Alton Brown Cooks Food | Episode 15: Fish Sticks!

This guy is responsible for my culinary childhood. No, it's it's not my dad or my granddad. This is Clarence freaking Bird's Eye, who in 1927 invented this, the multiplate freezer. See, at the turn of the 20th century, frozen foods sucked because the technology at the time froze. The target food slowly, creating huge ice crystals that literally stabbed the food to death from the inside. Bird's eye machine squeezed food into a little rectangular box surrounded by metal plates that were super chilled by refrigerants like say ammonia. Now, this meant that the uh the food brick therein froze very very quickly. therefore contained tiny little ice crystals which preserved both taste and texture. The very first foods, although you may be familiar mostly with vegetables, but first one was fish fillets. He also attempted freezing rabbit. No records of how that turned out. Now, flash forward to the days following World War II. We're having, you know, beaten the snot out of the Axis powers. America turned its new technological advancements like say the Nordberg 6,000 horsepower uh marine diesel engine and a little thing called sonar to wage a brand new war. A war on seafood. In the 50s, factory ships started working the seas, capable of catching, processing, and freezing seafood into gigantic blocks using essentially bird's eyes invention, but on steroids. The problem is is that American consumers didn't have much of an appetite for seafood bricks. No problem. Guy name of Roberty Kenny of the Groten Pew Fisheries. Groten Groten, I've never been able to say that. Anyway, his team decide to run these blocks through a band saw till they've got pieces about the size of a finger. And then with the help of MIT, no less, they figured out how to bread, fry, and refreeze them. Boom. Fish sticks, a food we didn't even know we wanted. In 1953, the head of advertisement for Grot, this one, uh, Paul Jacobs, talked the editors of the very powerful Parents magazine, um, into giving fishsticks their official seal of approval. advertising America's obsession with processed foods and the future did the rest and thus I and my ilk became intimate with the Groen's fisherman and of course Captain Bird's eye who's clearly Captain Kangaroo's second cousin or something. Now I loved fish sticks with a fiery passion and a few years ago for kicks I purchased a box only to find the product lacking. So, I set out to make my own. And now I share this rebooted culinary classic with you. I My Hardies, we cook. Let us examine the software. Beginning with the fish. I have here one pound of cod filt. Now, if you can't get cod, don't don't panic. You could use hadock or pollic. Lots of time in the history of fish sticks, nobody knew what the heck they were catching. Uh, we're also going to need a tablespoon of mayonnaise. I like Dukes, but that's just me. You'll need a tablespoon as well of Dijon mustard. This is great pup. Remember? Pardon me. Would you happen to have any gray pu? Do you remember? I'm old. Um, spices. Teaspoon of onion powder, 1/4 teaspoon of cayenne pepper, two teaspoons of kosher salt. We will also require the services of three eggs, 70 g, and you are going to weigh it. all-purpose flour, a cup and a quarter panko Japanese breadcrumbs. You don't have to weigh that. And finally, a quart of peanut oil is what I use. Now, I know some folks might think, "I'm allergic to peanuts. I can't have peanut oil." Well, odds are good that you can. There are a lot of fast food places that use refined peanut oil like this. Refined meaning all of the proteins which cause the allergic reaction have been removed. It's uh coldressed and unrefined peanut oils that are probably giving you the problem. However, if you're really worried, check with your doctor or just don't use it. Use instead um safflower oil, avocado oil, vegetable oil, um canola oil if you like it. I don't really use it that much anymore cuz my wife thinks it's bad for you. Anyway, fish like sorry, fish like hadock, uh cod, and uh the like are a lot easier to chop if they're nice and firm. So, uh, if your fish is frozen, which is fine, um, you probably want to just thaw it for one, maybe two hours so it's still, uh, firm enough to cut. If your, uh, fish is fresh, well, then you'll want to, uh, firm it up in the freezer for at least an actually not at least an hour, exactly an hour. There we go. Oh, tots. Ain't got time for tots. All right. Uh before we uh chop up this decidedly raw seafood, perhaps we should talk about cutting boards, just for a very, very brief moment. I do 99% of my cutting at home on a hardwood board like this. This is in fact my favorite board. It is made out of maple. Uh very dense, very uh friendly to knife edges despite its density. Um and this one's got some scratches on it, which means it's going to have a manicure soon. Means I'm going to sand it down with a palm sander and reil it. Um, and I oil them about every u about three months or so. Um, and that means that they're pretty much impervious uh to bacteria. A lot has been written about this recently, and the truth is is a well-maintained wooden board is perfectly safe uh for cutting raw meat. Um, as far as being good to a knife, pretty gosh darn gentle to a knife. However, if you want to really be gentle to a knife, you would use what's called an end cut board. So instead of the grain of the wood going this way, it's literally going up and down very fast. Oh, lightning fast. Very, very speedy. But I would only use something like this or keep this around for uh for doing uh a lot of vegetation. Um the problem with these boards is they can often separate and get cracks. Ooh, like that right there. Um which become very difficult to treat because these are harder boards to sand, although it can be done. Um my very favorite board, walnut. I like walnut. Um, I like it a lot. Um, but then I have to photograph food a lot and food looks really nice on these boards. Um, I I do like this board and I would have no no hesitation of uh cutting even raw chicken on this board because I would wash it right away. Um, but there has been a lot of talk lately about some other boards uh that I think maybe we should talk about. Um, this is a composite uh board and it feels different from plastic. Uh these are actually kind of a a resin impregnated paper. Um not terrible to cut on. Um they do however involve formaldahhide in their processing and people that are uh sensitive to formaldahhide might want to uh reconsider. I don't I don't like how they feel and in the kitchen I want to like everything I feel. Oh, talking about something I don't like. Check this out. This is the dumbest thing I've ever seen in my life. Uh in my opinion, this is a titanium cutting board. Titanium. People buy these boards because uh they say they're antimicrobial and nothing will live on them. Neither will your knife edges. Uh now I have talked to some manufacturers who say that actually this metal is softer than this metal. I don't care. It's metal. I'm not going to do it. No. No. So, if you're going to have a uh a plastic board or a nonwood board for cutting uh raw uh fish, raw, you know, beef, raw chicken, whatever. I'm going to go with a straight off of a restaurant uh supply shelf model. Uh this is made out of polyethylene, actually, high density polyethylene, HDP. Um and you'll notice that you probably can't see this on here very well. It says, u we'll get a cutaway of that. NSF, National Sanitation Foundation. I would not buy a plastic board that did not have that. Now, the uh NSF is a an organization that does uh in Oh, notice I've got wet paper towel under there for keep it from sliding around. The NSF is a certification process that uh you will see involved in a lot of restaurant equipment. The best thing about this board, these boards come in a lot of different colors, uh which is terrific. Restaurants often use blue for seafood, green for vegetation, and red for for raw meat. I just have the blue one because I like blue. I do. Um the main thing though and the the determination for buying this particular board is that it fits in my dishwasher and that is the number one reason that I have this size and shape. I would never put a wooden board in the dishwasher. Always hand wash those. These guys are actually made to go in the dishwasher without um any uh warping. So, that is what um I will use for the fish. I've only got one of these and I use it for all raw meat. Before we dig in, let's just review the cutlery options. Now, you could totally just use your favorite chef's knife, right? Um but for a piece of fish like this, you're probably going to have to do a lot of cuts this way, some cuts this way, some cuts this way, and that thing is going to thaw very quickly and get floppy on you. And this is a hard knife to use on floppy things. Um we could just dig in with a big old cleaver. You wouldn't want to use this one, though. This is an actual antique bone cleaver. This is meant for like chopping up entire like donkeys. I don't know why I said donkey, you know what I mean. Um, you could use an Asian style cleaver, okay? Uh, which is uh very often used for all kinds of of of cutting. Very thin blade uh but maybe not quite enough heft uh to move quickly through this. Luckily, um I do have kind of an hybrid uh cleaver uh that's uh not too heavy, not too thick u but very very sharp and uh very good for this kind of thing. So today I'm going with a cleaver. Once the chopping's done, move the fish to a large mixing bowl and add one egg. Uh, there you go. And 1/4 cup of panko breadrumbs. Not regular breadcrumbs or Italian breadcrumbs. Panko breadrumbs. Also, a tablespoon of mayonnaise. a tablespoon of the dijon, 1/4 teaspoon of cayenne, 2 tsps of kosher salt, and a teaspoon of onion powder. Now, the best way to mix this is definitely uh by hand, but I don't want to make too much of a mess, so I'll use the uh the black villain gloves for this. Just kind of stir loosely. Don't crush the fish or squeeze or moisture will come out. Now, to portion, going to need a scale. Now, if I've done my math correctly, I'm looking for 43 gram a piece. That should give me 12 fish sticks. But it doesn't. I only get 11 because I didn't measure correctly. That's okay. Now, just roughly shape into thick fingers like that. And again, don't crush them. This uh or these will now go into the refrigerator for at least half an hour. Just just go. Behold, we have our entire frying line ready to go. As you see, uh three loaf pans, one containing the all-purpose flour, uh the beaten eggs here, and then the panko breadrumbs. Here, I have moved uh my fish sticks, fish fingers if you're English, uh to a uh a rack uh so that excess um you know, crustininess will be able to drain away uh if it needs to. And uh here we've got our oil all ready to go. That's standing by. And then on the other side of that, we've got yet another pan uh with another rack over uh some paper towel as a landing pad. Yes, I know that means you need to have two sheet pans. And you really should, and you should have two racks as well. Go to the restaurant supply store. They're cheap as dirt and they'll live forever. Um, now you'll notice that I have uh positioned this rack upside down over the paper towels. Why would I do that? is I believe through considerable experimentation that if the uh bottom of the metal of the rack is actually touching the paper towels, when fried food goes onto it, it will wick uh the uh the excess fat away in a more efficient manner. And you'll notice I have my favorite spider standing by to get everything out of the oil. But we're not going to heat the oil yet cuz we've got other work to do. First, let's uh let's get uh to the breading. This is very very standard. Um, but the place where a lot of folks kind of mess up on this is that they don't have black villain gloves on, which is incredibly important to the process. Um, you don't you don't overdo it. And we are going to practice wet hand, dry hand, though I haven't decided which one's going to be which yet. So, here we go. Carefully. Bit of flour. Two hands dry. There we go. And I'm just going to kind of roll that in the egg. Wet hand. Wet hand. And then into the panko. Dry hand mostly. Back onto the rack. Nice. A roll in the flour. You don't want any more flour than absolutely necessary. That's what makes breading fall off when there's like a big fat layer of flour and then the the rest of the breading shears away from it. So you really want to take a moment to tap that off. The same certainly true for for the egg. We don't want too much or the panko will fall off. So always let that drain then into the panko. There. Last one. Now um I want these to sit uh for a solid half hour um because I want that breading uh to really kind of set in place. If you were to fry them now, everything would just fall apart and that just wouldn't be very much fun at all. Definitely not good. You know what I mean? This gives us time to clean up. All right. When you're ready to cook, crank your quart of oil up to 350°. I'm using an induction uh here, but you can use gas, electric, whatever. When hot, lower in three to four fingers at a time. And then the one piece of equipment I didn't tell you about, chopsticks. Just kind of roll them right off into that hot fat. And now just wait until they're golden brown and delicious. H somewhere in the 2minut vicinity. Uh do watch your heat. You want to keep it at 350. And it's definitely going to drop as soon as all that moisture gets in. Usually by the time the oil bounces back to 350°, you're ready to go. Just drain patiently and then transfer to the prepared resting area. Then simply wait a couple of minutes for the oil to rebound and repeat with the remaining pieces until they're golden brown, delicious, and temping internally around 145 degrees Fahrenheit. All right. Um, now that we have our fish sticks, we'll be craving a sauce. Now, for you filet of fish fans out there, tartar sauce may be desired. And if that be the case, the interwebs is chock full of recipes, as are several cookbooks, or so I've heard. However, if you happen to be a Hooian, and if you don't know what that is, then you're not. Um, you'll recall that when the 10th doctor regenerated into the 11th, the new doctor was very hungry and having rejected several perfectly good foods offered up by a young girl name of Amelia, whose garden he crashed his police box into, decided that what he really craved was fish fingers, that's what the Brits called them, and custard. Now, when watching this with my own uh daughter, she thought it was disgusting. And that's because she was thinking sweet custard, which is disgusting. I've tried this. My mind went to another direction, though. So, here now is the custard that I serve when I serve custard with my fish fingers, which is probably a lot more often than you'd think. Begin by beating one large chicken egg yolk only in a mediumsiz mixing bowl. Really uh tear that thing up a bit. It's a simple step, but it's important. Then, get yourself a small saucepan or pot or I'm using a small Dutch oven for even heating. And add one cup of whole milk. Don't be bringing that skim stuff to the party. 1 tbsp of cornstarch, half a teaspoon of kosher salt, followed by 1 teaspoon of lemon juice, and 1 teaspoon of again the dijon mustard. And now whisk that uh to thoroughly combine and put over medium low heat for about 3 and 1/2 minutes. So unlike a a basic tartar sauce uh which would of course use a lot of mayonnaise, which isn't an emulsion, we're actually going to skip the mayonnaise and make a custard. Now, this is going to be a custard by definition because it involves eggs, specifically yolk, and of course, milk. But we are also going to starch stabilize it, which is what you would do with a say a lemon mering pie. Only this is savory. Uh the starch is also going to thicken and it's going to get in between all of the uh the egg uh proteins, keeping them from curdling. So, we kind of get the best of both worlds. All right, we want to get the uh the starch and milk mixture up to 175°. At that point, the starch will begin to gelatinize. In other words, it's going to thicken, and that's the perfect time to temper it into the yolk. Our tempering, of course, is anyone who's made an ice cream base knows means that we're going to uh briskly whisk that egg yolk while drizzling in slowly about half of the hot liquid. This is going to prevent it from, of course, scrambling. Then we reverse it and pour that mixture back into the original hot pot, whisking all the time. Standard tempering maneuver. Uh, whisk thoroughly and then continue to heat gently. All right, now that we have the uh the egg yolk in, we want to bring this up to 185°, but really no further. At that temperature, two things will happen. one, we will have the maximum thickness that this mixture is going to have given its egg content and starch content. But it's also going to shut down an enzyme in the egg called amaase. Um, and that's important because amalayase likes to eat starch which will uh over time reduce um our nice creamy custard into kind of a runny little puddle of goo. Um, and 185 will keep that from happening. I know this, by the way, because I've ruined a lot of lemon roaring pies by not cooking the interior to 185. there. Maximum thickness. Time to bring the pickles. 1/4 cup of chopped cornish. Um although any sour pickle would do. Also, one tablespoon of chopped fresh dill and 1/4 teaspoon of ground white pepper. Just uh stir that in. Remove from the heat and allow it to uh cool to thicken. And there we have my uh tartis sauce. Um, while we're on that subject, I will close with the words of the Doctor the 11th, uh, who said in the episode, uh, Power of Three, I believe, "If I had a restaurant, this would be all I served." See you next time when we'll, uh, you know, cook some food. Coming to a stage near you, maybe an evening of Alton Brown presents the legend as you've never seen him and probably never will again. Even though that's exactly what he said the last time he did this. Visit altonbrownlive.com for showdates and ticket information.

6,000 HP diesel engines, sonar, frozen fish bricks and advertising sea captains. How a food we didn't even know we wanted came to be - and a rebooted version of a culinary classic. FISH STICKS! An Evening of Alton Brown - come hang out! Tickets: https://altonbrownlive.com