Great recipie! If you dredge whatever you're frying in flour before you put it in the batter, it helps the batter stick more and makes it thicker.
Simple, tasty batter. I added just a little salt to enhance flavor. I use it to make fried shrimp with onion rings on the side. It helps to dust your fish, shrimp, etc. with flour first, then dipping in the batter. Some people have said this batter is too thin; add a little more flour if you like, but note that a heavy batter will fry up very dense and retain a lot of oil.
This was an excellent recipe, except for the fact that the fish got very soggy when it cooled. My oil was plenty hot, I dried the fish first (as someone else had suggested) and drained them real good. Does anyone have a suggestion on how to keep the fish crispy?
The batter seemed too thin so I followed another reviewers advice and dredged walleye in flour before the batter. It turned out perfect. Nice light crispy coating. I fried two pieces at a time and kept them in a warming drawer as they finished. A 200 degree oven would do the same.
For a more "formal" version of fish & chips, I also coat the french fries in the batter. For us weight-watching folks, the fish & chips can be oven baked (345-deg./30-35 min), and everyone still loves it.
I made this to batter Alaskan Whiting. As a family from the UK, we were missing our traditional fish and chips so I went on the search for a good batter recipe. We liked this batter very much. It had a good flavor and covered the fish beautifully. The only thing we found was that it was a bit flat and didn't bubble out the way we like it. This was easily remedied by the addition of a tspn of baking soda. The key to making perfect fried fish is the temperature of the oil. If it is too hot, the batter will burn and the fish will be undercooked. If it is too cool, it will take too long to cook and the fish will be greasy. If it's cooked at the correct temperature (320f), the batter will be golden and crispy and the fish will be cooked through but won't taste greasy. Effectively, the fish is steamed by the heat of the oil cooking the batter, but should be cooked before the oil actually soaks through the batter, which is why the temperature of the oil is so crucial. This is a good recipe and definitely reminded us of home.
I used two cups of flour, two and a half cups of beer and a bit of cayenne to use as my batter for blooming onions. Absolutely delicious!
I had to start over after initially following the recipe exactly. This is way too much beer - it makes a soup of the flour mixture. I suggest pouring about 1/3 cup into the flour mix to start, and to slowly pour beer from the bottle if you need more.
We are big fish eaters in my family. I am always looking for new ways to dress it up and the recipe went over big. I loved that there was almost no prep time
