Fish & chips

Before you start

• a deep heavy pan and a thermometer
• about a litre of oil
• a fire blanket or lid within reach

Ingredients

Serves 2 · dimmer marks are storecupboard

• 300gfirm white fish — cod or haddock, two thick fillets
• 500gpotatoes — maris piper or another floury one
• 100gplain flour
• 180mlcold sparkling water
• 5 tbspoil for frying — a litre goes in the pan; roughly this much ends up in the food
• ½ tspbicarbonate of soda
• to tastemalt vinegar
• to tastesalt

Method

8 steps

1. chop · 10m

   Potatoes into thick chips, rinsed of surface starch and then dried completely. Water going into hot oil is the reason chip pans spit.

2. boil · 12m

   Chips into salted water and simmered until a knife meets almost nothing — right on the edge of falling apart. Drained and left to steam dry in the colander.

3. rest · 20m walk away

   Chips spread out on a tray and left to cool and dry properly. Fried while warm and damp they never crisp, whatever the oil is doing.

4. fry · 12m

   Oil into the pan no more than a third full — it climbs when food goes in, and a fuller pan is how kitchens catch fire. Up to 140°C, chips given their first fry until pale and soft, then lifted out and drained. The pan does not get moved while there is hot oil in it.

5. fold · 4m

   Flour, bicarbonate and salt whisked into the cold sparkling water to the thickness of single cream, and used within a minute or two. Batter left standing goes flat and the coating comes out heavy.

6. fry · 10m

   Oil up to 180°C. Fish dusted in dry flour, dipped, and lowered in away from you one piece at a time. Six or seven minutes, until the batter is deep gold and hard and the fish inside flakes apart when pressed.

7. fry · 5m

   Chips back into the 180°C oil for two or three minutes until they are brown and rattle against each other. Salted the moment they come out.

8. finish · 2m

   Onto paper rather than a plate, with vinegar. Anything that sits about goes soft within minutes.