Readers of The Bitten Word cooked every recipe in the September 2013 Bon Appetit magazine. Here's their take on Fish and Chips with Malt Vinegar Mayonnaise.
Ping: A bit of a challenge: finding ingredients & it's been a while since I have made mayonnaise. Taste wise a bit bland, needs more spice ... possibly in the batter. But it was fun.
Kristl & Rachel: We dropped off some extra fish and mayo with a friend of ours. Here is her response: "OMG. That's like legit delicious restaurant quality. I just devoured half of that! YUM. Thank you!! It was so amazing I stood up and ate it in the kitchen. I'm lucky you two are my friends." [We thought it was] delicious, but there was a LOT of batter and it was lumpy no matter how much I whisked. The mayo was our favorite part of it, but when I got it out of the fridge today it had broken (which could be an error on our part, but it was fine last night). We also had a difficult time keeping the oil at the optimum temperature.
Connie: The beer batter recipe rocks. The fish (I used haddock) tasted really good. The batter recipe makes more batter than is needed -- you might want to be prepared to beer-batter some onions, other vegetables that you might have around, perhaps some fruit, a peanut-butter sandwich... :) It's really good! I used peanut oil for frying. I had no frying thermometer, but I used at trick my partner told me--when a popcorn kernel pops, it's hot enough. Worked like a charm! The mayonnaise, on the other hand, was nothing to write home about. Or on a blog about. Besides being squeamish about the raw egg, it was unimpressive. Maybe I should have mixed it longer. Perhaps. Not worth the effort, IMHO. For the chips, I parboiled some potato sweet potato strips (advice I may have read on the website somewhere?) and fried those too. What's not to love? Ok, the calorie count. But they tasted great!
Marissa : Never been a fan of fish and chips, but my dinner guests loved it. I didn't have the patience to make a mayo, but served the fish with with malt vinegar, old bay, and salt, and it was sufficient. This was my first time deep frying anything, so it was exciting to watch the batter puff up.
Alice: This household enjoys fish and chips on a regular basis, but we have always left the work to restaurateurs. We found the fish prep easy with straight forward directions, and the final product to be quite delicious. It is recommended that extra soda or beer be kept close at hand to temper the batter; it tends to thicken as it is used, becoming difficult to work with. A quick splash and stir with extra liquid before dipping each piece of fish is helpful. The malt vinegar mayonnaise ingredients appear to be out of proportion. It took four attempts to achieve a consistency even close to a sauce let alone a stiff mayo, and even then we had to modify the ingredients (two yolks, half the oil). Next time we will skip the suggested mayo and just enjoy a basic malt vinegar!
Diane: Delicious ... used wild caught Haddock - loved the light, fluffy batter! Served with oven fried sweet potato fries and carrot/beet salad. Don't usually prepare fried foods, so took me quite a while, but worth every minute.
Malia: Fabulous recipe! Followed it with no changes and everything turned out well. The Malt vinegar mayo was a highlight and really helped cut the richness of the fish and chips. I used cod and it held up and was very moist. Hot tip -- do not use too thick fillets as then I feel you would need to leave them in longer than the recipe called for. The batter was light and super flavourful. The chips were also a success -- followed the recipe BA provided -- could have left these in a tad longer but was nervous they would burn. All in all was thrilled with the outcome and would certainly make again.
Pam: Living in small town southeast Alabama I could not find fresh cod so I had to use frozen. I followed the recipe exactly and it turned out wonderfully! My daughter, who loves fish & chips, approved! My favorite thing about the recipe was the malt vinegar mayonnaise. Delicious! One of my tasters said I should "bottle" it! The calorie count on this recipe is high but for a treat it is so worth it! Better than those fast food fish places!
Get the Fish and Chips with Malt Vinegar Mayonnaise recipe at Bon Appétit
Head back to the Mains (Fish and Pizza) Index