British Fish and Chips - The Traditional Way or The Queen's Way? - Part 1

okay if you take your mask off you can have a little of the fish but you're not having the chips because the salad cream doesn't agree with you what is it about British fish and chips everybody loves them all over the world nobody makes them at home though they go out to the fish and chip shop or the local pub and often the local pub they're frozen fish or frozen chips but they're quite easy to make at home we used to meet them at Buckingham Palace all the time every Friday and I'm going to share with you two recipes the recipe that we did for the staff the more traditional fish and chips and then the recipe that we made for the Queen the Queen's fish and chips does the Queen eat fish and chips hmm I'll show you in a few minutes we start off with our chips and to get really good chips you need really good potatoes in the UK we use Maris pipers they're just the best chips in the u.s. I read so many people writing recipes where they're using russet potatoes and I just can't get along with russet potatoes for chips for me you can gold they're the best I love the color I mean chips are golden right you're already starting off with golden with the Yukon Golds so peel the potato first you don't have to a lot of the chip shops don't but if we're doing authentic fish and chips we start off peeling the potatoes that one's alive then we're going to make our chips it helps if you can try and keep them all about the same size so they sort of cook at the same time and then we don't have to have huge chips this size so you can cut long ways if you want or just across once you've done that the chips need to go into water because they've got all that starch around them otherwise when you drop them into the oil they'll stick together and you get big nasty ones like that that don't really cook so drop them into water swish them about get rid of that starch from the outside let them sit there for a while so all the starch runs off then drain them off onto paper towel the next stage is cooking them but real fish and chips you know the traditional ones that you get from the chip shops in the UK those ones they're twice cooked so they go into the oil first of all at 265 degrees that's 130 Celsius and that's to blanch them now blanching means to cook without color so we cooked the chips with no color so when we lift them out there'll be the same color as they went in obviously and they'll be soft they'll be ready caught once the chips are soft and cooked without color you can drain them onto some paper towel and then they're cooked there's no color to them but if you squeeze them you can see they're nice and soft already cooked all that we have to do now is once we fried the fish we can drop the french fries in drop drop the chips in right at a higher temperature and that will make them nice and crispy I grew up on fish and chips in the UK and I can remember as far back as being a little boy going to the fish and chip shop on a Friday night everybody seemed to eat fish and chips on Friday nights and I remember going to the fish and chip shop with my granddad and I'd be looking in that fish counter at all that golden fish batter glaring and glistening away and it was it was amazing and seen those batter bits at the end you know the the crunchy bits that fall off the fish and my granddad every week the same old joke it's a oh can you do me a bucket of chips please and at a lender card and leave the head on it took me a few years to realize he was asking for the biggest piece of fish in the fish and chip shop happy memories traditional fish and chips they are easy to make at home though and the secret is getting everything prepared so you're cooking at three different temperatures in effect you don't need a whole Bank of fryers to be able to do that you just were in order you start off with the chips and you blanch those as I said earlier 265 130 degrees Celsius cook them without color and you can make them the day before if you want to bring them out to room temperature when you're ready to start cooking the fish and then you make the fish batter when you're doing the fish batter fish batter is really important now some people will go for sort of a packet mix which is nasty others they want that sort of crispy crunchy flaky and bubbly and what makes that it's it can be sparkling water it can be baking soda it can be baking powder or it can be beer and my favorite recipe is one using beer now when you open a can of beer and pour it into the batter it all starts frothing up and it's the frothing herb that makes it amazing so don't make the batter too far ahead so back to those temperatures again when we cook the fish the fish is going to go into the fryer at 360 degrees that's 180 Celsius you cook the fish and then take that out put it onto a wire rack maybe in the oven for a few minutes just to warm stay warm you don't need to heat it or cook it or anything it'll already already be cooked in the fryer but you can take the temperature up then to finish cooking the chips and that's when they go nice golden brown and crispy let's make the batter when you're cooking fish in England it can be haddock you can use Cod I like to use Cod I like the sort of meteor fish and I think it holds well in the batter the batter doesn't need to be so thick it's like cardboard you can slice through it it needs to be crunchy and crispy but delicate as well that little shell imagine like an egg around the egg yolk and you crack into it and it's crunchy crispy the batter not the the raw egg I start off with the flour so I have a cup of flour and I put some salt in there and then an egg now the egg is going to help give me the color but also the binding in there as well then I've got some beer the fish I've cut it into two really nice loin size pieces and before it goes into the batter it has to go into the flour the flour holds it all together and then it goes into the batter and that's what makes the batter stick to the fish I don't need to season the fish because I've put my seasoning in here and then once it comes out we're going to put salt and vinegar and everything on top so we don't need too much more seasoning there on the fish ready we have to get the fryer at three hundred and sixty-five degrees for the fish so then I can pour my beer give this a mix around and don't worry if there's some lumps in there they'll just be the real crunchy bits of batter once it's cooked you see all that frothing on there that's important that's why we've got to work quick for adding this into the fryer so first of all dip the fish into the flour and then the batter the batter seems a little bit runny but that's fine we want it that way otherwise it would be too cloudy and crispy then to the fryer and then when we get to the fryer it's one drop one and then into the fryer while the fish is draining all the oil then we can drop the fries into the hot oil the oils now at 375 degrees and we're going to cook them until a nice and crispy now the chips are golden brown and really crispy I'll drain them off to get rid of the excess fat well the hot that's when I want to put some salt on them because the salt really attaches to that oil and then listen to them are they just the crispiest chips you will ever find so fish chips and then when I was growing up we had mushy peas I love mushy peas mushy peas mara fat peas dried peas and you cover them in boiling water a little baking soda overnight drain that off next day the water in the soda some fresh water bring them to the boil let them simmer and you get these gorgeous and mushy peas these chips are so hot straight from the fryer chips fish and mushy peas English fish and chips traditional fish and chips like you get at the chip shops in England like we used to serve to the staff at Buckingham Palace I love fish and chips but someone loves fish and chips better than I do and that's my cameraman Harry Harry come and try this thank you nice and crispy fish right crunchy chips oh for goodness sake get back to behind the camera her goodness saying that was scripted by the way this is how we serve fish and chips at the palace the thing we're missing from it is vinegar you have to put vinegar on the chips malt vinegar and then at the palace the Queen chefs we always served salad cream on our chips chips vinegar salad cream in my opinion the best fish and chip shop in the world is a place called the unscrew the fish bar in Scotland just outside Edinburgh um in Scotland they have something called brown sauce you have fashioned chopped salt and sauce that's good right so that's something like HP sauce with malt vinegar sort of softened and mixed together and then that goes over your chips now our cooking you can find the salad cream HP sauce malt vinegar most good grocery stores but if you having trouble finding them I put a link to them in the description below they really make a difference we've now got to make the Queen's fish and chips

Channel: Darren McGrady

Views: 985,179

Rating: 4.896728 out of 5

Keywords: Royal family, Food, British food, The Queen, buckingham palace, foodie, celebrity chef, eating royally, prince william, prince harry, queen, britishroyals, monarchy, royal, royalty, Delish, Darren McGrady, Royalchef, yummy, delicious, food, royal eats, british food, Gordon Ramsey, bubble and squeak, pub food, fish and chips, British fish and chips, fish, fried fish, amazing fish batter, perfect chips, french fries, fish and chip shop, real fish and chips, best ever fish and chips

Id: atdGfm9At_c

Length: 11min 44sec (704 seconds)

Published: Tue Jul 14 2020