fish

fish, chips and mushy peas

method

Good fish and chips are becoming harder to find these days, but there are still some good boys out there making the real deal. However, if you want to make your own at home, here's the recipe I use. Unless you've got a really big fryer I'd say it's not really worth trying to make fish and chips at home for more than 4 people – otherwise it becomes a struggle. Other things to have on the table are some crunchy sweet pickled gherkins, some pickled onions (if your other half isn't around!) – and pickled chillies are good too. Then you want to douse it all with some cheap malt vinegar and nothing other than Heinz tomato ketchup.

To make your mushy peas, put the butter in a pan with the peas and the chopped mint. Put a lid on top and simmer for about 10 minutes. Add a squeeze of lemon juice and season with salt and pepper. You can either mush the peas up in a food processor, or you can mash them by hand until they are stodgy, thick and perfect for dipping your fish into. Keep them warm while you cook your fish and chips.

Pour the sunflower oil into your deep fat fryer or a large frying pan and heat it to 190ºC/375ºF. Mix the salt and pepper together and season the fish filets on both sides. This will help to remove any excess water, making the fish really meaty. Whisk the flour, beer and baking powder together until nice and shiny. The texture should be like semi-whipped double cream (i.e. it should stick to whatever you're coating). Dust each fish filet in a little of the extra flour, then dip into the batter and allow any excess to drip off. Holding one end, lower the fish into the oil one by one, carefully so you don't get splashed – it will depend on the size of your fryer how many fish you can do at once. Cook for 4 minutes or so, until the batter is golden and crisp.

Meanwhile, parboil your chips in salted boiling water for about 4 or 5 minutes until softened but still retaining their shape, then drain them in a colander and leave to steam completely dry. When all the moisture has disappeared, fry them in the oil that the fish were cooked in at 180ºC/350ºF until golden and crisp. While the chips are frying, you can place the fish on a baking tray and put them in the oven for a few minutes at 180ºC/350ºF/gas 4 to finish cooking. This way they will stay crisp while you finish off the chips. When they are done, drain them on kitchen paper, season with salt, and serve with the fish and mushy peas.

• from Jamie's Dinners

ingredients

• Sunflower oil for deep-frying
• ½ teaspoon sea salt
• 1 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
• 225g nice white fish fillets, pinboned
• 225g flour, plus extra for dusting
• 285ml pint good cold beer
• 3 heaped teaspoons baking powder
• 900g potatoes, peeled and sliced into chips

for the mushy peas:
• a knob of butter
• 4 handfuls of podded peas
• a small handful of fresh mint, leaves picked and chopped
• a squeeze of lemon juice
• sea salt and freshly ground black pepper

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tried this recipe or a similar one? share your tips...

1. by Lou on Mon 14 May 2012 @ 19:46

Parboiling chips before you fry them?! Heresy! Not to mentioned it makes the whole process more complicated and labor intensive than it needs to be. Having worked in a good quality chip shop, you fry the chips at low temperature for the first 70% of it's cooking time, so low it's barely bubbling. Then you blast the chips at high temperature for the last 30% of their cooking time. I'm surprised you haven't mentioned anything about potato variety? You really need to use a good quality floury potato. These two things will give you super crispy chips, with a lovely fluffy middle, without the need for parboiling.

2. by Martin Bellamy on Wed 25 Apr 2012 @ 04:30

Dear Jamie, big fan of your tutorials and the 30 min show, on one show you made fish and chips with mushy peas in this show you refered to the peas being called some thing else in fancy restaurants it is a name I have heard before but for the life of me can not remember the name it was some thing like guacamole but I dont think it was that can you remember. Regards Martin and Thanks as this has been keeping me awake for days now................................................................................................

3. by dane eg. on Sat 31 Dec 2011 @ 09:04

this is the best fish and chips recipe, and we love the peas as well. huge success with my family !

4. by chris on Sun 18 Dec 2011 @ 12:21

Sami - Lager isn't English and the bulk branded lagers sold in England (and the US) are very poor immitations of the original product. A bottled traditional ale has much more flavour, there are loads in the shops, but I often use London Pride for my beer batter.

5. by kitchenvoyage on Fri 02 Dec 2011 @ 17:10

Great tips, I really when I came to live to England i dindt like to much fish and chips, but since I start to cooked at home i become more and more in love with the dish. Lucky in Brighton we have the fish market and i have a lot of fun cooking fish and chips for my english mates!

6. by Jamie on Fri 02 Dec 2011 @ 12:57

Thanks for the good reactions and tips.

7. by sami on Thu 01 Sep 2011 @ 20:43

Recipe is very good! Thanks for the great ideas! Next time I will use a dark stronger beer instead of golden Ale and cook potatoes crispy in the oven instead of the deepfryer. Saves a lot of time, hassle and makes a lighter meal. Probably I will also add some salt to the batter depending how fishy tasting fish I use. Mushy peas were really good and were the icing on the cake thing here! Nice! I'll keep that recipe as is on my memo for sure!

8. by Sami on Thu 01 Sep 2011 @ 16:08

Going to try this today with some nice Finnish perch filee's..will give comments later. What is good beer? Lager, English white or dark..hmm..I wen't for English white beer..

9. by Agnes Stringfellow on Fri 03 Jun 2011 @ 20:21

This got a 9/10 from us, it was lovely and cost less than £2 each. Unfortunately, the Co-op didn't have any peas in pods, so I had to cheat with a tin of mushy peas! I still popped the fresh mint, lemon juice and butter in though !

10. by melinda on Fri 29 Apr 2011 @ 19:48

tried the fish and chips last night.the whole family enjoyed it.

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