Easy Fish Fritters Recipe: Made from Scratch | French Cooking Academy

Welcome back to the channel. So in this cooking class or I call it this way because we're always making tutorials here we're going to be learning how to make french style fish fritters. We're going to be talking about batter, the different style we use in France, how to make the fritters and then how to make a very special tangy kind of spicy sauce that originates from the french caribbean because the original version of that recipe comes from there and these fritters are called the acra de morue called the salted cod fish fritters but we're just going to use simple white fish to make things simple. Let's get started. So let's begin here talking about the most important component which is the batter. So every time you want to deep fry something in french cooking and you want to use fruit or vegetables or whatever you dip it in and then deep fry there's different types of batter that you can use. A lot of them derive from the crepe batter to start with but depending on what you're making and the batter can be mixed with milk like here with water sometimes with beer and you can also use a element to flavor the batter and also yeast depending on what you're making. There's also another style of like tempura style batter that is used for vegetables like you know in japanese cuisine we're going to have a mix of normal flour, rice flour, potato starch and so on and so forth and plenty of different things. What I'm going to be sharing with you here is a simple base version that is pretty much based on the crepe batter that you can use as well and the good thing about it is that you can make it very simply just by using milk like a crepe batter or you can replace the milk with beer. So if you like fish with a beer batter you can use that recipe and use beer instead of milk very simple. Don't use water for that one though. The other difference is that a crepe batter usually has whole eggs and here we're only going to be using egg yolks but that's about it so let's make it and now let's make the batter. One thing to note when you have a recipe that includes batter always make the batter first because it needs to rest for minimum an hour sometime two sometime more so always start with this. First we're going to do bowl we're going to sift all the flour in the bowl always important the sifting. Keep in mind by the way that if you're making a crepe batter it is pretty much the same process so we've got dry ingredient number one which is the flour you always follow with another dry ingredient it's going to be the salt and there's no sugar in that one okay then we make that kind of little well we add here it is only egg yolks in the middle okay and we start to mingling everything together and what I'm going to do here very simply I'm going to start to add a little bit of the milk bit at a time and we incorporate and we're going to get something that's rather thick in here okay so now I'm all done what I'll add here is a little bit of oil and that's going to be it we're going to mix everything there and we are done so as you can see it is very simple this is the end result it's a thick batter and remember we're not making crepes we're making fritters the reason it's thick like this as well is because there is something extra that you can do if you want to if you want to have something a bit lighter and airy and to add some air where you can make a meringue and then add some meringue into the batter just before putting the fish and whatever resting time remember one hour minimum okay if you want to leave it longer you can make sure you just cover it like this and if it gets a bit more dry as you keep it in the fridge we can always add a little bit of milk in there it's never a problem now once you're done with the batter the other thing you can make in advance is that spicy sauce a dipping sauce that I've talked about but to make it today we're going to do it differently because as you can see right here there's a newcomer into my kitchen and rest assured this is not a sponsored paid post by Magimix at all it's something I just bought myself recently because I needed one the reason I'm talking about this it is because that's not the only thing it came with this is what came with that machine and surprisingly imagine if you don't know it's a French company and there is about 50 more recipes in there so I'm going to do that sauce to show you we're going to see with the book what happens and I think you know what on my next videos I'm going to take you through some of the recipes in there that I really want to test because it's claiming seconds and I want to see if that's going to work so for now let's test that sauce now let's do this this is quite exciting I'd love to try this little gadget so there we got the bowl it says we have to use a normal plate so we're going to lock this thing into place and this is the lid we're going to be using okay and it says here we have to put first the chilies in there with the onions in there and the coriander and the parsley okay so I've already prepared the ingredients this is to leave the stem it's called the sprig of something apparently there's a stem with it and pulse four to five times can we do this one two five okay if you're curious that's how it looks like it's kind of course okay interesting and now we continue add all the other ingredients and blend for 30 seconds oh it says it's an extremely hot sauce we have to be careful so the other ingredients so I've got some vinegar some lemon juice there's some oil in there okay and there is some salt and then it says to blend this for 30 seconds I'm gonna put here a timer on okay so here I go 30 seconds almost there boom all right let's see what we've got so let's see if it's super hot yeah I think it's hot while your batter is resting it is time to prepare the fish now the fish is going to take a little time because we need to pre-cook it we need to poach it and you don't use the fish roll like that so make sure you trim it you get all the nice pieces okay and we're gonna poach it in a courbouillon which is water with some aromatics I'll show you that in a second when this is done we're gonna mix the cooked fish we're gonna flake it put it through the batter with some flavoring ingredients so the flavoring ingredients can vary but typically you're gonna have spring onion chives this is a mixture of shallots and garlic and a bit of chili can be from the Basque country you can use a Thai chilies if you want something really strong salt and pepper and then we're gonna mix everything together the fish the batter the aromatics of that kind of thick paste and this is what we're gonna use to make the fritters so you see nothing complicated let me start by showing you how we're gonna be poaching the fish and now for the courbouillon what does it mean courbouillon means the short boil all it is is water we're gonna have a little bit of of salt in there and we've got all the aromatics you can add time but it's just ready to add a little flavoring in there I'm gonna be using a hint of acidity so I'm using lemon you can use vinegar if you want so courbouillon we're gonna wait for this to boil we're gonna leave this to boil very shortly and then turn the heat off and plunge the fish in here this is a technique from the Roux brothers that they tend to use instead of putting the fish where I leave it to boil to avoid any overcooking they kind of boil first turn the heat off and plunge the fish in there which is something that works pretty well perfect so as you can see it's boiling courbouillon short boiling so one or two minutes maximum you don't want to cook anything and I'm turning my heat off simple and now I'm gonna take my fish and I'm gonna plunge it in there directly so typically five or six minutes you can leave it in there always important use a timer let's go okay I'm all done and by the way I'm using rockling in here I did some peppercorn it's got a little bit milky the water but that technique from the Roux brothers one of the fish that the thing that I really like is that you will never overcook your fish so you bring to the boil turn the heat off and the fish you see look at that it's moist and tender just about cooked and can be flaked that kind of technique is golden for me especially at home because it really prevents you to make big mistake because fish if you overcook it it's terrible the next step when the fish is good is to flake it so as you can see this is the texture we want the pieces like this you can use a fork you can use a knife you can use your hands and make sure you wash your hands all done so look at this we're already I took my batter out of the fridge I've got my fish is pre-cooked and flaked and all the other flavoring ingredients now measuring for the making of the fruit is very very important the weight of the fish you use okay let's say I'm going to use 300 grams you need to you need to have half that weight in batter okay so more fish than batter so I'm going to take here 300 grams of that fish and then I'm going to divide this into and take 150 gram of batter okay and then we're going to mix everything and now for the assembly so I've got my batter that's been measured here and this is a starting point we may need to adjust a little bit more depends on your type of fish how running your battery is etc etc but this is it now let's talk baking powder a lot of recipes say you need to add a bit of baking powder usually I don't I'm gonna add just to show you so a tiny bit like you know kind of even a quarter of a teaspoon in there it is said that sometimes it makes the whole you know your beignets a little bit more fluffier anything like this I'm not always too convinced but I'm gonna do it okay so stir that through and then you can start to add your fish okay and it's just adding the fish adding the batter and then we're gonna add the other ingredients hold on so as you can see we've got some beautiful colors going on and from here and we're gonna add the rest you don't have to add everything it's really up to you I like always to kind of judge by vision like I kind of look and I'm like ah you know what maybe a bit of chives in here and my a bit of chili is that enough yes and maybe you know a grind of pepper in there and of course a bit of salt you want some salt because there was no salt at all and then you mix the whole lot cool I'm gonna go crazy and add a bit of these Thai chilies in there that's gonna be hot I'm gonna be on fire and that's gonna be okay so in the fridge and the oil time let's go so I've got an oil at 180 degrees celsius pretty common finite and with the spoon I'm gonna start first I always do a test with a kind of a small tablespoon because there is a chance that this thing might decide to fall apart totally see here we go first one okay the foam is receding it's barely three minutes whoa look at that yeah I've just my temperature of the oil was a little bit too hot so make sure it's not too hot I'm gonna use one of the chili see it goes so three minutes I think is spot on and I think definitely below 180 to give you a bit of time to cook the whole thing there will be better I would say 175 might be best so you have time to kind of let it roll around and really cook properly I'm just for two in there to lower the oil temperature but to tame it down let's look I'm going on over to the first minute ah you see so lower temperature that's gonna retake its time to cook there that's a bit better let's have a look wow I like that nice color not too brown I'm gonna stop it so actually it is really really fast now let's try one rolling the drums okay so look at this one though it's still a little bit at lower temperature let's see how it tastes like it's a bit it's moist but it's cooked because the fish is cooked already so no problem no I think it's fine the fish is not like rubber you feel the fish I can feel the other aromatics I can feel the chives and the spring onion but definitely you know what it needs here is a dipping sauce now remember that sauce was super hot but why do we have this kind of you know lemony vinegary kind of sauce with chili because the batter with the white fish there's a dullness to it it's fine it stays fine but it just needs something to wake the whole thing up and I hope this is gonna be the answer yeah no immediately perfect match now that is bringing the missing element so you get the tanginess zestiness lemon so fish and lemon goes super well yeah I'm gonna open another one up okay one of the beginning it's like a fish nugget but that sauce wow you need something like this now that was quite interesting and that completes the video on how to make some simple fish fritters I call Acra in the French Caribbean and made remember with salted cod and for the original recipe but here we're using no more fish and perhaps you could use salmon who knows that's probably I will leave you with this picture on the screen and I'll be waiting for you for the next little cooking class on the French cooking academy take care bye