Forget whether you have jam and then cream or cream and then jam on your scone, the most divisive culinary choices in Britain must be fish and chips.
Here we celebrate the glorious differences between chippies across the nation and discover a few chippy treasures (and a few battered horrors) we didn’t know existed.
What’s your poisson?
There’s a definite north/south divide here: haddock is the most popular choice in the north while cod is the fish of choice in the south. In major cities and chi chi seaside towns, you might find fancier items such as crayfish tails and Dover sole but, try as they might, nothing truly beats simple crunchy fish and fat chips. If you want to branch out a little, there’s always a fish cake to tickle your fancy, and if you’re in Yorkshire, you might be lucky and get a Yorkshire Fish Cake (originally from Sheffield), which is made up of fish sandwiched between two slices of potato, battered; all your fish and chip raw materials in one easy, crunchy parcel.
Chips with everything
Let’s face it, the chips are almost as important as the fish in this illustrious duo, if not more so. Chippy chips (or chipper chips, depending on your location) should be Proper Chips; hunks of potato in various sizes, occasionally with a bit of skin left on. French fries and skinny chips have no place here.
In some areas of Britain they’ve stopped even pretending the chips aren’t the main event, and we admire that. In London, wet chips (with gravy or curry sauce) make up a fine meal in their own right. In the Midlands you might find chips served with gravy and peas or beans, known as a pea mix or a bean mix, and probably two of your five a day. While in the Black Country, orange is the new black and you can buy Orange Chips, which are chips coated in batter and turmeric or paprika and deep fried.
What to put on your chips (or dip your chips in)
Salt and vinegar happens all over the UK but down south it’s pretty much de rigeur and there’s not an awful lot more choice, unless you’re going for ketchup or fancy yourself as continental and have your chips with mayonnaise.
Gravy is found more commonly in the north, though the preponderance of pie shops in London means ‘liquor’ (or gravy to you and me) has made its way onto the capital’s chippy scene, too. Whether you pour the stuff all over your chips or delicately dip is more a matter of class (and whether you’re wearing a dry-clean only top).
Of course, the chip condiment to end all chip condiments must be ‘chippy sauce’ - a mix of vinegar and brown sauce or simply brown sauce and water. If you’re new to this and are offered ‘salt’n’soss’ in a fish and chip shop in the north, that’s what you’re getting. Say ‘yes’!
But ‘things that go on chips’ vary from one area to another. In Newcastle you’ll find Bolognese and chips, in Liverpool Salt and Pepper Chinese Chips, in Cardiff cheese, chips and curry sauce, and in Weymouth, comforting cheese, chips and beans is considered a local speciality.
And what of the best bits… the crispy bits?
The leavings at the bottom of the fryer have long been recognised as being the best bits. Once upon a glorious time, they were free and considered the rightful property of children and teens, who hadn’t the money for a meal but could usually cobble together enough from between the sofa cushions to buy a buttered bun into which kindly fish and chip shop owners would add ‘scraps’. Or if the sofa was ungenerous, you could just have them out of newspaper.
But were they called ‘scraps’ in your home town? In Lincolnshire they’re often ‘bits’, in South Wales, ‘scrumps’. In Yorkshire they’re sometimes ‘scrags’ and in Cornwall they’re ‘screeds’. They’re ‘scratchings’ in Leicestershire but ‘fish bits’ in Scotland. But whatever you called them, we’d like to start a campaign to make them free again.
And while we’re as big a fan of a Marks and Spencer dinner as the next man, on principle we eschew their tubs of M&S Chip Shop Batter Bits. At £1.05, that’s a gentrification too far, we think.
Give peas a chance
Mushy peas are a northern staple but available everywhere and we don’t think you should trust a chippie that doesn’t offer them. Some pea purveyors have gone still further, however.
We’d like to give a metaphorical medal to those chippies on the south coast that are proficient in the alchemy that is making mushy pea fritters. How you envelop something that is essentially liquid in another liquid and get the whole thing into hot oil is beyond our kitchen skillset.
In Nottingham, we’re told they serve mint sauce on their peas, which seems like such a grand idea, we can’t believe we’d not thought of it ourselves.
Pea wet, meanwhile, (the reduced liquid left from cooking dried peas, or simply skimmed off the top of the mushy peas) proliferates in chip shops in Cumrbia, Lancashire, Durham and Yorkshire, and was apparently an acceptable breakfast (with bread) as far back as the 17th century.
And finally...
We must make mention of all the eclectic and surprising non-fish-and-chips items available in various hallowed corners of this sceptred isle, from Cumbrian patties (mince, encased in mash, battered and fried), to rag puddings in Oldham (minced meat and onions wrapped in suet pastry and cooked in a cheesecloth), via faggot and pea batches in Coventry (speaks for itself) to the Wigan kebab (essentially a pie in a buttered barm - you need a big mouth and a big napkin for this one).
And in this category, Wigan emerges as the clear winner, with not only that potato and meat pie sandwich (why have only one carb when you can have three, after all?) but also the fabulously monikered Smack Barm Pey Wet: deep-fried potato with salt and vinegar served in a buttered barm with a drizzling of pea wet. Wigan, we salute you (and pray for your arteries).
Whether you like your haddock and chips with white bread and butter and a cuppa, or your scampi tails accompanied by prosecco and tartare sauce, the diversity of British fish and chips is certainly something to celebrate.
In our March issue we take a look back at takeaways over the years, from oyster stalls on the banks of the Thames to McDonald’s Chicken Katsu nuggets.
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