Thursday, August 2, 2012

Crispy Fish Tacos



This was the very first recipe I wrote over at JunnieBites (now my mom's blog) back in 2010.  I just wanted to share this here as I branch off and start my own blog.

These are still the crispiest fish tacos I've ever had and I'm going to have to make these some time soon. These tacos are amazingly yummy with extra crispy beer batter fish and a delicious sauce to top it off. We made these by adapting a recipe I found here.




This was also our first successful main dish dinner made from scratch by my sisters and I. Mom is always the one to make the main dinner. We can generally make pasta, other simple foods. We can also make practically any type of dessert but meat is something we can't really cook from scratch yet (that's Mom's expert arena). We never deep fried anything by ourselves either so this dinner was really fun to make :)

Ingredients


1 bag of tilapia fish (2 lbs)
1 cup all-purpose flour
2 tablespoons cornstarch
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 egg
1 cup beer

1 cup mayonaise
juice of 1 lemon
1 tsp minced capers (optional)
dried oregano
paprika
ground cayenne pepper
garlic salt

1 package of 30 corn tortillas
1/2 head of cabbage
cilantro
salsa

  1. Prepare the taco topping goodies. Finely shred the cabbage. Wash and chop the cilantro.
  2. Make the topping sauce. Measure out about 1 cup of mayonnaise. Whisk in the juice of 1 lemon and add the following spices to your taste: cayenne pepper, paprika, garlic salt, and dried oregano. I wish I had the exact measurements for you but I just mixed stuff into the sauce until it tasted good. I'll try to get the measurements the next time we make fish tacos. Minced capers are optional. The original recipe called for them and I was about to omit them but since I was surprised to find them in my spice cabinet, I added them.
  3. Mix the dry ingredients for the beer batter in a big bowl (flour, cornstarch, baking powder, salt). Mix the egg together with the beer and then quickly stir into the dry flour mixture. It doesn't matter if there are lumps. Mix the batter but don't overdo it because we want the bubbles to stay.
  4. Heat up canola oil in a frying pan.
  5. Cut the fillet into approximately 4 strips. Lightly dust each strip of fish in all purpose flour before dunking it into the beer batter.
  6. After dipping the fish into the beer batter, put it into the hot oil and fry until crisp and golden brown. Drain them on paper towels when they are done and then move them onto a cooling rack to preserve their crunchiness.
  7. Warm the tortillas on a hot frying pan. No need for oil.
  8. To assemble delicious tacos: put some mayo sauce on the taco, place the fish on it, top it with some salsa, the shredded lettuce, and chopped cilantro. Serve with wedges of lemon.
Enjoy! Our dad doesn't typically like Mexican food but he ate three of these babies :D