Fish Fry: Gluten-Free Beer Battered Fish n’ Chips

Hello faithful readers! I’m back as promised! It always seems that I can manage to find time to post Thursdays so it may just be a safe bet that this is when I’ll be posting up.

As the nights get cooler and it gets dark earlier I find myself falling pray to the comfort food coma. If it’s filling, fatty, or fried it becomes my new best friend (and dinner). Tonight was no different. I have to admit that part of the reason I haven’t been posting is that I’ve been lazy with my food and either snagging an unhealthy amount of Chipotle or salads and since you already know about Chipotle…and I’m sure you can all make a salad I’ve been quiet.

Once again this post can be blamed on Adam Richman and his show Man v. Food. Yesterday I caught the episode where he had to eat 29 pieces of fried catfish and immediately had a craving for fish sticks or some sort of breaded/battered/fried fish. Of course I was part way through my left over burrito bowl and Bo was grumps and doing his own thing… so fried fish would have to wait.

Anyway, this afternoon while at work I remembered (like I occasionally do) that I had some cod in my fridge that needed to be used before it decided to go bad and thus make Bo more grumps. I’d never bought cod before and thus had no idea how to use it in a dish or the proper way to cook it. So of course when I got home I googled ‘Recipes with Cod’ and one of the first results was a very non-gluten-free ‘Beer Battered Fish n’ Chips’. I was bored though and decided to challenge myself into turning the recipe gluten-free.

I think I can say with confidence that I succeeded. It really only took swapping out the flour with rice flour, the beer with Red Bridge, and leaving out the malt vinegar.

What You’ll Need for 2 Servings:

~ 2 Filet’s of Cod cut into smaller pieces
~ Lemon Juice
~ 1 cup of Rice Flour
~ 1 Bag of Ore-Ida Roasted Original Potatoes
~ 2 tsp of Baking Soda
~ Salt & Pepper
~ Olive Oil
~ 7 shakes of garlic powder
~ 4 shakes of ground black pepper
~ 1 cup of Red Bridge Beer
~ 2 eggs

To Make:
~ Heat oil in 2 skillets (enough to cover the bottom of the skillets at least).
~ Combine the dry ingredients in 1 bowl.
~ Combine the beer and eggs in another.
~ Pour the eggs and beer into the dry ingredients and stir until batter reaches the consistency of pancake batter.
~ Fry the potatoes in skillet 1 for 9 minutes or until crispy.
~ Coat each piece of cod with batter. I honestly just dumped them all into the bowl and covered them for about 10 minutes.
~ Fry each piece of cod for about 5-8 minutes or until batter is crispy and cod is cooked through. Spray the frying pieces with Lemon Juice every so often.
~ Remove potatoes and fish from heat and serve immediately.
~ Enjoy.

The flavor is actually really good. It was a bit too bread-y to me though, not really flaky as I prefer but it was alright. According to Bo the beer flavor was really in the batter though and very tasty (I was drinking the rest of the beer I used with the meal so I couldn’t tell very well). The potatoes have remained a favorite of ours although I  think they’ll be cooked in the oven from now on as they crisp better in there. The sauce in the photo is a gluten-free BBQ sauce (clearly labeled on the bottle just like I prefer) and goes perfect with the potatoes. When I find out the name I’ll edit this post (I’d do it now but I’m typing this in bed under a comfy set of blankets and I am not getting up for anything).

If you’re in the mood and don’t mind a little mess and effort I highly recommend this dinner. It’s a nice change from the normal salmon and various fish dishes I make. It’s also quelled my craving for Fish n’ Chips for awhile now.

While I know I promised you all a cookie recipe too that is going to have to wait until tomorrow as I totally ripped apart my kitchen in making dinner and didn’t feel like cleaning it to destroy it again OR destroying it more. So tomorrow, Flourless Peanut Butter Cookies (and Hot Chocolate)!

For now I’m going to re-watch yesterday’s Halloween episode of Psych and giggle quietly to myself at the simultaneous references of the 80′s movie The Lost Boys in the episode (I love that movie…don’t judge me). And then pass out for the night like Gus when he inhales the chloroform rag… until next time…