Chris Makes Fried Fish Sandwiches | From The Test Kitchen | Bon Appétit

Hey, I'm Chris Morocco. I'm in the Test Kitchen. We're making fried fish sandwiches with tartar sauce and pickled cucumbers. This, to me, is like iconic summer cooking. First thing we're gonna do is make the tartar sauce. This fits within this world of mayonnaise-based sauces punched up with really assertive ingredients. So this is a sauce that cuts through. There are obviously measurements in this recipe, but I wanna show you that you don't necessarily have to be beholden to following a recipe, strictly speaking. Mayonnaise is really the base, and there's no need to make your own here. Dijon mustard, a little bit of punch. Sweet pickle relish, really sweet. I don't necessarily put it on my hot dogs, but in a sauce like this, it's so, so good. Capers. Did you pre-drain these for me? Thank you. You need to chop them up a little bit. You can disperse the capers a little bit throughout the sauce. I'm a little specific about my zest. I believe you gotta go from pole to pole, making one pass. You get into a real rhythm with it. That's how you get that outer zest without digging into the pith. Take the zest before you bisect the lemon. I love these. I know you can squeeze juice other ways, but it's just so clean. You don't necessarily want tons of garlic flavor in here, so a modest clove. And we're gonna microplane this. The microplane unleashes the full garlickiness of the garlic. So I know we're gonna need a little bit of extra salt in here. Some of these ingredients are salty, but we want it to cut through. But we just created something very bright, very punchy. It's bright, it's a little bit sweet. I'm very happy with that. Pickles. When else have I done this? I do this on ******* everything. Seasoned rice vinegar. It's got sweetness, it's got salt. You can just use it straight up. You don't need a mandolin to slice things thinly. I just take a little bit off, just to give me a steady base. Cut down the length of it. Once you get close to your fingers, just turn it on its side again. The reason why I'm cutting it lengthwise is I want these to get drapey, but stay put. The vinegar, it's gonna draw out some of the water content from the cucumbers. It's gonna create its own brine. And then these can just sit until we're ready to assemble. We've got a few different scenarios when it comes to the buns. Okay, when it comes to bun prep, option one is do nothing. And that's valid. A squishy bun isn't trying to pretend to be something it's not. Option two, you toast it, just to kind of wake the bread back up. Option three, taking a little bit of butter, go over to the stove and kind of do one of these. And that kind of works. But I want like leveled up buns here. In terms of leveling up the flavor of just like a regular, pretty average store-bought bun, brushing on a little bit of melted butter just gets everything nice and coated on here. And then just light pressure there. So I'm doing this in the cast iron that we're ultimately gonna fry the fish in. Because the buns, once they're toasted, they can kind of hang for a minute. So that's nice. Now we're gonna go in with our oil for frying. We're gonna let this heat up while we make our dredge and our batter. We're making dredge, which is our dry mixture that the fish is gonna be dipped into initially. And then we're making our batter, the wet mixture that is gonna be the final coating before it goes into the oil. So quarter cup each AP flour and cornstarch. It has no gluten, so you're not gonna get chewiness. You're gonna get crispiness. We can put some salt in there, but we don't need much. Into the batter bowl, AP flour, cornstarch. The baking powder is gonna create lift to the batter as it fries. It's gonna kind of open up inside that layer, so it's not kind of rubbery. Next, we're gonna do cayenne, which is just straight, pure heat. Old Bay's got quite a bit of salt in it, so that is gonna form the bulk of our seasoning. Now we're gonna do the liquid part. One egg makes it just ever so slightly doughy, and I don't mean that in a bad way. It really kind of gives it substance. And then a light beer. Carbonation, even if it's just club soda, provide lift to the batter, making it really light and airy. So I want the egg to be mixed before the beer goes in because I don't wanna have to whisk it to death and decarbonate the beer. Light beer mainly because it's gonna be the sort of the mildest in flavor. In addition to carbonation, the beer is also giving us acidity. Lower pH environments inhibit gluten formation, preserving tenderness in the batter. Just want like a few swift strokes here. Done. Fish, gonna season somewhat generously. Gonna go into our dry dredge, shaking off all the excess here. If you wanna use another implement, a fish spatula is a pretty nice thing to use there. See how the batter is really clinging? It's also kind of bubbling a little bit. If you're afraid of the oil, you know, just kind of lowering it using the spatula, you can use any flaky white fish here. Hake, haddock, halibut, this is cod. I'm looking for color change. You can already see like there's quite a big difference where like that sort of raw batter, and then what's happening color-wise to the cooked batter there. So I do like the clinginess of this batter. It's not gonna adhere like 100% perfectly, but I do really like the way that it's giving like a nice barrier between the oil and the fish. This one like got a little bit more color, but when you do like a very shallow fry and cast iron like this, it's gonna sit on the bottom of that cast iron, which is why some spots get a little bit darker. Fish is done, looking beautiful. We're gonna head back to the station and finish this off. First thing I'm gonna do, like I'm gonna just grab a handful of dill, and I'm literally gonna just tear it up and sprinkle it in these cucumbers. It just wakes up all the flavors. Beautiful piece of fish laid on like so. And then to finish, I just want like a couple pieces of iceberg that are gonna drape right over the fish like so. And then I'm gonna use a generous amount of this sauce to finish. Knowing that like once I put the top on, it's gonna kind of ooze out just slightly. It's messy, it's beautiful. This is my fried fish sandwich. Mm, the fish is still crispy. I just wanna point that out. Like that is so satisfying to me. Moist, juicy, super tender, but with that shattering shell around it. I just love that it hits like that summer beachy vibe, but something that's actually pretty simple to do at home. I hope it can convince you that you can make amazing fried fish yourself at home. Even if you didn't wanna put it on a sandwich, totally fair game, but I think layered with the tartar sauce, the pickled cukes, so good.