hello this is chef john from food wishes comm with crispy beer batter fish and
chips that's right anybody can do a beer
batter fish that stays crispy for a few minutes but I'm sorry for me that is
just not long enough okay not to sound too high-maintenance but I kind of want
my crispy fried fish to stay crispy throughout the entire eating process and
by the way it's always a nice thing when the recipe that provides the best
results also just happens to be the easiest recipe which is the case here so
with that let's go ahead and get started with our batter and that's gonna begin
with one cup of self-rising flour which is nothing more than regular flour
that's milled with baking powder and salt and as usual I will tell you how to
mix up your own in the blog post which is super easy and only takes a second
and then to this flour we're also going to add about two tablespoons of rice
flour or if you want some other kind of non wheat flour okay some people like
cornstarch some people like potato starch which will also work but I like
the rice flour and then last but not least I'm also gonna add in a little
extra touch of baking powder and even though our self-rising flour already
contains baking powder I do like to add just a little bit more and that's it
we'll take a whisk and give this a mix until we have everything thoroughly
combined and that is now ready to finish off by stirring in our beer which by the
way I'm going to wait to do until I'm ready to use this and because one the
secrets here is keeping the batter as cold as possible what we'll do is
transfer these dry ingredients into the freezer and we'll leave this in there
until we're ready to mix in our beer and then once that's set we can move on to
prep our fish and today I'll be using some beautiful frozen cod which I gently
defrost it overnight in the fridge and if we are going to use frozen fish or
any fish for that matter we want to make sure to get it as dry as possible okay
so use some paper towels and blot off any excess moisture and then what we'll
do once our fish has been thawed and dried is possibly cut it down the middle
to make to approximately one inch thick strips sure we could have just fried
this as is but by cutting it not only will cook faster but we're also
increasing our surface area which means that much more crispy coating and then
what we'll do once that's cut is go ahead and dust those in a little bit of
seasoned rice flour be for they go in the batter and what this
is gonna do is absorb any of that last moisture on the surface and then once
that's been lightly dusted and we shake off the excess what we'll do is transfer
it onto some crinkled up foil and this is just gonna serve as sort of a drying
rack for that fish okay so that's gonna let some air circulate underneath and we
will have less chance of a soggy bottom oh by the way I'm just seasoning with a
little bit of salt but if you did want to sneak in some spices like curry
powder chili powder etc this would be a great step to do that but anyway we'll
go ahead and dust our fish in the rice flour along with like I said any other
seasonings we want and then because we want to keep everything cold well
transfer that into the fridge until we're ready to use it and that's it once
our fish is prepped in our oils hot we can pull our dry ingredients either
freezer and finish this batter off by pouring in some beer and for this I
recommend a nice inexpensive lager style okay I have one imported from Australia
in large blue cans but really any cheap lager is gonna work and that's because
you're more affordable can beers are gonna be nice and light in color and
taste not to mention have a nice high level of carbonation and all we're gonna
do is whisk it enough until it's as thick or as thin as we want okay so I'll
start with a nice big splash and I'll give it a stir and then I'll decide if I
need more which I did and what I'm going for is something similar to a nice thick
pancake batter all right keep in mind the thicker the batter the thicker the
coating once it's fried and since personally I want a nice thin crispy
coating I tend to go for a thinner batter and I'm actually gonna grab a
spoon so you can get a good look at what I'm talking about
okay so make it thicker if you want but I generally shoot for something that's
just gonna coat the fish and by the way I mentioned keeping everything cold as a
key so if you're not gonna use this right away pop it in the fridge or keep
it on a bowl of ice but I was starving and ready to fry so I'm going to
transfer in two pieces of my nice cold dry fish into the batter and then once
those are nicely coated we'll go ahead and lift them out letting most but not
all the batter drip off which plane we will carefully transfer that into some
375 degree oil and by the way I did that first piece wrong because we don't want
the oil splashing towards us so place it in like this so it splashes away from
and then what we'll do after making sure those aren't sticking together let's let
them fry for about three to four minutes or until they're crispy and beautifully
golden brown and there are some things we deep-fry that about halfway through
we can kind of tip them and flip them over
but fried fish isn't really one of them so don't worry about trying to turn them
over they can just cook with that same side down although sometimes to hedge my
bets I will give them a little dunking for a few seconds but anyway like I said
we'll let those go for about three or four minutes or until they look a little
something like this at which point we'll fish those out and
let those drain for a few seconds on some paper towel and as you can
hopefully see this recipe really does produce a gorgeous piece of fried fish
which we will want to serve immediately on top of either some french fries which
people in certain places call chips or on real actual chips and as you can see
I've lined the bowl with some newspaper and a little bit of an homage to actual
fish and chips speaking of which because malt vinegar
is often served with the fried fish I actually went with salt and vinegar
potato chips and that's it before I tuck in I went ahead and tucked in a little
bit of tartar sauce in a wedge of lemon which is not traditional with regular
fish and chips but is very very very traditional with Western New York
fish fries which is what I like to pretend this is and by the time I did
that it had been about 10 minutes is's came out of the fryer but it was still
crispy as you'll hear when I bite
oh yeah and what I find amazing with this recipe is that we've achieved this
level of Chris penis with such an incredibly thin coating I mean it's
barely there in fact this might even qualify as a low carb recipe oh and by
the way as I was taking this next bite I thought to myself I'm gonna stop and
take some pictures of the cross-section which is why you're about to see me
pinch off a jagged piece of the coating which as I was doing I realized would
look weird on camera so just something I wanted to mention because that would
have kept a few people up wondering why did he pinch that fish dick and of
course it's probably really obvious but I'll tell you anyway just because I use
Cod for this doesn't mean you have to I mean you are after all the Arthur
Treacher's of what sea creatures this features and virtually any fish or
seafood will work with this technique but anyway I went ahead and finished
that first piece and I went ahead and grabbed the second and even though it
had been quite a while since this came out of the fryer it was still just as
crispy as my first bite so I just absolutely love this formula oh and let
me give you a little tip here whether you're gonna use a tartar sauce or some
other sauce you want to go ahead and apply that to each bite
all right don't just slop it all on there at once otherwise everything is
gonna get soggy all right so the method we want to use is the bite sauce white
sauce white sauce whoop sorry it's actually the other way
around it's sauce white sauce white sauce white and that will help preserve
the Chris penis but anyway that's it my favorite method for doing beer battered
fish whether you're going to serve yours on regular chips or the British style
potato chips which are actually french fries which are really actually Belgian
fries but the point is no matter what you serve this on I really do hope you
give it a try soon so head over to food which is calm for all the ingredient
amounts of Martha as usual and as always enjoy
you