My Mother Never Would Wash Her Cast Iron Pan Or Dutch Oven In Soap Water Don't Know Why But She Was One Hell Of A Cook. Had Something To Do With Seasoning She Used Some Kind Of Stuff To Clean It ???? Any Body Else Know About That. We Just Cooked 16 Pounds Of Crappie Last Sunday And All Went Well Remember To Adjust The Air On Your Cast Iron Burner To Burn Hot Not Lazy Yellow Flame Hot Blue Flame

The best way I know to make fish soggy no matter how they are cooked, is to cover them tightly after cooking. The hot fish will cause foil/lids to condensate and the result is soggy crappie. The longer they sit under the cover, the soggier they get. This is why restauarants use heat lamps. If you need to keep flies, or bugs away, make yourself, or buy a cover made from screen wire and don't pile em too high.

I didnt catch up on all the posts in this thread so I may be repeating something already said, but it sounds like your cooker is under powered, either too small a burner or too weak a regulator. If it were me I'd start with getting an adjustable pressure regulator. Once you turn the pressure up if the flame wont stay on the burner and keeps going out then your burner is just too small. That's my 2 cents...

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Just back from the wild game supper. The cooker was fine. I used one 9 qt. cast iron pot and an aluminum one. Both worked, but I had to keep the gas roaring on the aluminum side. I cooked fries, catfish, then venison..all good. I'm ready for the next fish fry now!!

Yes there are different type of burners. I have a larger about 8 inch diameter burner that takes hours to heat the oil. I have a smaller diameter burner that sounds louder that must be controlled by a valve. The smaller one makes cooking so much easier. Adjusting the air on the larger burner will not make any difference as it is a lower btu burner and is not suitable for this purpose.

I had this happen to me one time while I was trying to fry a turkey. Oil was taking too long to heat up but I figured out why. It turns out that I turned the needle valve for the burner on before I opened the valve on the gas tank. For some reason, the burner will not generate much BTU when that happens. So I turned both valves off, turned the valve at the tank on first then the needle valve for the burner, I got a flame like a jet engine!