Classic Ensenada Fish Tacos | Rick Bayless Taco Manual

the next page in our Taco manual brings us to the iconic fish taco from Ensenada [Music] fish tacos I think that when you say the words fish tacos everybody's mouths start to water and they start to think about something that's not just delicious but might remind them of being near a big ocean body of water I know that's what it does for me now I know there are tons of different approaches to fish tacos and there are people who say that fish tacos should be only grilled fish but I'm going to take you away from all of that and go back to the source because the source of fish tacos in Mexico is an Ensenada and most people track it back to the fish market that's there the one that's called Mercado negro that all these stalls popped up around and most people say that it was one man who started making these fish tacos at one of those stalls and everybody flocked to him and well the next thing you know Ensenada is known as the ish Taco capital of the world at least I think it is I think it's the place where you find the absolute best version so I went there I talked to everybody that I could talk to I talked to the fishermen I talked to the people who are making the fish tacos every day for the customers that came into their places and I've put together what I think is a great representation of the classic Ensenada fish taco so let's start with the batter because these are battered and fried which is one of the things that makes them just so absolutely delicious but it's not just this sort of tempura batter it's a flavored batter and there's a lot of different approaches to them but they all sort of overlap at one place they all start with flour and I'm going to add a little bit of uh baking powder to that because it does give you a very crisp a light exterior so I'll put in my teaspoon of baking powder there and then I'm going to distribute it nicely through the flour just by using a whisk to get those combined then we'll use that whisk to make the wet part of things here so we are working with all-purpose flour here if you want to make this a little bit lighter you can use cake flour for it and you will notice a little bit of difference but I personally like it made with all purpose flour the best because you've got all these condiments and the sliced cabbage that will be talking about in a minute and so I think a little bit more substantial crust is a really good thing but if you like really light use the cake flour for it now what we're going to use for liquid in this situation is going to be beer for me but I will tell you A lot of people in Ensenada do not use beer they use water and it works perfectly well with water you can use straight water you can use sparkling water for an even lighter crisper crust but I like the flavor of the beer in there and you've got the bubbles which is going to make for that really light crust so I'm going to put that into this bowl here and now we've got to talk about all the flavorings that go in here I will tell you that the most common things that people will tell you to put in here are chicken bouillon okay that's going to make it super Savory and this kind of mustard what we would call like ballpark mustard here and I will say that that stuff is the is um gonna do two things it's gonna get give a very light tanginess to it but what it's really going to do is give us this beautiful color that I always associate with those classic ones so I'm just going to take a teaspoon of this mustard out of here and put that into the beer toss that around to get most of it out of there okay next the bull yacht okay so anybody that has been in any Mexican Grandma's house has probably seen this packet Norris Caldo de pollo in little cubes and people throw it into all kinds of things basically when you look at the list of ingredients It's a combination of salt and monosodium glutamate okay so it's sort of taking a a page out of the Playbook of a lot of Asian recipes where they will add some monosodium glutamate to it that's kind of what this does of course there's flavorings in there that add that chicken flavor you can find it in the cubes and Crush those or you can find a powder version of that or if you're looking for something that's a more natural ingredient I have had really good luck with this Orrington Farms it doesn't have any MSG in it at all and it's a really beautiful chicken flavor so you could use that one so there's lots of options there so I've got that one of the little North suisa Caldo de boyo cubes crushed up here and I'm going to put that into the liquid and then I'm going to follow that with some salt black pepper and Mexican oregano now I like to put the the black pepper and the oregano in here because I think it just adds more Savory qualities to this but not everybody does that the last thing that I'm going to do for flavor here is to slice up some garlic and of course some of the people that I talked to said that they wouldn't use fresh garlic they would use garlic powder garlic powder is a strong flavor that I don't care for very much so I always use um the fresh garlic when I can what I'm going to suggest that you do with this if you're going to use fresh garlic to get it into the full flavor of it into the this batter is to put some salt on it maybe chop it as fine as you can and then use the side of your knife to mash this into a rough paste it won't be a full paste you don't have to go that far with it but just to crush all of that good garlic flavor and get it distributed beautifully through the batter just use the side of your knife like this and just go down on it and keep pressing it and working it back and forth the salt works as an abrasive there so you'll just press it until you get a paste out of it okay that looks pretty good to me I see that a lot of the juices come out of the garlic and just scrape that up and I'm going to put that in to the liquid ingredients and then whisk that to make sure that everything that needs to dissolve does dissolve in there and then we'll put our dry ingredients the flour and the baking powder in there and I will tell you that this is way better if we let it sit for 20 minutes for the flour to absorb all of the moisture that it can absorb so while we're putting that off to the side here let's talk a little bit about the fish and then about the frying then when that has set for 20 minutes we'll come back and fry that fish but first on to the fish itself here so you need little pieces about three inches long about a half an inch on the sides but you can notice that mine are not all perfect and you'll never get perfect ones out of any kind of fish because of the nature of the the body of the fish what I'm working with here is cod and it works absolutely beautifully for this kind of a preparation but it's certainly not the only fish that you could use this is cod when I was in Ensenada people used one of two fish usually they would either use this little what's called a dogfish shark called Cason but I wouldn't ever recommend using that only because it's moving its way into being an endangered species so I don't recommend that but there is another kind of sea bass that they use a lot there that's just called pescado Blanco it's a large sea bass and cutting that into strips like this is absolutely perfect but that's not what you're going to find in your uh fish monger's place so I would say Cod or hake are really good those are typically used for fish and chips which this is a version of and then um if you're looking for something really inexpensive I'm not a big tilapia fan but if you've picked the thickest tilapia it will work beautifully for this and I've actually used it for this before and it's worked great but then the more expensive fish the things like the mahi mahi is just excellent in something like this catfish works really good and that's another inexpensive choice but what you want to do is to make the pieces as regular as possible just so that they will all cook in about the same amount of time but don't fuss over it too much because you'll never have them all be exactly perfect now for the frying part of this and I know that this is where a lot of people stumble um this isn't sort of an air fryer kind of thing you got to work with a pot of oil and I'm going to give you two choices here now this is a cast iron pan and it's about four inches deep you can find this this one is made by Lodge and I've had this one for 40 years it's one of my very favorite pieces of cooking equipment they're inexpensive and it's called a chicken fryer usually when you find it listed it will because it's cast iron it will hold heat very well which means that the temperature of the oil will stay the as as consistent as possible in this kind of a thing but if you're really into frying things and I know a lot of you are then my recom Foundation is that you invest in a piece of equipment that is a a regular fryer now this is a small commercial one made by cecilwell where you can find a wearing version of this as well and basically what you're working with here is a big pot of oil and this one's got the plastic wrap on the top of it because once I finish using this I will cool down the oil take it out in this container and put it in a refrigerator the back of a refrigerator where I know I'm not going to get to it for a while refrigerated used oil is the only way to go because once you've used your oil it could turn rancid now this is a this is a piece of equipment that has a fair amount of power to it and so it has an electric coil that runs through the oil and that's going to keep it at the most steady temperature so if you're into frying things and you always fussing with what's going on at the on the stovetop because because the temperatures go up and down too much then I would highly recommend getting one of this you set it on 375 degrees and it will stay at 375 degrees because you have a good amount of oil and a consistent heat Source running through it now I want this to get to 375 degrees but the only way I'm really going to know whether it's at 375 or not is to have a thermometer and I'm using this therm Pro I have had it for a long time I like it very much to me it's a very reliable it's a reliable piece of equipment and it really does tell me when when the temperature where the temperature is so that I can put it in at the right temperature but it also tells me then has it dropped way far down have I put too much in here and cooled my oil off this is a piece of equipment that I recommend for everybody buying a thermometer that you can put in here I have the probe stuck on the side here it's got this long long heat resistant cable to it so I can also use it as an oven thermometer if I want to but all of this is really important for making the best fish tacos I'll come back when that batter is ready now we've got the fish cut the batter rusted and the oil at 375 degrees so pick a piece up with a pair of tongs and then you want to get most of it off of there so let it dangle for a minute there and then I like to put it in here and kind of turn it a little bit and then let go of it so that it doesn't just sink to the bottom and stick to the bottom of the pot and I'll put about five or six pieces in here and there we go now what I'm looking for here is an uncrowded layer I put five pieces in there I probably could have gotten six of them in there but I want these to float freely so that they cook evenly and I don't want to drop the temperature too much now what I've noticed is that I've dropped now to about 3 45 here I'm going to turn the temperature up underneath this so that I can recover that getting it back to that 375 as quickly as I possibly can keep turning these guys and when they're a deep golden brown it takes about four minutes or so to cook these guys but most of the fish that I was talking about that is perfect for this can be well cooked fully cooked and still be really delicious okay I think we're about where we need to be with this they will be a beautiful golden brown here like that um take those out and drain them on paper towels when they're all beautifully golden then wait for the oil to go back to 375 degrees and continue frying I'm going to transfer these fried ones after they've drained on the paper towel for a minute or two onto a wire rack and I've got my oven on low here and I'm just going to keep them warm in the low oven until we get everything fried [Music] now on to the classic garnishes that go on to Tacos de pescado in Ensenada now at first I think it was probably just a pico de gallo kind of salsa that was put on them but one of my favorite parts that has become traditional over probably the last 30 40 years is what I call Baja Crema so it does start with Crema Mexican style kanama you could use sour cream or creme fraiche for this and then you add to that some mayonnaise I will say that for me that combination of that slightly sour flavor of the of the cream and the richness of the cream with the flavors and the textures of the mayonnaise is just spectacular so I've got a third of a cup of each one of those and then we're going to just mix them together um and add enough milk so that this mixture would be easily spoonable so back to that sort of loose Crema consistency I've got a little milk here so put that in there I think this is really benefits a lot from just a pinch of salt since there's no salt in the crema and this is going to be one of our condiments here now the other ingredient that we're going to go on to here is the Cabbage part of it lots of people in Baja use red cabbage for it but I don't like the the density of red cabbage a lot so my choice but it may not be yours is to use napa cabbage so I've got some sliced up and you want to slice it then some sliced up napa cabbage here for a salsa of course you could do that pico de gallo and lots of people really love that or you could do the other thing that I find in all of them places that sell these fish tacos in Ensenada and that is a red chili sauce Now red chili sauce you could do just by buying um Mexican hot sauce if you want to or as I've done in other videos a dried chili sauce that just has garlic and a touch of vinegar to it that's what I'm going to do here and to me the absolute perfect fish taco has that really bitey red chili sauce on it because it's such a beautiful combination with the crema the Baja Crema so we've got our fish all nicely fried here I'm gonna put a couple of warm tortillas down now I a pound of fish should make about 18 pieces so if you have small tortillas then you could probably make 18 little tacos out of it if the I've got small ones here but if you have larger tortillas you may just want to kind of break some of these in half but I'm going to put one of these Beauties on each one here the next thing that I like to put on there is the crema so I will drizzle some of that across the top here on each of these and then I like to put the red chili salsa on top of that just like that and that gives you that really Bold Flavor then the last little bit here will be that crunchy raw cabbage you always want to serve these with a lime wedge to go alongside each one and there you have what I think at least for me is the absolute perfect Taco de pescado in the style that you find them in Ensenada and I'm ready for a bite [Music]

Channel: Rick Bayless

Views: 60,223

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Id: MsLRAE7q3m8

Length: 19min 40sec (1180 seconds)

Published: Fri Feb 17 2023