British cuisine

Fish and chips

Name: Fish and chips
Prep time: 25 min
Cook time: 35 min
Total time: 60 min
Yield: 4
Cuisine: British cuisine
Ingredients: 800 g Cod fillet; 1 kg Potatoes; 200 g Plain flour; 50 g Cornflour; 300 ml Lager; 1 tsp Baking powder; 1.5 l Oil for frying; to taste Malt vinegar; to taste Salt

Cod in beer batter with twice-fried chips. The batter lives on cold and on the gas in the beer.

Prep: 25 min
Cook: 35 min
Total: 60 min
Difficulty: Medium

Servings

Units

Ingredients

Cod fillet — in 200 g pieces800 g
Potatoes — in 1.5 cm batons1 kg
Plain flour200 g
Cornflour50 g
Lager — ice cold300 ml
Baking powder1 tsp
Oil for frying1.5 l
Malt vinegarto taste
Saltto taste

Salt and spices grow more slowly than the rest: doubling a dish does not double the pepper.

Weight converts to ounces and volume to cups. Grams of flour are not turned into cups, because that depends on how tightly it is packed.

Method

1
Rinse the cut potatoes of their starch, dry them thoroughly and fry at 140 °C for six minutes. They should turn soft but stay pale. Set them aside to cool.
20 min
2
Mix the flour, cornflour and baking powder. Pour in the ice-cold beer and whisk only a few strokes — lumps are fine, an over-mixed batter turns tough.
5 min
3
Dry the fish, dust it in plain flour and shake off the excess. Without that the batter slides off in the oil.
5 min
4
Heat the oil to 190 °C. Dip the fish, let the excess run off and lower it in, holding it for a couple of seconds so it does not stick to the bottom. Fry six minutes.
12 min
5
Lift the fish out and finish the chips in the same oil for three minutes, until gold. Salt them at once, while hot.
6 min

About the dish

The batter has to be ice cold and the oil furiously hot. The bigger the difference, the more violently the water flashes off and the more open the crust — the same principle as tempura.

Beer does two jobs: the carbon dioxide lifts the batter, and the alcohol evaporates faster than water, so the coating dries before the fish overcooks.

The chips are fried twice. First at 140 °C, which cooks them through, then at 190 °C, which builds the crust. One pass cannot do both.

Worth knowing

— Drain onto a rack, not paper. On paper the underside steams and the crust is gone within a minute.
— Make the batter at the last moment. Twenty minutes standing and it has lost its gas and fries dense.
— Cod, haddock and pollock all work: what is wanted is a firm white fish that does not fall apart.

Nutrition

Per serving at the base yield, calculated from the ingredients rather than measured in a lab.

Calories: 890 kcal
Protein: 46 g
Fat: 40 g
Carbs: 88 g

Useful for this recipe

Oven Temperature Converter