Southern Hush Puppies: How to Make Crisp, Classic Cornmeal Fritters

The useful part

Joanna Cismaru • Last Updated: 9/23/26 3 Comments This post may contain affiliate links. Southern Hush Puppies are little fried cornmeal fritters with onion through them, shatteringly crisp on the outside and soft in the middle. They take about 3 minutes in the oil and they're best about 4 minutes after that.

How it works

• Guessing at oil temperature is how this goes wrong, and it's the only fussy part of the whole recipe.
• If you make this, please leave a review and rating letting us know how you liked this recipe!
• They brown faster with cheese in them, so watch the color.
• Still hot enough to be slightly dangerous, crisp all the way around, soft and steamy inside.
• Nobody has ever managed to get these to the table without one going missing on the way.

What to take from it

The only thing standing between you and good hush puppies is oil temperature, and I'll walk you through that below because it's the one thing that goes wrong. This usually happens on batch 2, because a batch of cold batter drops the oil temperature hard and most people don't wait for it to recover. Good, but softer and less crisp, because a hush puppy is a fried food and the frying is most of the point.

Example or evidence

• You stir it together in a bowl, scoop it into hot oil, and 3 minutes later you're done.
• Puppies (And Yes, There Are Also Shoes) A hush puppy is a small ball of seasoned cornmeal batter, deep fried until golden.
• If you landed here looking for footwear, I'm sorry, this is going to be a disappointing page for you.
• Nobody can prove it and food historians have been rolling their eyes at it for decades, but it's a better story than most, so it persists.

Details worth keeping

This is the plain, classic version, and it's the one worth learning. There's a short window, maybe 5 minutes, when a hush puppy is perfect. Cornmeal, flour, baking powder, an onion, buttermilk, an egg.

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