Beer Battered Fish and Chips

Picture sourced from Wikisauga

Really good fish and chips are hard to come by. I find the type found in these parts to be generally quite soggy and lame. Growing up we had a fish and chip shop just up the street from my house. I remember when you got take out it would come in yesterdays newspaper; unhygienic? No, that was the best part.

Inside the restaurant was like the belly of a ship. Salt, pepper, ketchup and vinegar on every table – the perfect dinner companions. The menu was simple, fish, chips, some other deep fried seafood, and drinks. The food came quick and on a plate which was forever lightly greased.

I thought I would give it a shot in my home kitchen. This recipe came to me via Madelines Adaptations as adapted from Closet Cooking so much respect to the original posters!

Beer Battered Fish:
1 bottle/can beer
2 cups flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 beaten egg
1 pound white fish fillets (use whatever fresh white fish you have available)
salt and pepper
->insert something here<-
1/2 cup flour (for dredging)
oil for frying

Chips:
2 teaspoons vegetable oil
4 large potatoes
1 large egg white
Salt and pepper

Prepare the chips first. Preheat the oven to 425 degrees. Slice the potatos lengthwise into 1/2-inch thick slices. Then turn each slice flat and slice again lengthwise into fries, 1/2-inch thick. The trick is to cover your pan with parchment paper to protect them from sticking. I ended up bringing home wax paper from the store, which I discovered is not the same thing!!! So I lightly oiled the pan but this did not prevent these puppies from sticking. I think the egg adds even more glue for sticking.

Whisk the egg white till light and fluffy and pour it over the chips in a large bowl. The egg white will make your chips nice and crispy. This is a really neat trick that I just learned! You can also season your chips at this point. I kept it simple with salt and pepper.

Bake for 30 minutes, or until golden brown and crispy; halfway through the cooking time scrape the potatoes from the baking sheet and flip. Mine were so stuck after 15 minutes. I thought all hope was lost, however they still turned out really nice once I had scraped them off the pan.

Start preparing the fish as soon as you slide the chips in the oven. Fresh fish can be hard to come by in the desert so I used frozen kingklip fillets which I thawed out in advance. Season the fillets with some freshly group pepper.

Combine the beer, flour, baking powder salt and beaten egg in a flat bottomed bowl. Before adding the fish to the batter dredge them lightly with flour. Put the fish into the batter and leave them to soak for a good ten minutes.

Set up a little assembly line for your fish to take its last dip.

Remove the fish from the batter and gently place in hot oil. I used a combination of vegetable oil and olive oil. I believe that my oil was not hot enough. Also I think that olive oil is not meant for frying.

Fry the fish until golden brown, about 5-7 minutes, flipping half way through.

Drain on a rack and serve immediately with fresh lemon wedges.

The chips were really good, but I am still washing the bloody pan. The fish was missing something, as you can see in the recipe above I am still planning to find out what it was. Some sort of seasoning needs to be added to the batter. Maybe just more salt. It was not too crispy but the batter had a very nice consistency.

I also sauteed some spinach with garlic for a little iron. The local fish and chips place would be devastated.