How One of NYC’s Best British Chefs Makes Fish & Chips

[gentle instrumental music]

[oil sloshes] [gentle music continues]

Hi, my name's Ed Szymanski.

I am the chef and owner of Dame in New York City,

and today, we're making our perfect version

of fish and chips.

[gentle music continues]

[bell rings]

We serve English food here. I'm English.

I grew up in London.

We've built a menu of modern British food around it,

but fish and chips is the anchor of the menu.

No pun intended. [chuckles]

I think the Dame fish and chips are so good

because of how light and airy they are.

The batter is this really delicate, frilly, lace batter

that coats the fish,

potatoes that come out super crispy and crunchy,

and then we douse the whole thing in malt vinegar

and eat it with a homemade tartar sauce.

We're gonna start by preparing our fish.

[gentle music continues]

This is local hake,

which I think is the best fish if you're in the northeast

of the US, to use for fish and chips.

If you can find local cod, that's really delicious too.

We use that a lot in the UK.

We like hake for its texture.

It has these really big, pearly flakes.

Fall apart delicately when you eat it.

It gives a really pleasant mouthfeel.

It also doesn't have too high of a moisture content,

which would interact with the batter

and stop it from getting crispy.

I stick to large, firm, flaky whitefish where possible.

These have very generously been semi-butchered for us

and pin boned, so we're going to cure it.

Curing it is a process of adding salt and other flavorings,

pull out some of the moisture and season it from the inside.

We gonna add salt and lemon zest,

just two very simple flavors.

Salt pulls out the moisture

and it adds seasoning to it,

which is gonna make it more delicious.

The low moisture is really important

so that the batter stays crispy.

If you introduce a very wet product into a deep fryer,

the water has to evaporate

before the batter can form its shell on the outside.

We don't want that to happen.

That slows down the cooking process.

It makes it oily and soggy.

You do not wanna put wet products in a deep fryer.

We use lemon zest

because it has a really nice aromatic quality.

We will use lemon juice later when the fish

comes out of the fryer,

and we serve this with lemon wheels

so that people can add as they wish,

but we add lemon juice at this stage.

It'll start to cure the fish in a much more intense way

and it tastes more like ceviche.

The flesh will really become a lot firmer,

to a point where it gets quite chewy.

So this will sit in the fridge for a couple of hours

and now we'll move on to the next step.

[tray clangs]

The fish has been curing now for a couple of hours.

I'm gonna portion it.

I like nice big pieces of my fish and chips.

There's nothing worse than getting

a stingy little thin piece,

and also, it will overcook the fish,

so we'll cook nice big chunks.

These weigh about six ounces.

You can see from the curing process,

the fish is quite nice and dry on the inside,

which is perfect for deep frying.

Now it's being portioned, it's ready to go in the fryer.

[gentle instrumental music]

The chips are just as important as the fish,

French fries if you're American,

but these are different.

These are English, they're thick.

Golden brown on the outside.

They're really fluffy on the inside.

The closest thing you have in the states

that's analogous is a steak fry,

but you'll see these are different, and better.

First thing, we've gotta peel the potatoes.

Our skin-on chips are delicious,

but to get the exterior of the potato extra crispy,

we need to break down all the cell walls

around the edge of the potato.

We use Idaho russetts.

They are the most abundant American potato,

you see them all over the place,

and then we'll soak them in water

to remove some of the starch

so that when we fry them, they don't get gummy.

When we cut them, we're gonna cut 'em

into nice large chunks.

They might look huge.

When we cook 'em, they're gonna shrink a little bit.

The potatoes are cooked three times.

It's a two-day process,

and the reason we do that is to maximize crispiness

on the outside and creaminess on the inside.

So we soak 'em first, then we're gonna boil them

in salted water,

and normally when you boil a potato at home,

you put it into cold water and bring it up to a boil

and it's to cook it through

without destroying the exterior of the potato.

That's the opposite of what you want to achieve here.

We want to destroy the exterior as much as possible

to increase the surface area

and that'll allow it to get even crispier

than it would otherwise.

You're gonna add a bunch of salt.

So normally if you just cut a potato and then you fry it,

you don't get a chance to add seasoning to the inside,

whereas when you boil them, you can season the potato

from the inside out.

[potatoes slosh]

And try not to burn your hands when you pop 'em in.

So our potatoes have been boiling for about 20 minutes.

See they're starting to fall apart, getting nice and soft.

So I'm gonna pull 'em out onto the tray

to let them cool down.

[metal clangs] We wanna be gentle

when we're doing this.

We do want them to break up, but not too much.

You don't wanna end up with just mush.

And the best part of these fries are gonna be all these

little crackly edges around the exterior,

look sort of fluffy and delicate.

They're gonna get really, really crispy.

'Cause if you try to fry them now,

they're just gonna fall apart,

so they need to have a chance to firm back up

so we can fry them.

I'm gonna put these in the fridge and we'll keep moving on.

[gentle instrumental music]

Tartar sauce is a seasoned sort of mayonnaise

and creamy sauce.

We'll start by chopping up

some of our cornichons and capers.

[knife chops] So we like the chunkiness

in our tartar sauce,

so we're not gonna chop anything too fine.

Cornichon is a pickled gherkin, a little cucumber.

Capers bring a nice saltiness,

the cornichons bring nice bite and acidity.

[shallot crunches] The shallots bring

a nice crunch too.

[shallot crunches]

We'll chop some chives,

[knife chops] and now lastly,

we'll chop some dill and some parsley together.

Not too fine. That'll go in.

The tanginess in the tartar sauce is a really nice foil

for the richness of the fried potatoes and the fried fish,

and the herbaciousness too, is really good.

We make a mayonnaise in-house.

You can buy mayonnaise from the store,

especially if you're doing all the other steps.

This is made with some egg yolks, a little bit of mustard,

some champagne vinegar, a tiny bit of garlic,

some salt, and oil, and then a spoon of creme fraiche.

If you can't find creme fraiche, you can sub sour cream,

and if this sounds analogous to ranch dressing,

I think that's the American version of tartar sauce,

pretty much. [chuckles]

We make our own tar sauce,

'cause we do everything in-house here,

everything apart from making our own ketchup,

'cause if we could do ketchup better than Heinz,

then we would be ketchup barons,

and we are not ketchup barons.

We might one day be tartar-sauce barons.

And you see how sort of chunky this is?

Now, add a little bit of lemon zest.

[lemon scratches]

Mm. Delicious.

It's tangy, it's bright, it's herby, and it's crunchy,

and you can hear the crunch.

[gentle instrumental music] A little bit of salt,

and at the very end, we're gonna add just a dash

of malt vinegar.

Keep it true to its fish and chips origins.

And now we're ready to move on to the frying the potatoes.

[oil sizzles] [gentle music continues]

We're gonna do our first fry on the potatoes.

These have been in the fridge for a couple of hours.

You can see the frilly edges have started

to firm up a little bit,

and the potatoes themselves are much more firm now,

so they're gonna withhold going into the deep fryer.

The goal of this first fry is to begin the process

of getting 'em crispy, start cooking the outside,

and to set the edges so that when we deep fry

them the second time, they get super, super crunchy.

And we do this at a low temperature in the fryer.

Allow them to take their time.

It's better to do this slow first

and then do the high heat later.

You get a much crispier product

and a much creamier interior.

If you're doing this at home

and you don't have a deep fryer,

the best approach is to get a pot halfway full with oil.

Do not fill it to the top.

You see all this bubbling that's happening now?

That's gonna overflow if you fill your pot to the top

and then it'll get into the gas ring

and then, boom, up goes the house.

The potatoes have been in there for about eight minutes now,

and they're starting to develop these nice little

golden brown edges.

Other than that, they're quite pale.

However, they are now very crunchy.

Just drain these of their oil and let 'em cool down again.

These will now chill down

and right when we fry the fish,

we're gonna put the potatoes in again at a high heat

so that everything's hot and crispy at the same time.

[gentle music continues]

The batter, I think, is the most important part of this.

It's what sets a great fish and chips apart from a good one.

In general, with frying philosophy,

when you batter something, you don't want to fry the product

that's on the inside of the batter.

It's a common misconception.

You are frying the batter, but you are steaming the product

that's on the inside of the batter.

The batter needs to form a shell around the products.

You don't want the oil to get into the batter

and sizzle the fish on the inside.

That'll result in an overcooked piece of fish

and one that gets soggy quite quickly.

Whereas if you have this beautifully textured batter

that's light and fluffy, you can fry the batter

and then the fish itself just steams delicately inside it.

Let's start with A-P flour. That'll give it some body.

We'll add some rice flour,

and the rice flour really helps it get super crispy.

If you've ever had the chicken wings

that are coated in rice flour

at Asian restaurants, it's so good.

The rice flour will help it stay crispy for a long time too.

Whereas A-P flour, or regular flour,

will absorb moisture much quicker than rice flour,

so it gets wet and starts to sort of dissolve,

and then you get this mushy fish and papery, wet batter.

It's just not very nice.

And then some baking powder.

The baking powder's what gives it the puff.

It's what gives it that really lacy, lassy texture,

same way that it helps cakes to rise.

Baking powder does have quite an unpleasant taste when raw,

so it's important that it's fully cooked off.

Then we use our two fine alcohol products.

Vodka, which is an interesting reading

that you wouldn't see in fish and chips batters a lot.

What vodka, or more precisely, the ethanol in vodka does

is lower the evaporating point of the batter,

the same way it would in a pie crust,

so when the batter hits the hot oil,

the liquid in it evaporates quicker than it would

if it was just beer, forms the shell quicker,

allows us to create that crust

so the fish inside is steaming and the outside is frying.

And then a freshly cracked Narragansett.

It's a little not New England.

This is a very English recipe.

We did try this with a bunch of other beer

and it actually doesn't work as well,

but there's something about the fizziness of Narragansett

that works particularly well.

So the beer is for flavor.

You need some sort of liquid to form a batter.

If you were making a very refined tempura batter,

you might use sparkling water.

You want carbon dioxide, you want bubbles, you want air.

You're gonna see that when we put it in the deep fryer.

All these little bubbles will form

and that's what gives you the light batter.

You don't want water and flour,

you don't want a paste that coats it

and gives you this hard shell.

So some there and then some for the chef,

[Ed slurps] and now we're gonna mix it,

but one thing we don't wanna do is develop the gluten.

This is true for making cakes and pastry work too.

But you develop the gluten, you form this lattice structure.

Gluten strands are all loose,

and the more you work them,

the more they form this structure

that ends up being the chewiness in bread.

You don't want a bready batter,

you want the gluten to be undeveloped in this,

so it's really not important to get all the lumps out.

You just wanna incorporate this stuff together.

This is true for pretty much everything that's not bread,

like pancakes, waffles, all of that stuff.

You don't want to develop gluten too much.

What we want is all these little frothy air bubbles

around the outside.

Now we have this light batter

that's starting to souffle a little bit and pop up,

and in a minute or so this will be ready for our fish.

[gentle instrumental music] [oil sizzles]

The batter is nice and puffy.

It's got all these little air bubbles in it,

and now this is gonna happen quickly.

We're gonna dump the fish in, in a very specific technique,

and then we're gonna fry the potatoes.

So lightly dust it in the batter,

allow some of it to drip off,

and drop into the fryer while shaking.

[oil sizzles]

Now spoon a few little bits of batter with your hand

on top. [cage rattles]

And the shaking technique allows the batter

to sort of break off.

[cage rattles] [oil sizzles]

The best part of a fish and chip shop

in the UK is all these little crispy batter bits

that they sell on the side or giveaway for free.

So we get all those on the side too,

so we can either eat them or serve them.

And whilst the fish is frying,

we're gonna do the second fry on our potatoes as well.

The fish goes in about 30 seconds to a minute earlier

than the potatoes.

Takes a little bit longer to cook,

depending on the thickness of the fish, that's adjustable,

and at this point, don't screw with it too much.

Just let the frying happen.

We want everything to be hot at the same time,

so it's important that we fry the potatoes

so they come out at the same time that fish comes out.

You don't want soggy, cold potatoes.

[oil sizzles]

The fish is swimming in above the oil,

but the bat offers it some protection from getting fried

on the outside and not cooked on the inside.

[oil sizzles]

Okay, the potatoes are pretty ready now.

Golden brown and very crunchy.

It's been four-ish minutes. It looks delicious.

And you can see this really light coating,

and this airy, crispy batter.

All these little bits we'll take with us.

We'll pull out our fries too.

[fries plop]

Go hit it straight away with some flaky salt.

[fries rattle]

You can hear how crunchy it is. Same on the fish too.

You do need to salt it right away,

'cause when it's hot, it can absorb the salt better.

Then when you're draining the fish,

just move it a couple times on this tray with paper,

so the oil drains off the fish,

but now we're ready.

We go to the plate. [gentle instrumental music]

So we have our crispy potatoes.

[gentle music continues]

I'm gonna stack our fish,

[gentle music continues]

gonna add a few little crunchies,

[gentle music continues]

and then a nice, generous portion of the tartar sauce.

To finish it, we'll serve a lemon cheek,

and then I'm gonna spritz the whole thing

with some malt vinegar.

This is a perfume bottle.

You can get it at CVS for a dollar.

A few little sprays.

[bottle sprays] [gentle music continues]

You just douse the malt vinegar on top,

that is delicious, but it makes it go soggier quicker,

so this is another way of not adding too much moisture,

to keep everything crispy.

Add a few last flakes of salt, and here it is.

This is the Dame version of fish and chips.

[gentle music continues]

I like to start with a chip and dip it in the tartar sauce.

So, be generous with the tar sauces too.

[Ed crunches] [gentle music continues]

Mm. These potatoes have totally transformed.

They're really, really crisp on the outside,

but the inside is really light and airy and fluffy.

You break it open and you can see

how creamy the interior looks, and how soft.

It's almost like mashed potatoes in there.

Fish and chips is finger food too.

A lot of people don't think that,

but you can eat every part with your hands,

including the fish,

and you see how that flakes up into these nice, big,

pearly, juicy flakes,

and you can see the batter has fallen around the outside,

coats it with this very light layer,

still delicate and crispy.

[gentle music continues]

[Ed crunches] [gentle music continues]

Mm. [lips smack]

You can taste the lemon zest and the salt

from the seasoning, and the batter, crunchy at first

and then melts in your mouth.

[gentle music continues]

Just get another piece so you can see here

all these flakes.

This is why we like hake so much for its texture,

it's these really big flakes.

I want people to see all the work

that goes into a really delicious version of fish and chips

and appreciate the craft

that's behind this quite simple dish,

but if you take each element seriously

and work on technique, how delicious it can be.

[mid-tempo instrumental music]