Beer Battered Hake and Chips is soul food if you ask me. Especially if you’re at a seaside village and it comes wrapped up in newspaper. Aaaah love that!!! I’ve finally added a really tasty and really easy beer batter recipe, as well as a homemade chips recipe and a tartare sauce recipe. I made this for my family a few nights ago and it was a toddler-and-husband approved success! I’ve tried a few batters before and they haven’t ever worked out that well, until this recipe of course.

Beer Battered Hake and Chips

Author: Louise

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Description

Delicious homemade beer-battered fish, with chips and tartare sauce – its soul food!

Ingredients

Hake

4-6 pieces of deboned hake fillets (I used skinless fillets)
2 cups flour plus extra for dusting
2 cups Guinness Beer (or even just one large 440ml can), in fact you can use any beer you like, I just happened to have Guinness at home.
Salt and Black Pepper
Oil for Deep Frying

Homemade Chips

6 large potatoes, peeled and cut lengthways, approximately 1cm in thickness.
Oil for Deep Frying

Method:

4-6 pieces of deboned hake fillets (I used skinless fillets)
2 cups flour plus extra for dusting
2 cups Guinness Beer (or even just one large 440ml can), in fact you can use any beer you like, I just happened to have Guinness at home.

Homemade Chips

6 large potatoes, peeled and cut lengthways, approximately 1cm in thickness.
Oil for Deep Frying

Tartare Sauce

6 Tablespoons Mayonnaise
1/2 tablespoon chopped Capers
1/2 tablespoon chopped Gherkins
Juice of a quarter of a Lemon
1/2 tablespoon chopped Parsley
Pinch of Salt

Instructions

For the hake:

Dab the hake with some paper towel to get rid of any moisture and then lightly dust the fillets with some flour. Set aside.
Make the batter by mixing the flour and beer together well. Add a little salt and pepper to the mixture.
In a deep pot/apn, pour in enough oil to come up to the middle of the pot. Heat the oil until you can see the oil “moving” and “swirling” but not so hot that it’s boiling.
Place the fish one by one in the batter and coat well, using a spatula, gently place the fish into the oil and then repeat the process with the rest of the fillets. Cook until the batter goes a crisp, golden brown (Guinness is a dark beer so the batter will naturally be darker than a lighter-coloured beer). The cooking doesn’t take long at all, my fillets cooked in about 5-6 minutes.

Homemade Chips

Rinse the potatoes under cold water to get rid of any starch and then pat dry with paper towel.
In a deep pot or pan, pour enough oil to reach the middle of the pot. Heat the oil to approximately 130C – if you don’t have a thermometer, the oil should be very hot but not enough to brown the chips just hot enough to cook them through. Lower the chips into the pot slowly and cook for approximately 10 minutes.
Now remove the chips from the pot using a spatula or slatted spoon and drain on paper towel.
When you are ready to serve the chips, reheat the same oil to approx. 190C and cook the already par-cooked chips for roughly 5 minutes or until a beautiful golden brown. Remove chips from the pot and allow to drain on paper towel.

Tartare Sauce

Mix all the ingredients together and voila – perfect homemade Tartare Sauce!

Beer Battered Hake and Chips