How to Make Fish and Chips & Shrimp Burgers

I Think I'm Home I Think I'm Home Today in Cook's Country Ashley

make

s Bridget the perfect

fish

and

chips

Jack challenges Julia to a burger bun tasting and Christy

make

s Julia the best

shrimp

burgers

that are just right here at Cook's Country. a

fish

and chip shop and the first dates back to the 1860s in England, but it wasn't until after World War II that fish and

chips

became popular here in the United States, as the food was sold in clam shops and fish markets, an Englishman was needed. actor who made it a national hit in 1969, arthur treacher, who you may remember as agent jones in the movie mary poppins, opened his first eponymous fish and chips restaurant in columbus, ohio. treacher ran bold advertisements and local newspapers with funny headlines like arthur treacher brings everything- The American dish returned to its place of origin and was always followed by the name of each local city.

By the late 1970s, there were around 800 Arthur's creatures that inspired restaurants across the country to add fish and chips to their menus. Well today we're getting into the kitchen with Ashley who has a simple, foolproof version of fish and chips that you can make at home, so I've stopped making fish and chips at home and that's because a pub can do a much better job than me, they have that specialized team. fryer with two baskets so you can fry fish and chips at the same time and serve them piping hot, but at home normally one gets cold while waiting for the other, but Ashley is here and she is going to show us how we can eat all the fish hot. and crispy fries, all at the same time, all at the same time, well, like you said, I mean, you know when you're driving home from work you don't normally think, "Oh, tonight I'm going to make a small batch of fish." . and fries is not a last minute dinner, no it is not, but after showing you how easy this recipe is, you will start to think so, so let's start with the dough.

Here we have a cup of all-purpose flour and here. it's a cup of cornstarch now the combination of these two things gave us the color and texture of the dough that we were looking for it's really nice and it has a beautiful light golden color and to season it a little we have a teaspoon and a half of salt and to rise we have a teaspoon of baking powder, so let's add a little beer to this dough. This is a light bodied American blogger and I have a cup and a half now beard does a few different things for us in this dough. provides some seasoning here provides some sweetness provides some acidity which is always welcome with some fried food and also if you don't cook with beer or alcohol, don't fear, you can use plain mineral water, plain water won't do unfortunately, it's Plus, carbonation is essential, but beer adds additional flavor, exactly the benefits.

I'm going to blend this until it's nice and smooth, I'm going to cover it with a little bit of plastic wrap and before I do anything with this, let's move on to the fish sounds good, so here we're going to use some cod, but if you can't find cod, halibut or haddock also work, we have two pounds of skinless cod fillet that I have cut into two pieces. Cut this into eight pieces and I want them to weigh about four ounces each so first cut them in half like this and then I'll cut it in half cut the fish into equal size pieces everything will cook at the same rate before.

I season it with salt and pepper. I'm going to pat them dry with paper towels so the seasoning can stick well. Season it well with a little salt and pepper. If you season it from the top, it really distributes very well over any protein you want. I'm working on transferring the seasoned fish to a nice big plate. I'm going to wash my hands and then we'll put the dough and fish in the refrigerator. Okay, we've got the fish covered for our fish. and fries now let's move on to the fries for the potatoes, I chose the Yukon Gold potatoes because of their moderate level of starch so first when you're working with any type of round vegetable it's always best to flatten all the sides and you can do that.

By cutting a quarter inch off each rounded side, now that I have all those square rounded pieces, I'm going to cut this into quarter inch thick boards, so using my trusty ruler I now have a good idea of ​​what a quarter inch. So I will continue working on the potato. I would recommend just stacking one on top of the other. Just start with about two at this stage. Two-tier stack. I'm going to cut them into quarter inch thick fries, okay Ashley. I mentioned a minute ago that I chose Yukon Gold because they were a medium starchy potato.

Now the reason russets were out of the game here is that they are very starchy and the general rule of thumb is that the more starchy the potato is, the fitter it will be. To get super tender and fall apart, here we want sturdy but still tender chips, that's why the Yukon Gold were the perfect choice for us, we're going to deep fry, here we're going to do what's called a cold frying method, so yeah you notice a lot. Many times when you cut potatoes you put them in water to prevent them from oxidizing and changing color.

Now I didn't do that with this. I want the starches to remain in the potatoes. Okay, I'll add these potatoes to the cold peanut oil. this is peanut oil, I have eight cups total here, put it on high heat and I'm not going to touch anything here, it's going to take about seven minutes until it comes to a boil and then I'll cook it in that. boil for 15 more minutes the potatoes after that will be a little soft and the outside will start to harden now that seven minutes have passed and this is what I meant for the boil it's boiling it's boiling so again no I am.

I'm going to touch these potatoes and continue to cook them at this high heat level for an additional 15 minutes. Well, it's been 22 minutes in total. Now I'm going to use these tongs and just stir gently to prevent any of these from sticking, especially the bottom of the pot because some tend to stick there. I'm going to continue boiling them for four minutes until they're golden brown. Okay, those fries look great. I'm going to use this spider here, but a skimmer works too. Oh, those are beautiful now. Normally when French fries or any other type of fried food comes out of something like oil, my first instinct is to season it with salt, but these. they're not completely done at this point just take out the big chunks that were a little stubborn and wanted to stay behind now that looks really good I'm going to set this aside let's coat the fish now I'm going to add everything all together just make sure Let everything be covered here now before you do anything.

I'm going to wash my hands. Sounds good, so I'm going to check the oil temperature here. Now I need it to go back to 375 degrees sooner. I add the fish, it's time to fry it. Now I'm going to make two batches here and using this fork, which is a beautiful thick dough, very thick in the refrigerator, I'm going to drag it through the oil, let it go and drag it. the oil and what that does is it really seals the dough really well, so you won't have a lot of jagged edges. It was now important for Ashley to raise the oil temperature back to 375 if she cooked the fish at a lower temperature. temperature the outside would have been nice and dark in color but the inside of the fish wouldn't be cooked yet so 375 is the key so I'm going to monitor the temperature of the oil and I want to make sure they're good.

We're between 350 and 375 degrees and I'm going to cook this for four minutes on each side, eight minutes total okay second batch is ready to go oh yeah super super crispy beautiful you know I love good fish with fries that I get in pubs. I haven't seen fish and chips as good as these yet. Well, I'll put a little salt on this fish. Season now. Season now. I'm going to bring the oil temperature to 375 degrees and we're almost done. What we need to do is simply reheat those fries. Normally I would tell you to reuse the cooking oil after you're done with our fish and chips recipe, but not in this case, you'll want to get rid of it once you cook the fish.

The oil really releases its flavor, so if you are going to make donuts there, you will get fishy flavored donuts. Fish donuts, well, that didn't take long for the oil to come back to town, at all. Okay, okay, stir this up a little bit and in a minute, see you soon. Well, it was a long minute. Wow, it was a literal minute. I have to say they look beautiful, oh man let me see how that fish is doing. How is it still hot? Oh well, that's it. Great, I'm going to season them with a little salt.

I can do it? I'm very excited about this. My mouth is watering too. Here we have some homemade tartar sauce. You can get our recipe for our tartar sauce on our website cookscountry.com I love a little bit of lemon, it's super crunchy, that dough is so light, so light and flaky, but it still has half of it, you know, it's not one of those doughs you make it so light, it's just a thin chiffon, almost a veneer we wanted a little more structure there, you gave it to us and the baking powder, if you could see it, really helped provide a little lift there, I'm putting the fork and knife, yes, to go for the fries, oh, right.

They are actually a little creamy on the inside, very pretty shell on the outside, perfectly cooked and a gorgeous color, great job, thank you. Make an ultra-light dough with flour, cornstarch, baking powder and beer, and season large pieces of cod with salt and pepper for the fries, start Yukon Gold. potatoes and cold peanut oil and cook until just cooked, remove the fries, then coat and fry the fish until well browned, return the fries to the oil for a minute to brown and crisp and serve everything with lemon and tartar sauce. It can be done like this. from the land of cooks, pour yourself a pint and enjoy the fish and chips with wheat chippy, oh I answer you, so behind every great burger there is a great burger bun and today Jack will tell us which bun is the best , Julia, this is a very easy tasting.

Where is the meat? Yes, let's say they are very simple, so these are the three of the four best-selling brands in the country. Oh, okay, a couple of things I want you to pay attention to. Size is quite important. You can imagine that the bigger. the buns do a better job of holding the burger and people didn't like it when the burger was hanging off the side, actually the second thing is the size of the bottom bun mm-hmm because the thinner it is the more soggy it will be. Yeah, I've noticed that at home, so there are a couple of interesting things that we generally do at almost every tasting, the more salt something has, the better it will work.

This was an exception, we actually prefer the brands with the least amount of sodium and the theory is there. that the burger is so salty you wanted a good contrast and our winner actually has more sugar to counteract the saltiness of the burger. We were looking for things that could hold the burger but were also light, fluffy and nice to eat. I will say there wasn't a bad bun here, you wouldn't turn down a burger that was put on any of these buns, but there are some differences so whatever you notice here, I know which one it is because it's the one I buy. at home I recognize its color and I recognize the sweetness, so this is by far my favorite, are you sure about that?

I love how Julia doesn't really have any context in this entire segment, yeah, no, that's my muffin, okay, now between these two. They are both pretty good, this one actually the bottom felt a little thin and a little like it turned into nothing under a burger and the top was very thick, it tasted good, this one had a slightly better flavor and I thought had a little more chew on the bottom, this one almost turned into a paste in my mouth while I was eating it, I didn't like it so second favorite, but third favorite, third favorite, it's not far off so you want the good news. of bad news always good news well, the good news is that you got them all totally right the bad news is that I didn't win bad news for you so this is the winner this is the winner mark martin yeah, uh, half of the studio audience chose this as their favorite this is a New England product that is available in the eastern half of the country it is made with potato chips, milk and butter, that is, it is basically made with mashed potatoes yes, it is very distinctive yes even though it's the second best selling brand in the west country you can't get it oh it's an east coast thing it's an east coast thing so these people live on the west coast this is our second mint farm oh it's not made with potato flakes but it's a very nice bun it's the biggest um so the widest uh yeah it was the biggest it does a good job of holding that burger up well and this one isn't bad but it's not my favorite yeah , the stadium was okay, it was a little small in the middle of the audience side of the studio uh, that was his favorite was the stadiumof baseball, but I didn't give them the hint about the size, so they were just trying it on and okay, it's small, yeah, there you go, if you're from the east coast, go for Martin's. sandwich potato rolls for 3.69, but if you're on the west coast, go for Pepperidge Farm's white burger buns.

Maine owns the lobster roll and Maryland is the land of crab cakes, but in South Carolina, well, that's the home of the

shrimp

burger. Now we went. I've been there and tried

burgers

up and down the coast and they're all pretty good, but we fell in love with the one at the shrimp shack in Beaufort so we used that as a model for our own recipe, that's right, these are important. Shrimp burgers are full of shrimp shrimp and more shrimp you don't know fillings ready they don't even add a lot of spices there is no old bay just shrimp shrimp at its best, of course, in the shrimp shack they have deep fryers running all the time so they get a nice crispy crust, but they are so easy and so good that we wanted them to be easier to make, without so much mess, without so much fuss and in the pan, without having to deal with all that leftover oil for frying, we started thinking about breadcrumbs, how could we get that same crispy crust without frying?

Panko is our favorite because it is very light and crunchy, the problem was that those flaky pieces made them look more like crab cakes, yes, and that. It wasn't what we were looking for, so our solution was to take them and pulverize them in the food processor, so I have a cup of panko. I'm going to pulse them about 15 times until they're nice and good. dragable just a couple more just in case well let's check this out so you can see it's a much finer grain now not as hard yeah yeah because panko has a pretty iconic texture with those nice flakes so I just I'm going to transfer to a shallow dish so I'll have a good space to dredge and I'm going to use this again so we needed these burgers to stick together but we already knew that bread fillings were suitable so we found that the more you process the shrimp the stickier they got and in the end we didn't need to add much more than a little bit of mayonnaise to help them stick well so I'm going to take about a cup of my shrimp I have one and a quarter pounder in total, these are 26 30 shrimp, so they are large, they are peeled and deveined and we remove the tails and my mayonnaise, which is not much mayonnaise, it is only two tablespoons, wow, this little bit of mayonnaise adds a little flavor extra. a little richness because they are quite lean.

I also have a quarter teaspoon of pepper, an eighth of a teaspoon of salt, and an eighth of a teaspoon of cayenne. Let's give it a little push, but it won't make them. Spidey, now I'm going to press this about eight times. I want to grind it very finely so that we have that sticking power so you can see that it's very finely ground. Yeah, I'm just going to take my spatula and clean up the bowl a little bit. a little bit, it's quite doughy, but we don't want the shrimp burgers to be shrimp paste burgers.

We liked a combination of larger chunks and finer ground chunks and we will pulse this, but not as many times, so some smaller chunks and some larger. It gives you sticking power and good texture about four times. I just want to make sure the big pieces are broken up, but you still want to be able to get a nice clean bite. You want to know what you are eating in a shrimp burger you want to get a good look at the shrimp, it looks perfect, yes there are no big chunks of shrimp sticking out but they are still recognizable.

I'm going to transfer this to a bowl for the last step, try to get some bits. of salt or cayenne or whatever, all the nooks and crannies, that's great, so the last ingredient we're adding is a little bit of chives, oh, okay, so three chives, I've chopped them up good, the reason why The reason we didn't add them in the food processor is that it really pulverizes the scallions and we wanted to have a little bit of texture, we wanted them to still taste fresh and we didn't want green shrimp burgers, the flecks of green are nice, but the amazing shrimp burgers Hulk are less fun, so I want to make four burgers here.

I have a half cup measure, so I'm going to transfer them to that just to make sure they're pretty. Now I'm just going to shape them into patties so that each one is about three and a half. inches in diameter, but what's really important is the thickness because we want to make sure the shrimp are fully cooked. We're looking for three-quarters of an inch. The really nice thing about these is that you don't need to refrigerate them. They don't need to be chilled, they're so gooey that they're really ready as soon as you've shaped and dredged them, which is quite unusual for a burger or patty like this, and also makes them super easy for Tuesday nights. you can make them ahead of time, but it's not necessary how far in advance you can make them.

I've made them a day in advance, oh but it's time to dredge them so I have my panko ready to go. We grind the panko very well. that we can really get a nice even distribution, so again we have a very thin layer, we don't want bready, we want crispy, so I'm just going to keep dredging my shrimp burgers, wash my hands and then we'll come back. and making some tartar sauce sounds good to get the burgers ready, I just want to heat up my oil now, that's not a lot of oil considering at the shrimp shack they fry them, that's right, it's only three tablespoons of oil ooh. like that, but we're using a non-stick pan and that's why we were able to use so little oil.

We want it nice and crunchy but not greasy. I have it on medium heat. You want to let the oil shine. Let's go to work. about the tartar sauce I love a good tartar sauce well we needed something to season the bun so I have three quarters of a cup of mayonnaise I'm also going to add three tablespoons of pickle that I have chopped fine plus a teaspoon of the brine a small shallot that I have chopped give us a little movement a little bit keep moving I like it I like it I also have a tablespoon of capers that I rinsed very well and then I chopped well the brine is It's really going to help that sweetness in the shrimp pop and a quarter teaspoon of pepper .

We don't need to add more salt, thanks to the pickles. We have enough for everyone, so we'll just mix this together pretty easily. easy and tastes so much better than anything you can find in the store. It has a really nice, fresh flavor with a little bit of texture. We'll let this hang out a bit while we cook the burgers. Okay and it looks like I have a nice glow here, so I'm going to pop the burgers. I'm just going to fry them until they're golden brown. That will only take about three to five minutes now if you have two spatulas. you want a fin and a catcher, not them to land on their side, that's what we're looking for so they're a nice golden brown color, so we're going to let them cook for another three to five minutes and then we're going to tempt them to do I'm sure they're ready, it's been about four minutes, so I'm going to try this, but I want to go in on this side to get a really accurate measurement, so I'm going to raise it up a little bit and If you're looking for a temperature between 140 and 145, keep in mind that because We have large pieces of shrimp and smaller pieces of shrimp, it's not a bad idea to check in more than one place so they are all ready.

The last thing you should do is let them sit on paper towels for just a couple of seconds. I'll give them a quick tour. I think we're ready. I'm hungry. So put some tartar sauce on the bun and We'll put this shrimp burger on top and a little extra sauce, we're not going to load them with a lot of stuff, no, just a little bit of crispy lettuce a little bit of color, a little bit of crunch extra crunchy, that's a shrimp burger mmm, that's good. They stay very juicy, yes they are very juicy and taste like shrimp with just a few other flavors around the edges but it's really about the shrimp and the texture.

I like to get some of those bigger pieces of shrimp and a little bit of chives now I know how to do the shrimp burger move. I'm not moving for everything to make your own Beaufort-style shrimp burger. Start by pulverizing panko in the food processor for the burger. Process some of the shrimp finely to act as a binder, but chop them. Roughly chop the rest of the shrimp so the burgers have some texture. After you shape the shell and sauté the burgers, serve them on a bun with homemade tartar sauce. If you think so, leave a comment and tell us what recipes you're excited to make or just say hello.

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