food

Triple Cooked Chips & Scampi

Once, twice, three times a classic. Jack shows you how to elevate scampi and chips with a few simple tricks.

food

Triple Cooked Chips & Scampi

Once, twice, three times a classic. Jack shows you how to elevate scampi and chips with a few simple tricks.

Supplies

  • Roughly 500 grams Maris Piper potatoes
  • 2 pots duck fat
  • 4 liters vegetable oil (for the fryer)
  • Scampi: Vinegar salt:
  • 75 grams corn flour 3 tablespoons malt vinegar
  • 200 grams plain flour 6 tablespoons fine sea salt
  • 350 milliliters real ale 1 tablespoon corn flour
  • Splash of white wine vinegar
  • 500 grams Langoustine tails (or large prawns)

Steps

  1. First make the vinegar salt by combining all ingredients to form a paste. Turn out onto a baking sheet and leave to sit at room temperature for 24 hours until it's dried out. Bash it up to serve.
  2. Prepare the potatoes. Instead of cutting into chips with a knife, use an apple corer to 'core' out sections of potato, utilising as much of the potato as possible. This will yield circular but slightly ridged chips.
  3. Place these potatoes into a pan of cold, salted water
  4. And bring to the boil. Cook until the potatoes are almost falling apart. This could take up to 30 minutes and the cracks and imperfections on the outside of the potato help them crisp up perfectly.
  5. Carefully remove the potatoes from the pan using a flat, slotted spoon and drain on to the wire racks. Let them steam dry and when cool, ideally place these in the freezer for an hour to cool completely.
  6. Preheat your oil and duck fat to 130C, and carefully
  7. Fry the potatoes for roughly 5 minutes until slightly
  8. Golden and lightly crusted.
  9. Remove from the fryer and drain on kitchen paper and
  10. Return to the freezer for an hour. This process extracts
  11. All of the moisture from the chip, allowing it to crisp up
  12. Perfectly.
  13. Meanwhile, make the batter for the scampi by whisking
  14. And combining the elements. Dust the scampi in flour
  15. And drop them into the batter.
  16. Turn the heat up to 180C and fry the chips for the final
  17. Time for 8 minutes or until golden and perfectly crisp.
  18. For the final two minutes of frying, add the scampi tails and fry until cooked and serve with vinegar salt.