🇬🇧 How to Make Fish and Chips

Craving Fish and Chips? On FoodNeverComes the food never actually comes — so here's how to make real Fish and Chips at home, in about 45 min, with stuff you probably already have.

🛒 Ingredients

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• 4 thick cod or haddock fillets, about 200g each
• Batter: 200g plain flour
• 50g cornflour
• 1 tsp baking powder
• 330ml very cold beer or sparkling water
• 1 tsp salt
• Chips: 1.2kg Maris Piper, cut into thick chips
• 2 litres sunflower oil, for frying
• malt vinegar and salt, to serve
• mushy peas and tartare sauce, optional

👩‍🍳 Method

1. Cut the chips thick and soak them in cold water 30 minutes to wash off surface starch, then dry them completely. Wet chips spit dangerously and steam themselves soft.
2. Fry the chips twice. First at 140°C for 6–8 minutes to cook them through without colour, then drain and rest. The second fry at 190°C for 3 minutes is what makes them crisp. One fry gives you either a raw middle or a leathery outside.
3. Mix the batter only when the oil is already at temperature, and mix it badly — lumps are fine. Worked batter develops gluten and fries heavy.
4. The beer must be cold and fizzy. The bubbles expand in the oil and the cold slows the crust setting just long enough for the fish to steam inside its shell.
5. Dry the fish, dust it in flour, then dip and lower it away from you into 180°C oil. Fry 6–7 minutes until deep gold, and do not crowd the pan.
6. Drain on a rack, never on paper — paper traps steam against the batter and softens the underside within a minute.
7. Salt immediately, malt vinegar at the table, and eat it standing up out of the paper if you can.