So, if you’re looking to make someone from the U.K. drool, this is the recipe. (No, I wouldn’t be looking to do that, not me.)
Anyway, I know I said this was cheap: one of the ingredients in this, is distinctly not cheap. It makes all the difference in how well the entire recipe works, though. That ingredient, is Bard’s Ale. It’s beer. Dark gluten-free beer. Gluten-free beer that is really good.
It’s important to have good beer for this because one of your obstacles in gluten-free cooking is the fact that rice doesn’t stick. It doesn’t have gluten. Yeast and malt can compensate for all that non-stickiness, though. Hence, the expensive beer.
Ingredients:
1 bottle of Bard’s
1 1/2 cups regular rice flour, either Kokohu Rose or Kinnikinnick–it’s not sweet rice flour.
Yukon gold potatoes
sea salt and vinegar for garnish
3 cups of canola oil
1 1/2 lbs of deep water Atlantic fish. (I bought a bag of Hake at Costco because it was cheap; it turns out that’s one of the things the Scots use for fish and chips, further lending credence to the idea that I’m part brownie.)
Kitchen apparati:
Microwave
Deep fat fryer with temperature settings
kitchen timer
mixing bowl
plates
mixing spoon
slotted spoon or heat resistant spatula
Chill the beer for at least thirty minutes, or in my case, just take it out of the back of the refrigerator. It’s really important that it be cold. In fact, all of your ingredients will fry better if they’re cold.
Put the hake into the microwave and thaw, using the thaw setting, until the fish is only halfway thawed. The fish should be pliable enough to cut into pieces, but not warm. Measure three cups of canola oil into a deep fat fryer. Turn on the deep fat fryer to about 360. Pour the beer into a mixing bowl. Measure out the rice flour into the beer and mix well. Take the fish out of the microwave and cut into palm sized pieces. Divide the fish into two batches. Working rapidly with one batch at a time, spoon batter onto the fish, coating both sides. (The goal here is to be fast, so you keep it all cold.) With a spoon or spatula, lower half of the pieces of hake into the batter. Cook about five to eight minutes, until golden brown. Line a plate with paper towels to drain the fish and carefully remove it with a spatula or slotted spoon. Repeat.
While the second batch of fish is cooking, rinse and scrub three large Yukon gold potatoes. Cut into wedges. Remove the last batch of fish from the deep fat fryer. Turn up the heat on the deep fat fryer a little, to about 375. Separate the potato wedges into three batches. One batch at a time, fry each batch for only five to six minutes–french fries are surprisingly easy to overcook. Be sure to use utensils to put the potatoes in the boiling oil; at this temperature, it will splash and burn way too easily.
Finally, take out the last batch of fries and let everything cool for at least twenty minutes: right out of the fryer all of this is the temperature of the interior of Jupiter.
Admire your handiwork. Inhale. Your whole house now smells like fish and chips.
Serves five, for about $10.00
glutenfreedirtcheap 
We don’t have a deep fryer, and I’m afraid to own one because I know then I’d be tempted to use it all the time. We’re trying this gluten-free fried fish recipe out tonight, it’s the same idea:
Oven Fried Catfish
http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/foodnation-with-bobby-flay/oven-fried-catfish-recipe/index.html
Is it possible that Red Bridge (the other gluten-free beer) would work as well? Mmmmm… red bridge.
Related: last night I had a regular beer, and the next morning I felt hung over despite having only had a small amount of alcohol the night before. Go figure…
Bard’s is better, because it’s actually kind of like the Guinness of gluten-free beer, but Red Bridge is about half the price of Bard’s, and may be a lot easier to find. (It will work with any kind of gluten-free beer.)
It’s not the alcohol. Gluten gives gluten sensitive people a headache.
Mmmm….sounds really good.
O.k., now I’m going to be *really* annoying, so apologies in advance. =0)
You can use sweet rice flour if the sweeter taste is o.k. in that recipe. It IS gluten-free if it’s made by someone like Koda farms who uses the wet-milling process. They sell sweet rice marked “mochiko”, and that is gluten-free, because rice is all they have in the plant, so there is no cross-contamination.
If it’s made by someone like Hodgson Mill, or Bob’s Red Mill, though, it’s probably not gluten-free, even if it says it is. (That’s a whole ‘nother essay–some manufacturers are not gf, but say they are.)
As far as the cornmeal goes–yikes, that’s a tough one. If it’s milled in a larger mill, it’s not gf because of cross-contamination; if Bob’s Red Mill makes it, it’s not gf even if it says gf on the box because they process oats in their gluten-free plant. You could, though use Argo cornstarch, maybe? It’s gluten-free, and always has been, because, again, that’s all they make, so there is no danger of cross-contamination.
Like I said, it’s annoying. Basically, when I walk into an H.E.B. with the idea that I’m going to make something from scratch, I buy
1.) King Arthur gluten-free flour;
2.) Betty Crocker for desserts;
3.) Koda farms mochiko;
4.) Ener-G Flours;
5.) Gluten-Free Pantry Mixes;
6.) Argo cornstarch;
and then anything else comes from Kinnickick in Canada–all of the manufacturers I mentioned have dedicated gluten-free plants that either just mill rice or corn or they mill lots of gluten-free flours, but not oats. Just using that list of seven manufacturers means I never worry about cross-contamination or unsafe labeling. I hope that clears that up a little? Thanks for playing. =0)