why is this the BEST FISH & CHIPS recipe on earth?

why is this the best fish and chips recipe because a great british chef who is a perfectionist him and his team developed a few tricks that make this batter so perfect and so crispy that most people universally can agree that this is the best batter for fish and chips the recipe yields crispy chips and a perfect extra crispy fried fish so let's just jump right into it the chips take the longest to make so we're going to start with those first now this is a three-step cooking process for the potatoes a thrice cooked fry the problem with french fries is moisture and double frying has inconsistent results because the amount of moisture in potatoes varies the best potatoes that heston found were aaron victory or maris piper never seen either of those in any supermarket in america so i'm using russet potatoes they will work just fine and what i do is i feel them i want to make sure they're not soft and soggy it's a lot of moisture in those they're not going to crisp up as easier as a harder potato we want as little moisture content as possible so a nice hard one it's gonna be a good starting point so to cut the chips take the top and the bottom off it's gonna create really just some flat angles you don't have to trim the edges like this but i find it just makes cutting the fries a little bit easier i'm going for about three quarters of an inch thick slices for these fries i find it's a great size for making fries at home especially when making traditional chips they're a little bit bigger [Music] toss those into some cold water and rinse that starch off now we just want to run these under cold water for a few minutes to rinse off any excess starch until the water runs clear do that a few times then fill up with fresh water get that onto a stove and bring that up to a boil with some salt i don't want a rolling boil that's going to potentially break up the potatoes before they get a chance to cook through properly i want to take the potatoes right up until the point where they start to fall apart if the potatoes break up and crumble then you've overcooked them they're still raw and hard in the middle you've got a little bit further to go but if they do break in into two smaller pieces that's fine that's actually a more traditional chip shape now we just want to carefully fish out the chips and then let them air dry and cool these are the visual cues you're looking for before popping it in the refrigerator those little cracks and crevices along the edges those are just gonna get more pronounced as they cool so once your french fries are at this stage you pop them in the refrigerator and we're gonna cool them down completely maybe 30 minutes to an hour and then they're ready for their first fry now today i went to the farmer's market and picked up this beautiful cod any flaky white fish is generally going to work for this but i actually do like cod it's very mild fish and this was caught off the coast of montauk so super fresh we need to portion it now i actually got yelled at on instagram with some test recipes on fish and chips and i got told that my piece of fish wasn't big enough i don't think that's a valid concern i like to not eat so much especially fried foods so i'd like to make them a little smaller but you make them as big as you want this looks like it's going to be a nice piece right here now that because this is a little bigger i'm just going to sort of go at an angle and we just want to get these seasoned with salt [Music] now these are going to go into the refrigerator they're going to sort of firm up a little bit we'll come back to these later oh yeah you sort of see how it's like almost looks like parmesan cheese these little white spots and this craggly edge that's what you want to see firmed up not so delicate anymore these are ready to fry these little breaks and these edges and the potatoes if you get them nice and dry enough they're going to create the extra crispiness that we want in these french fries the first fry we're going for a temperature of 270 270 fahrenheit to be exact i'm just gonna fill this dutch oven with oil a little below halfway so we have a safe amount of oil in the pot once it's up to 270 degrees i'm gonna gently start to place in the potatoes i would say that i pushed it a little bit i would do one potato at a time my fries turned out fine but in my experience the smaller the batch the better the fry comes out and we just want to fry them until the fries begin to start to brown around the edges once you see that browning start to happen around the edges that's a good time to kind of pull them out of the oil and we're gonna let them dry a second time in the refrigerator so we've got our fries they're gonna go back in the refrigerator and dry out for a one last time at this point what you can do is like cover them up seal them up and just store them freeze them and then they're ready to just throw in the fryer at any time this is like the stage in the restaurant they would take the fries up till prep and when an order came through they would just drop them and then they'd be perfect i'm just gonna go in and let them air dry one last time so they're as dry as possible and we get them as crispy as we can now let's talk about the batter what's so special about this batter why is this batter so great well heston is quite a perfectionist so he and his team sought out to make the crispiest batter possible working with national starches starch company to find the best combination of starches that work and usually a batter just starch in water but he thought he knows vodka an alcohol evaporates much faster and with less energy than water does he though maybe if i replace some of the water with vodka he might get a crispy or batter and he did that quick evaporation leaves the air bubbles left in the space that the vodka used to be in the batter that sort of creates this really beautiful crispy batter and when somebody has gone great lengths to figure out something to perfection who would i be to come and screw that up so we're just going to follow his directions for the batter now we're going to use a scale i'm going to leave his full recipe down in the description we're using two flowers a rice flour and an all-purpose flour the rice flour has very little gluten gluten comes from the all-purpose flour the combination of the two and the rice flour creates a crispy batter that you cannot get with just all-purpose flour so he has 200 grams of each so basically equal parts rice flour to all-purpose flour teaspoon of baking powder salt a couple pinches tablespoon of honey for color 300 milliliters of vodka and this is the secret 300 milliliters of a cold pilsner which is just about a whole beer like a pancake batter you want to combine this until it just comes together a few lumps are okay and one extra thing heston does is he runs it through a siphon with a co2 charge to impart more air bubbles but for the home we can omit that but now we're just gonna keep this cool until we're ready to fry all right now let's do the tartar sauce now a lot of you asked me why i might not make my own mayo from scratch after i did a video about it and there's a few reasons maybe i don't have as much egg and i want to eat the egg rather than use the egg yolk to make this maybe i don't have enough oil to make it and i want to use the oil for something else or maybe it's really expensive oil so that's why i always have mayo on hand use whatever you want but for a basic tartar sauce we're gonna need about call it about a cup is that exactly a cup i don't know just go with me dijon mustard let's call it a nice tablespoon going with a little bit of malt vinegar some lemon zest a little teaspoon of lemon juice or a little cheek a little salt not too much because we're adding a lot of salty stuff black pepper i really want the smallest amount of an onion or maybe something that size let's call it a tablespoon or two of diced onion i want to cut it as fine as i possibly can [Music] get this fine mince in there the texture is important to me that size that really fine size of onion i really want it small we're gonna do a similar thing with uh let's call it two gherkins two to three gherkins portion of a large one if you have whatever you have but some sort of pickle and cut it into three like that and then into little strips then into a fine dice the same as the onion and approximately the same amount as the onion [Music] i hate these stupid caper bottles it's like no real good way to kind of maneuver through them i just want about the same amount of capers as i have onion and pickles give it a rough chop and add it to the mix throw those capers in and i like a little half teaspoon little touch of the caper juice pickle juice is good too think about it why does a tartar sauce work you've got that fatty rich piece of fish and fries this is acidic and punchy and all these things are like a pickle or some sort of version of a pickle or vinegar or lemon juice so it's gonna cut the fat and balance everything out that's why tartar sauce works now you don't need to add this but i saw some at the market this morning so i'm just gonna add a few chives [Music] i think i'll save a little bit for garnish and we just want to give it a good mix i taste a little bit of that onion sort of leeching out its onion juices and flavoring the whole thing the crunch of the pickle and the caper everything's starting to come together but it needs a little time so we're going to put it in the refrigerator until we're ready to use it all right so we've got our fish here i think we're ready to fry i'm just going to pop the heat on get our oil up to 350 dredge these up real quick then batter them then fry them our fries as you can see they firmed up a little bit they're dry they've got nice craggly edges no moisture they're not soggy they're going to be perfect chips these we're going to want to fry at around closer to 370. but first we're going to fry the fish that's going to take the longest then we're going to drop the fries and it's all going to come together at once so i'm just going to dredge that fish in a little bit of that flour i'm going to bring that oil temperature up to about 350 and you want to get out your batter which should be a lot smoother and a bit more hydrated by now drop your fish into the batter get it fully coated and then carefully drop that into the oil [Music] let the piece of fish fry for a second in the oil and then with a spoon drizzle a tad a bit more of that batter right atop the fish that's a little tempura trick that heston picked up that provides some next level texture you're gonna see a lot of this rapid bubbling and that's that vodka quickly evaporating which is what we want you might find some excess batter that's now floating on top of the oil you can just fish that out and let that fish cook until it's beautifully browned and crispy all around make sure the oil is the right temperature if it's too high and your fish is too thick the batter might brown before the fish fully cooks through once it's cooked transfer to a wire rack to cool and repeat with the rest of the fish now this is kind of a big piece of fish so you really want to be gentle when you place it into the oil [Music] i find the trick to this frayed crispy top is by spooning a little bit of that batter rapidly back and forth across the top of the fish and it sort of creates this like mohawk on top of the fish of extra crispy batter that i love once the fish is beautifully browned and crispy let it cool on a wire rack and then you're going to want to drop the chips down for their final cook we just want to cook these until they're browned and crispy again i pushed the limit with the amount that i fried at once always remember smaller batches are going to fry much better for you [Music] once everything is cooked season everything up nicely and then get your tartar sauce out and get ready to plate [Music] there's a restaurant in new york city called dame that serves a variation of the heston batter and the brilliant ad that they did is they put the malt vinegar in a squirt bottle [Music] so you get the flavor but you don't drench it in vinegar i love it [Music] just an incredible crunch mind you this is a good 20 minutes after this came out of the fryer stays together the whole time which is exactly what you want recipes down below that's all i got today see you next time until then take care of yourself and go feed yourself [Music] if you like this video i got more videos that are just perfect for the summer right now that you gotta check out if you like what you see on the screen like this pulled pork video i just did click through you really gotta give it a shot

Channel: NOT ANOTHER COOKING SHOW

Views: 1,380,684

Keywords: the best fish and chips recipe ever, fish and chips, fish and chips recipe, how to make fish and chips, how to fry fish, beer battered fish recipe, the best fish and chips, perfect fish and chips, fish and chips batter, heston blumenthal fish and chips, the best beer batter recipe, how to make the best chips for fish and chips, thrice cooked fries, not another cooking show, stephen cusato, the food freak, how to make tartar sauce from scratch, tartar sauce

Id: 5NL1vB10wM4

Length: 13min 53sec (833 seconds)

Published: Wed Jul 21 2021