Fish and Chips

Name: Fish and Chips
Total time: 55 min
Yield: 4
Cuisine: British (English)
Ingredients: 4 fillets (about 180 g each) Skinless white fish fillets (cod or haddock); 1 kg Floury potatoes (Maris Piper or King Edward); 150 g Plain flour; 50 g Cornflour (cornstarch); 1 tsp Baking powder; 200 ml Ice-cold sparkling water; Fine salt; 2 L Neutral oil for deep-frying; Malt vinegar

Britain's Friday-night takeaway: a fillet of white fish in a light, shattering batter next to thick, soft-centred chips, eaten with salt and a shake of malt vinegar.

Fonte

Ricetta di English home & pub kitchens · 🏺 Tradizionale · Everyday English cooking — the food of home kitchens, cafés and pubs rather than any one chef

English · traditional takeaway — An ownerless traditional dish, so no cook is credited. The cited article traces battered fried fish to Sephardic Jewish immigrants and dates the first combined fish-and-chip shops to 1860s Britain (Joseph Malin in London, John Lees in Mossley); it confirms the plain flour-and-water batter (with beer as a common alternative), that beef dripping is the traditional frying fat while vegetable oils — including peanut oil — now predominate, that cod and haddock are the usual fish, and that salt and malt vinegar are the classic seasoning. Quantities and method here are this book's own.

Background on Wikipedia ↗

Watch it being made · 3 videos

The Cooking Foodie The Golden Balance Andy Cooks

⏱ 55 min🍽 4 porzioni🔥 780 kcal🇬🇧 Regno Unito

HalalPescetarianoSenza latticini

Passaggi

Peel the potatoes and cut them into thick chips. Rinse them under cold water until it runs clear, then boil them in salted water for 6–8 minutes, until a knife slides in but they still hold their shape. Drain and leave them to steam-dry on a tray.
💡 Rinsing washes off surface starch so the chips crisp instead of sticking, and the pre-boil is what gives them a soft, fluffy inside. Dry chips fry crisp; wet ones spit and go soggy.
Heat the oil to 140°C in a deep, heavy pan no more than half full. Fry the chips in batches for about 6 minutes without letting them colour — this is the soft first fry. Lift them out and set aside; they can wait an hour like this.
💡 Never fill a frying pan more than halfway — the oil rises and foams the moment food goes in. If you have no thermometer, a cube of bread should sizzle lazily and take about a minute to brown at this temperature.
Make the batter only when you are ready to fry the fish. Whisk the plain flour, cornflour, baking powder and a pinch of salt together, then pour in the ice-cold sparkling water and whisk just to a thin, lumpy cream — stopping while a few lumps remain.
💡 Overmixing develops the flour's gluten and turns the crust chewy. A few lumps are correct — they cook out. Batter made ahead goes flat, so mix it at the last minute.
Raise the oil to 180°C. Pat the fish dry, dust each piece in plain flour, then dip it into the batter and lower it gently into the oil, holding it for a second so it sets before it sinks. Fry for 5–7 minutes until deep gold and crisp, turning once. Drain on a rack.
💡 The flour dusting gives the wet batter something to grip, so it does not slide off in the oil. Lower the fish away from you so any splash goes away from your hand.
Bring the oil back up to 190°C and fry the par-cooked chips again, in batches, for 2–3 minutes until golden and crisp. Tip onto kitchen paper and salt them at once, while they are still glossy with oil.
💡 The second, hotter fry is where all the crunch comes from. Salt sticks to hot oily chips and slides off cold dry ones, so season the instant they land.
Serve straight away, fish beside chips, with malt vinegar and more salt at the table — and mushy peas or a wedge of lemon if you like.

💡 Consigli

Everything hinges on frying twice at two temperatures: a low, gentle fry to cook the inside soft, then a hot one to crisp the outside. One single fry gives you either a raw middle or a burnt crust.
Fry the fish first and the chips second, not the other way round: the fish holds its heat and crust better while the chips get their final blast, and the chips are the thing you most want piping hot.
The base recipe here is halal and alcohol-free (water batter, vegetable oil). The two traditional swaps that void that are beer in the batter and beef dripping as the frying fat — both are common in Britain, so ask if it matters to you.