Fish and chips is a popular take-away food in the United Kingdom, Ireland, Australia, New Zealand, Canada. It consists of fish which isbattered and then deep-fried served with chips. It is sometimes accompanied by other items such as mushy peas or tartare sauce. Traditional frying uses beef dripping or lard; however, vegetable oils, such as peanut oil (used because of its relatively high smoke point) now predominate. A minority of vendors in the north of England and Scotland and the majority of vendors in Northern Ireland still use dripping or lard, as it imparts a different flavour to the dish, but it has the side effect of making the fried chips unsuitable for vegetarians and for adherents of certain faiths. Lard is used in some living industrial history museums, such as the Black Country Living Museum. British chips are traditionally thicker than American-style French fries sold by major multinational fast food chains, resulting in a lower fat content per portion. In their homes or in non-chain restaurants, people in or from the United States may eat a thick type of chip, more similar to the British variant, sometimes referred to as home fries or steak fries.How much cooking fat soaks into the potato depends on the surface area and how long they are cooked. Chips have a smaller surface area per unit weight than French fries, which means absorbing less oil in a given time. On the other hand, chips, being thicker, take longer to cook than fries. UK chippies traditionally use a simple water and flour batter, adding a little sodium bicarbonate (baking soda) and a little vinegar to create lightness, as they create bubbles in the batter. Other recipes may use beer or milk batter, where these liquids are often substitutes for water. The carbon dioxide in the beer lends a lighter texture to the batter. Beer also results in an orange-brown colour. A simple beer batter might consist of a 2:3 ratio of flour to beer by volume. The type of beer makes the batter taste different: some prefer lager whereas others use stout or bitter. In all cases, the alcohol itself is cooked off, so little or none remains in the finished product.
