Fish n' Chips

BlaRo

Little Nudger
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"London! Fish, chips, cup o' tea, bad food, worse weather, Mary fucking Poppins!"

Anybody here make fish and chips before? And with what type of fish? I bought some haddock today and I'm going to attempt an experiment: to see whether or not using good beer (Sam Adams, one of the winter classics) in the batter will make a difference over using shitty beer (Natty Light). Any thoughts?
 
good beer will always be better, but in combination with fish, is wouldn't go for a beer with an all to distinct or strong taste, or you won't taste your fish no more...
 
Whenever I've made beer batter, it's always with the same beer you would drink. You're not going to sit down with a cold Foster's, so why the hell would you pour it into your food?
 
I haven?t done it with fish so far but with vegetables ... and I?ve done it with Pilsener or sparkling water ... and I couldn?t really taste a difference ... If anything, the Batter made with sparkling water, was more airy (?) and therefore of better texture after the deep-frying.
Maybe if you take beer with a stronger taste it will come though or it?s a different story if you use fish, I don?t know. But personally, I don?t Use beer for that type of batter anymore ...
 
I always mix an egg white into the batter too, to add to the fluffiness.
 
Pretty sure Heston Blumenthal did fish and chips on his "perfection" series but i can't find it online.
 
UK Fish and Chips is usually either Cod or less often Haddock. The chips are as important and need to be something like a Maris Piper. The oil is better if it is animal based - Yorkshire or Scottish F&C are the best by a mile in my experience.

You should use soft water or fizzy for the batter 50-50 with the beer as you say you are going to use.

How NOT to do it:

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Not funny but how to do it properly:

[YOUTUBE]6OhkUbwZWak[/YOUTUBE]
 
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"Fish was introduced to britain in the 1970's by vikings..."
:lol:

Ok I had a bit longer look and found this...

[YOUTUBE]rQaLjLJtDEQ[/YOUTUBE]
 
Haddock is my preference, but then I'm Scottish. Heston knows what he's doing but that's extreme, I'm of the opinion the brand of beer doesn't really matter, it's the carbonation you're after mainly and since lagers tend to be the fizziest of beers it's best to stick to that.

Don't forget the mushy peas and tartare sauce.
 
hmm, I live in the fish and chips capital of the world and I don't know very much about cooking it :blink:

I eat it here and there though, almost always cod with some kind of ome made batter - obviously
 
How not to do it: accidentally char your kitchen with an oil fire a la ninjacoco. (Never mind that my kitchen seems to have two settings: "raw" and "kill it with fire" and the latter seems to be my usual method of cooking things.)

When I finally did the fish successfully, though, I had an idiotproof little deep fryer thing. Used cod and Shiner. Don't remember the recipe, though, but it was surprisingly edible for something I made...and darn tasty in malt vinegar. I think I should've used a lighter beer or something, though--the batter came out a bit heavy (...but still: mmm, Shiner).
 
I used to be a fry cook at a local seafood restaurant and I made all of our fish 'n chips. Unfortunately, our batter mix was bought in, and we used soda water, not beer, but the result was still quite tasty. My personal favorite was halibut. I find it much meatier than haddock, but they are both quite good. When I make it at home, my batter mix consists of flour, some corn starch, lots of salt and pepper and enough beer to make enough batter for however much fish I have (I usually use Sleeman's Cream Ale or Honey Brown).
 
I used to make fish and chips quite often until my mum banned me from frying in the house. Cod and tilapia are what I used, along with some random pi?wasser.
 
Also, catfish is an amazing alternative to other whitefish for fish 'n chips.
 
^Yeah, I had that ages ago at some random restaurant and it was very good.
 
Catfish is tricky, it's the one fish I don't like to eat wild. Being a bottom feeder Catfish can get a real disgusting lake water taste. Farm-raised is delicious though, especially blackened.
 
I miss the ready availability of cod back in England, it tastes so much better than the pollock we commonly get here in the middle of nowhere (also called Arizona by some). Tilapia wasn't bad either. As for recipes and cooking methods, I can appreciate the effort some people put into making "the perfect fish and chips" but for me personally that kind of defeats the purpose of the dish. For me it's something that's easy and quick to make and is light on my wallet. It does a fantastic job at both, and is hard to make poorly enough for it to taste bad.
 
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