The chip is a British institution. I mean proper chips, not spindly fast food French Fries at McDonalds or KFC. It’s the source of North / South arguments. When I was in Hull and Leeds, friends took me to favoured local chippies, claiming these were the best chips in the world. They were cooked in lard and so soggy the fat soaked through the Daily Mirror wrapping onto your hands. I grew up in Bournemouth. Chips were cooked crisp in oil. My friend Alfie, drummer in our teen band, was the son of chip shop owners. They served the best chips in the area, though Alfie who had to help in the shop never quite lost the odour of frying fish from his clothes or hair, in spite of soaking himself in Old Spice after shave.
We walked home from youth clubs eating chips in newspaper. There is nothing better on cold autumn and winter nights. On Saturdays, we were allowed to practice in the youth club church hall, and feasted on fish and chips from MacFisheries who sold wet fish at the front, cooked fish and chips at the back.
Southern chips beat Northern chips hands down, not that I want to start a fight. With trepidation, I opened the comments section here. Oh, and battered fish was better on the South Coast too. And so were mushy peas (not sodden with lard).
I was in Borough Market and the South Bank on Tuesday. Triple cooked chips signs on all sides. So what are tripled cooked chips? They were invented by Hester Blumenthal in 1993 and first served at his Fat Duck restaurant in 1995.
“The potatoes are first simmered in water for 20 to 30 minutes until they are almost falling apart, then cooled and drained using a sous-vide technique or by freezing; deep fried at 130 °C (266 °F) and cooled again; and finally deep-fried again at 180 °C (356 °F). The result is what Blumenthal calls “chips with a glass-like crust and a soft, fluffy centre”
Really? As most of us will argue, our mums made the best chips. My mum used home made fresh raw chips she’d cut herself and shallow fried them in a pan in oil.
Haddock is better than cod. It remains so. I am suspicious of pubs and restaurants (The Ivy?) serving ‘fish and chips.’ I want to buy ‘haddock and chips’ or ‘cod and chips’ or ‘plaice and chips.’ The Fish restaurant in Borough Market specifies the fish, as does the Rockfish chain in Poole, Weymouth and Brixham.
Chips are traditionally deep fried, and some say cooler oil first then transfer to hotter oil. We inherited a built-in deep fat fryer when we moved house in 1984 and we just used fresh or frozen raw fries and chucked them in once. At one point the basket mesh fell apart. We ordered a new one. It arrived. Then another arrived every day for over a week. We phoned the supplier who said it wasn’t worth returning them, just keep them. We left that house in 1993, leaving a stack of unused baskets in the garage.
Now you get chilled Triple Cooked Chips in the supermarket. You even get Triple Cooked Fries too. . So you heat them in an oven for 20 minutes. Won’t that be quadruple cooked chips? They often advertise that they’re cooked in beef dripping. I don’t buy those.
Or you can get frozen triple cooked chips. Same thing. Quadruple.
You can cook them in the oven or air fryer. That’s still Quadruple.
Then here’s the Sainsbury version. Fried in a crisp batter? With beef dripping? Is that part of the original concept?
Do we need triple cooked chips? In my opinion, absolutely not.
‘Beer battered’ attached to fish is another piece of bullshit.
OTHER CULINARY RANTS HERE
Beaujolais Nouveau
Chorizo is Vile
The March of The Halloumi Fries
The Decline & Fall of The Publishing Lunch
Peter Viney's Blog 
What about this description I saw on a menu: “Beer-battered fish on a bed of handcut triple-cooked chips”?
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