Blackened Cod (Blackening Rub)

I think Heather and I have finally reached the point where the consensus is screw snow.

It seems that every joyous morning we wake up in wonderful Indiana and overnight, magically, a couple more inches of the death powder has fallen.  If it is not snow we are waking up to temperatures in the negatives with the windchill being insanely worse (we have danced in the -40s with windchill a few morning).  Thanks to the splendid cold weather we have been forced back inside the house.  Pair this with no new shows on TV thanks to the Olympics we have a lot of time to talk.  Of course our conversations go exactly to what brought us together in the first place, which is food.  And one thing we've started to realize was for some strange unknown reason, fish is something we rarely do.  Which is odd because even in Indiana it is easily accessible and reasonably priced.

Instantly when we started talking about making more fish but no grill because of those -143° temperatures my mind went straight to it has to be blackened.

This then set us on the path to make a nice spicy blackening powder that brought that awesome bold flavor, but had plenty of back end heat to warm you up on a cold night.

Besides working on fish this spice rub is also amazing on chicken, pork, and even those strange things called vegetables.

Blackened Cod

To make the spice rub you just need:

• 1/4 cup paprika
• 2 TB salt
• 1 TB dried oregano
• 1 TB onion powder
• 1 TB granulated garlic
• 1 TB cayenne
• 1 teaspoon ground thyme
• 1 teaspoon ground marjoram
• 1/4 teaspoon ground bay

Combine everything and mix well.  This should stay for months but honestly it will not last that long.

For the fish it is very straight forward:

• Grab your cod fillets and pat them dry
• In your favorite cast iron skillet or other heavy bottomed pan, heat up a couple TB of butter to just smoking
• While the butter is heating up, cover both sides of the cod in the blackening powder.
• Gently lay the fillets in the butter and cook for 4-5 minutes a side (just until the fish started to flake).
• Put it on a plate and spoon some of the leftover butter from the skillet over top of the cod.