Beer Batter Fish

While at the lake on a recent fishing trip, we ate quite a bit of fresh trout. Here is our favourite Beer Batter recipe that we've been using for years. To accompany the trout, we warmed up some Garlicky Pepper Jelly as a dipping sauce. Yum. The trout didn't last long enough for a photo shoot!

Beer Batter Fish

Ingredients:
Vegetable oil
1 cup flour
1/4 cup cornstarch
1 egg
1 1/4 cups amber ale (or whatever beer you have handy)
1 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon white pepper (or black will do)
2 pounds fish

Directions:
1) Heat vegetable oil in a cast iron frying pan. You need a fair amount of oil. Up to 1 inch in the pan.
2) Cut up the fish into bite size pieces or how ever big you'd like. Pat dry with paper towel.
3) In a large shallow bowl, whisk together flour, cornstarch, salt & white pepper.
4) In another bowl, whisk together egg & amber ale, until smooth.
5) Slowly whisk the egg mixture into flour mixture until smooth.
6) Dip pieces of fish into batter.
7) Fry fish in batches so not to overcrowd the fish. Too much fish will make your oil cool down and result in soggy fish. Cooking time varies depending on the size and thickness of fish.
8) Use a slotted spoon or tongs to turn fish for even frying.
9) Remove when golden brown.
10) Allow to drain on a plate lined with paper towel before serving.
11) Serve with your favourite dipping sauce!

Note: When camping or heading to the lake, we pre-measure the dry ingredients and combine them in a ziploc bag. That way when we're ready to fry up some fish all we need to do is mix up the egg and beer and add them to the dry ingredients!