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Fish Chips
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Dish Deep Dive: Fish & Chips

On this month's Dish Deep Dive, we're going to explore the ins and outs of fish and chips. You'll be frying cod better than your local chippy in no time.

Ok, here we go: dish deep dive number one, and what better way to start than with the mighty fish and chips? In this feature, we’re going to be grabbing the bull by the horns and get to the bottom of exactly what it is about fish and chips that we, as Brits, love so much. Once we’ve all recognised the obvious, I’ll try and make the best version of fish and chips I possibly can. This feels a little like a David versus Goliath match up but, hey, let’s give it a go.

To describe fish and chips as an institution doesn't quite do it justice. This Friday night treat is the greasy, beating heart of what many believe to be the meagre showing that is British cuisine. Now, parking that accusation aside for now, what exactly is a fish and chips and where did it come from? Well, before the marriage of fish n’ chippies was official, they were single, living their best lives out on their own in the world. As with almost all of the best foods in the world, we can thank immigration for fish and chips. Spanish and Portuguese Jews brought the delicacy to London as an interpretation of Pescado Frito in the 16th Century. Following the dawn of trawl method fishing in the 19th Century, combined with a blossoming national rail network, fresh fish could now be whisked around the country with ease. A few shrewd business people started serving this fish dunked in beer and fried with chips and that was that. The nation fell in love, and the love affair continues to this day.

While available from a staggering variety of outlets, the natural home of fish and chips is the down-to-earth, no-frills, local ‘chippy’. My local growing up had the comforting name Mother Kelly’s. I never had the pleasure of meeting Kelly herself, but I can confirm her pea fritters are excellent. What’s a pea fritter, you ask? Don’t worry, there’ll be more on that later. Beyond the doors of those chip shops you’ll find fish and chips flying out of roadside vans, greasy spoons, zhuzhed-up gastropubs and even on aeroplanes. Basically, it’s everywhere. so you won’t have to look far to get your fix. So, when you get there, what exactly should you order?

When you bop down to the chip shop, you’ll generally be greeted by a menu that’s largely the same as every other. What makes fish and chips a fiercely regional dish are the subtle differences that exist from town to town – the most significant being that the north and the south use different fats to cook their fish suppers. Up norf’ it’s beef dripping. Eating fish and chips from the Magpie Cafe in Whitby Bay is a life-changing experience. They serve golden tranches of fish so heavily perfumed with beefy flavour they could, at first whiff, be mistaken for a delicious slice of roast topside. South of the midlands the fat of choice is vegetable oil, which lends a much cleaner but, to some, lacklustre flavour.

It’s an oceanic minefield, and a shit fish and chips will not only ruin your day, but your stomach, too. Let’s get into how to nail eating, ordering, and cooking fish chips. My personal barometer for a good fish supper are detailed below. Full disclosure: we’ll be embarking on this deep dive on my terms. So if you’re in, stick around, if you’re out, get out, and take your soggy chips with you.

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What Are The Goals Here…

My perfect fish and chips is made up of five key features. They must contain

  1. Juicy, flaky, perfectly seasoned fish.

  2. Crispy, light, craggy batter.

  3. Beautiful golden colour.

  4. No soggy chips. Chips are crunchy on the outside, fluffy in the middle.

  5. Tartar sauce, mushy peas, fresh lemon for the fish and malt vinegar for the chips.

Fish and chips deep dive

Let’s Start With Chips:

Disclaimer: I know my above demand for crispy chips will have pissed off 60% of you who for some ungodly reason love a bag of soggy chips. But I don’t care. We’re on my terms, remember? If you insist on soggy chips, make these and leave them in a paper bag for 20 mins, sorted.

Chips are made of two ingredients; 1. Potatoes. 2. Fat.

With such a spartan ingredient list, you’re going to need to pick the right potato and fat to pull this off. The easiest way to figure out which potatoes are needed for different dishes is to think about where they sit on the potato spectrum, where you have waxy at one end and floury at the other.

Waxy potatoes are packed full of moisture and are low in starch. They really retain their structure and bite when cooked. Think Cyprus potatoes, new potatoes or Charlottes. These potatoes are not the ones for chipping as they won’t give you the fluffy mash-like interior of a beautifully cooked chip. They’ll always be a bit too firm and never get quite as crispy thanks to the moisture retention.

A floury potato contains far more ‘dry matter’ (i.e. not water) and is packed with starch that will properly ‘mash’ when cooked. The secret to good chips is cooking a floury potato to the point where it is almost mash, then halting the cooking and deep frying the chip-shaped mash before it completely falls apart. Sounds easy, right? You have one option here. Maris. Pipers. There really isn’t another variety of readily-available potato that will come close to the mighty piper for chipping. An MP is classed as a ‘floury’ potato alongside King Edward, Desiree and Agria. Agria potatoes are maybe the number one, but are a pain in the butt to get hold of. If you happen across some at your local deli, scoop up a kilo and make some chips.

I tested a few different approaches to chips. I tried triple-cooked, oven-roasted, fried from raw, blanched then fried, blanched frozen then fried. A lot of chips got chipped. I landed on blanched then medium fried as my chip of choice. The perfect chip for fish and chips is one that has been boiled in very salty water until it is on the edge of collapsing into mash, gently scooped out of the water and left to air dry until cool. The cooled mash sticks are then lowered into 170°C oil and cooked for 7-8 mins until shatteringly crisp and golden on the outside and perfectly fluffy in the middle. F**king good chippies.

NB: A special shout out to triple-cooked chips – the choice of every self-proclaimed “gastropub” and the pinnacle of chipping hype circa 2007 – for being a huge waste of everyone's time.

What Fish Should We Use?

Before we get into it, a good top line rule for fish is to get your butt down to the local fishmonger (we all have one, you just might not have met yours yet) and ask them what fish is best for frying right now. It might sound weird, but just like veggies, fish have seasons. Just as you shouldn’t eat a strawberry in December, it’s not ideal to be eating mackerel in the middle of winter or a big bowl of mussels under the beating August sun. Pick a fish that is bang-in season and you’re already onto a winner.

The decision is also fiercely regional. You won’t find folks from east Yorkshire ordering cod down the chippy. The Cod Wars of the mid twentieth century left a bad taste in the mouth of those from Hull and neighbouring port towns embroiled in the tussle with Iceland over North Sea fishing territories. Down in Kent, you’ll find skate wing on every menu; in Essex, it’s rockfish,; cod in Cornwall; and if you jet off to Seattle (one of the few spots in the US where fish and chips is a roaring trade) you’ll find pacific salmon on the menu. Each choice is dictated by what fish swims in local water, and what the locals think of it.

If, like me, you live in London, or any other landlocked city largely free of fishy traditions, the choice is yours. I am a big fan of cod – it has a clean, lean, delicate flavour, flakes beautifully and, when cooked perfectly, has a beautiful pearlescent sheen. I also love hake, which boasts a slightly higher fat content and rewards the eater with the richness of a more oily fish while retaining the flaky structure of the white fish family. This time, I’m going for cod.

To get the most out of whatever fish you land on, you’ll want to season it. For me, brining is the best way to do this. Brining is an ancient preservation technique that revolves around the salting of foodstuffs to change the texture of the product and prohibit the growth of nasty bacteria. Brining can be wet or dry, wet being a salt solution and dry being a dry salt mixture rubbed directly onto the product. The brining process effectively draws moisture out of the product and chucks in a load of salt, seasoning the protein. Remember osmosis from your Year 9 science class? Well, this is the moment where that knowledge finally comes in handy.

Brining will help season the fish, not only making it taste better, but improving its overall texture, too. After an hour or so of being exposed to salt and sugar, the flesh will firm up, making it easier to handle, batter, fry and – ultimately – eat. I favour a dry brine over a wet brine every time. It’s much cleaner, more direct, and doesn’t saturate your product with a load of salty water, it simply concentrates the flavour of the protein. Winner, winner, fishy dinner.

Let’s Talk Batter

This, for me, is the single most important element of this whole endeavour. The fish is the hero of this show and the batter is its costume, we’ve got to get it right.

A common mistake people make is to assume that you are frying both the batter and the thing battered as one entity. A better way to think about it is to separate the batter and the product encased within. Your goal should be to fry the batter to crispy perfection while the product inside steams, never meeting a single drop of oil.

To make a batter that’ll achieve this we’ll combine regular, glutinous flour (plain wheat flour, bread flour,etc) with a gluten-free flour or modified starch (such as rice flour, corn starch, tapioca starch) and a leavener. The gluten will give your batter structure, the gluten-free flour will keep it dead crispy and give it the shatter factor and the leavener gives it some lift. I tested a few different recipes for batter including tempura-style, a classic beer batter, and some more modern approaches.

Regardless of what technique you’re going for, you’ll need a liquid to hydrate all of these dry ingredients and transform them from powder to a thick, smooth batter. Water is fine, but If you’re after very, very, hilariously crispy batter then you need to get down to the off-licence and pick up a bottle of vodka. Booze is your friend when frying, and high-proof booze like vodka is far more volatile than water – it’ll evaporate almost instantly when dunked into hot oil, gifting you with a lacy, frilly, crispy casing for your fish. Vodka is best as it has a very neutral flavour. If you use whiskey, gin or rum, you’ll have fish and chips that taste like that booze but, hey, maybe you’re into that. Do your thing. A combination of lager and vodka worked best for me, the classic flavour of beer batter worked great with the insane texture that vodka brings. Perfect.

Oh, and everything should be really cold for the best results, even the dry ingredients. Again, this has to do with getting rid of moisture ASAP, so if you’re super keen, put your flours in the fridge and your booze in the freezer. A pro move when frying fish is to spoon over a bit of extra batter as the fish fries – this gives even more gnarly, craggy bits to crunch into later.

Fish and chips recipe

Fat

The test for this was simple and the choice easy. We fried both fish and chips in 100% veg oil, 100% beef fat and a blend of the two. A blind taste test revealed that the veg oil was lacking flavour, the beef fat was pretty intense, with far too much bovine punch. In true Goldilocks fashion, the blend was just right. Job done.

Garnish

Now, it gets really personal. Tartar sauce is a must, as is fresh lemon. To whip up a good tartar sauce grab 4 tbsp of really good mayo and stir through diced capers, gherkins, shallots, dill, parsley and chives. Lob in a glug of white wine vinegar and a load of black pepper and lemon zest. Delicious.

The world is your oyster here, you can go curry sauce, a shit load of vinegar, mayo, ketchup, brown sauce. Whatever. Have fun with it. After all that rambling, we’ll relinquish some control back to you, the reader.

A final thought – If you ever find yourself near Portsmouth on the south coast, grab yourself a pea fritter. A big brown ball of mushy peas, battered and deep fried. A truly elite side order, and only suitable to eat drowned in malt vinegar. Bliss.

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