Beer Battered Fish Goujons

If you follow Pesky Recipes on Instagram, you’ll know all about the American road trip that my husband and I took in April. We started in Chicago, then drove down to Nashville and Memphis before spending our last few days in New Orleans.

The trip was amazing, a true once in a lifetime experience. The people were friendly, the music was incredible, but the food, well, as a pesci, that’s where the USA let me down.

It was SO hard to find vegetarian food over there, especially on the road. I have no idea how a vegan would manage. Pretty much every dish on every single restaurant menu had meat in it. It was only usually a side salad or fries that were veggie (though some places even put meat in their salads). MacDonalds didn’t stock the Spicy Veggie burger and Subway didn’t stock veggie patties like they do in the UK. I couldn’t even get a plain cheese sandwich when we stopped at service stations, they all had turkey or pastrami in them. I ended up buying myself a loaf of bread, a packet of sliced cheese, a squeezy mayo and a bag of fruit from a supermarket for our days on the road .

But, the further south we drove there were more seafood options on the menus, which was good for me and seafood in the south is fantastic! There were some stand-out American dishes that I absolutely loved too – Chicago pizza (There’s a reason why it’s legendary!), crawfish tails, crab mac n cheese, biscuits with runny eggs, beignets, fried catfish sandwiches and fried pickles dunked in ranch dressing.

You read that correctly, fried pickles – gherkins dipped in batter and deep-fried. I pulled a face too at first, but then I tried them and they were delicious. So that has been the inspiration behind this month’s recipe.

Beer battered fish is a British staple and you’ll find picked eggs and pickled onions in every traditional chippy. There’s something about the mix of the tart, tangy pickle, mixed with the flaky fish and crispy batter that just works. So I’ve come up with a bear batter recipe which includes pickle juice. Literally the brine out of a jar of gherkins. You can’t taste it in the batter, it just adds a hint of tartness that goes so well with a flaky white fish such as cod, haddock or plaice.

Beer batter is so easy to make and you can coat anything that fries well in it – fish, obviously, but also veg, and of course, pickles. So why not give it a go, make your own American inspired beer battered fish, and if you have any batter left over, slice a few gherkins up, pat them dry then dunk them in the batter and fry them off too.

Ingredients:

4 fillets of white fish (cod, haddock or plaice work really well)
75g of plain flour
A good pinch of salt
A good pinch of black pepper
A good pinch of dill
100mls of beer (lager or a pale ale)
25mls of pickle juice
Enough oil to fill a small saucepan or frying pan by a 3rd (I used olive oil, but feel free to use whatever oil you prefer)

Method:

Put the flour, salt, pepper and dill into a large bowl and add the pickle juice and beer a bit at a time whilst whisking to avoid lumps.

Cut your fish into even pieces, remove any bones and skin.
Then, put a pan, a 3rd full with oil on a medium-high heat on the hob.
After a few minutes, check your oil is up to temperature by dropping a small amount of batter into it. If it sizzles and bubbles form around it, it’s ready.

Set out your frying station. You are going to be working with very hot oil, so you don’t want to be wandering around the kitchen. Have everything to hand so you don’t have to leave the oil unattended at all.

Put a few pieces of fish, slices of gherkin or whatever you’re frying into the batter and turn them over with your fingers to completely coat them.

Place a couple of well coated pieces of fish carefully into the hot oil.
Don’t overload the pan as that will lower the temperature of the oil and make your fish soggy. Just cook two or three pieces at a time.

After a few minutes, use a spatula to turn the fish over to cook on the other side.

Once both sides are a lovely golden brown colour, carefully take them out of the pan and put them straight onto kitchen roll to soak up any excess oil.
(I recommend cutting the first one in half to check that it is cooked all the way through. Then judge whether the others are ready by the colour of the batter on the first.)

Don’t take the pan off the heat or change the oil, just coat the next batch of fish in batter and continue to cook them in small batches.
I have the oven on a low temperature and keep the plate with the kitchen roll and cooked fish in there. When the next batch is ready to come out of the oil, I take the plate out of the oven, put the freshly cooked fish on there, then put it back in the oven to keep hot until I’m ready to serve.