies!

Hush puppies are traditionally served with seafood in the south, but are actually quite delicious with any meal. Knowing our love for Cajun and Creole foods we put a spin incorporating those flavors in our recipe.

A mild bit of spice (that you can kick up if you like) plus peppers and onions give them a fun Louisiana style.

Ingredients & Substitutions

• Self-rising cornmeal mix - no need to worry about adding baking powder or baking soda. The perfect proportions are already here. Find it on the baking aisle of your store next to the plain cornmeal. It's the basis for lots of recipes here, including the cornbread for our famous Southern Style Cornbread Dressing.
• Self-rising flour - Just a little bit to bind the cornmeal mix and give this hush puppy recipe the perfect texture! If you don't have any refer to our Three Ingredient Buttermilk Biscuit post for directions on making your own.
• Onion - any sweet onion will do fine, but if Vidalia onions are in season be sure to use them.
• Egg - large is standard.
• Creole/Cajun Seasoning - Our favorite is Tony Chachere Original but you can make your own homemade if you like. Refer to this Grilled Blackened Chicken recipe for that.
• Buttermilk - low-fat or full fat will work just fine. The Easy Buttermilk Biscuit post also has a formula for making a buttermilk substitute if you need to.
• Diced Peppers - As always we like to be versatile in our recipes. Traditional Cajun and Creole dishes typically use bell pepper and that works great as long as you dice very finely. For extra heat you could use jalapeno (pickled will be hotter than fresh with ribs and seeds removed). We grow poblano peppers every year so we've got them on hand a lot. They're awesome in this Cajun hush puppy recipe!
• Sugar - Plain white sugar is used sparingly. It's not enough to make the hush puppies sweet, but just enough to cut the saltiness a little.
• Cayenne Pepper - A totally optional addition for those that really love the heat!
• Vegetable Oil - Our go-to is canola, but peanut oil is good, or any vegetable oil that you have on hand.

How to make this Cajun hush puppy recipe

It's really super simple!

1. First you'll mix the dry ingredients
2. Grate the onion and stir it into the dry ingredients along everything else. Just get it all well blended.
3. Heat your oil to 350-360 degrees.
4. Drop by cookie-scoop full or rounded Tablespoon into hot oil.
5. Cook about 2 minutes stirring around to get all sides evenly browned.
6. Remove with a slotted spoon and drain on paper towels before serving hot.

(Full instructions in recipe card below)

Tips and Tricks

• Using a deep pan means less mess from oil splatters.
• Grating the onion rather than mincing it gives onion flavor without overpowering your Cajun hush puppies.
• We've found the 350-360 degree range to be the perfect amount of heat. Your puppies will get done in the middle without overbrowning.
• A medium (1.5 Tablespoon) cookie scoop makes the perfect size and is easy to work with (order one below if needed).
• Finely mince whatever your pepper of choice.
• Cook just a few hush puppies at the time so they have room to brown evenly. They cook quickly so even if you need to cook 3 or 4 batches you'll be done in less than 10 minutes.

Items you may need

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• For a full fledged fish fry you'll want to have a deep fryer that you can set up outdoors. We have one similar to this and it gets lots of use.
• For indoors this stock pot is what we have found to be the perfect size.
• A cookie scoop like this makes evenly sized hush puppies.

Storage: How to keep them

Any leftover hush puppies can be stored tightly covered in the fridge for up to 5 days.

For longer than 5 days they can be frozen. Before reheating let them thaw and then heat for about 5 minutes in a 375-400 degree oven or toaster oven.

How to serve and what to serve them with

Traditionally served with fish and all types of seafood hush puppies would go great with fried shrimp, fried oysters or these air fryer catfish fillets.

They're also really amazing anytime you would serve cornbread, like with country fried steak or fried chicken, for example.

A new idea that we can really get on board with is to serve them as a fun appetizer. Just add an interesting dipping sauce like homemade Remoulade.

For a quick and fun look at this recipe check out the Google Web Story.

📖 Recipe

More Cajun and Creole recipes: