If Your Beer-Battered Fish Isn't Turning Out Crispy Enough, There's An Easy Fix

Making beer-battered fish at home has a lot of advantages to going out for some fish fry. It's less expensive, of course, and you know exactly how fresh the fish is before it's cooked — as long as you have a reputable fish market nearby. It's also endlessly customizable when you're the one mixing the batter, so you can mix in some cayenne pepper or use a different beer style (here are some of our favorites for beer-battered fish). One of the biggest drawbacks, however, is getting the fish to turn out as crispy as the stuff you can get in a restaurant. The good news is, if your beer-battered fish is coming out limp and greasy, there's an easy fix to get a crave-worthy crunch: add some rice flour to the mix.

Most beer batter recipes are a simple combination of flour, baking powder, seasonings, and beer, which is stirred together to create a wet mixture that can coat a slippery piece of fish. Regular wheat flour contains gluten, which makes the batter softer, chewier, and more like bread. Rice flour, on the other hand, has no gluten proteins, so it creates a crispier texture when it's fried (this works great for fried chicken, too). Even better, rice flour will not absorb as much oil and water as wheat flour, so the fish will stay crispy for longer.

Choosing between wheat and rice flour in a batch of beer batter is not a zero sum game. The best batter uses a blend of both, because each variety brings certain properties to the table. Wheat flour gives the mixture its structure and stickiness; those tacky gluten proteins to hold everything together and glue the batter onto the fish itself. Gluten also keeps the batter contained. Once the mixture gets hot, it expands to create the fluffy crust, so you need the gluten to keep the batter in one piece, especially for handheld recipes like a crispy beer-battered fish sandwich. In addition to creating those much-wanted crispier results, adding a bit of rice flour to the mix lightens up the texture of the batter so the dish doesn't seem so heavy.

A mixture of 70% wheat flour and 30% rice flour will make a batter that tastes like classic pub-style fish and chips, while a greater portion of rice flour will make a batter that's lighter and crispier. You can experiment with different levels to find your favorite combination, but the sweet spot is usually a little more wheat flour than rice flour.