Home Cooking: Guinness Battered Fish and Fries

(image from Guinness)

I was given a couple of bottles of Guinness Extra Stout to cook with. They say that when life gives you lemons, make lemonade. In this case, mine came in a bottle of hops and barley.

With no plans of drinking it, I went to the grocery to get some fish fillet to make fish and fries with it. It's one of our favorite things to eat here at home. Considering Guinness is dark-colored, am expecting the batter to be the same.

Guinness' site actually has a repository of recipes. This is where I found their Crispy Guinness Batter Cod Fillet recipe.

You can also find a video tutorial from the Original Naked Chef. It shows the type of consistency to look in the batter - runny, but not too runny.

I used potato starch instead of all-purpose flour because it gives a less-burnt color when cooked. With Guinness making the batter dark-colored, using all-purpose flour might make it looked more burnt. Plus, I find using potato flour gives a crispier texture on the food.

The batter consistency can be quite tricky to the naked eye. It looked too runny to me, but when I tried to oat the fish with it, it's rather sticky.

The recipe is actually easy to follow and cooks quickly. To complement the fish,  I made a batch of tartar sauce.

We actually had this for an afternoon snack. So, I don't think we'd have enough room for dinner tonight.

So, what did I do with the other Guinness bottle? I left it on my workstation for a different purpose: