Can I make a fried fish sandwich that’s better than the most expensive restaurant in LA? In the cheap corner, we got the Catholic delight, the fileo fish from McDonald’s, the Victor over the hoola burger, and in the expensive corner, we have the $80 fish sandwich with caviar tartar sauce from David. This is the most expensive fish sandwich and the cheapest fish sandwich in the city, but yet to be seen. Mine tucked in the middle, the middle spoon, if you will. Big spoon, little spoon, overrated. I like to be held from both sides. Is my homemade version of a fried fish sandwich? Will I be able to take down the most expensive sandwich in a blind taste test? Or will a person with a very shoddy cheap pallet ruffle my ruffle my fins? I was trying to make a fish pun. That didn’t make any sense. I talked too much about spooning. What’s that? Uh, what? This one? Why? You don’t think there’s real filet fish in there? This is called a fileo fish. We’re going to see if I can win in a blind taste test against the most expensive fish sandwich in the city. I will put forth my best effort. That is my promise to you, the American people. And I think roughly 6% of our audience is Canadian. Let’s get cooking. I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking, Josh, is that a Kim Dracula shirt underneath your apron? Yeah. Yeah, it sure is. you got a great new single out with in this moment. Uh you’re also probably thinking for making a fish sandwich, you certainly ain’t got any fish out there on the counter. And you would be correct. That’s because the fish is the least important part of a fish sandwich. So, we’re going to blind them with a bunch of very complicated condiments and a lot of fry batter on the outside. Pull pull in the room here. Do you know what kind of fish is in a McDonald’s fileto fish? No. No. God dang it, Lily. Not you. Not you. What did she say? Alaskan. Oh, Alaskan. What? Lot of fish in Alaska there. You think it’s salmon? You think they’re Have you had a fle of fish? All right, Lily, what is it? Alaskan pollic. Alaskan pollic. It’s a total like drag catch fish. Uh, when you’re frying fish like that, to me, if you go to like a fish and chip shop in London, right, like you get like blue cod is like the king standard. But for me, I can use whatever fish. We’ll catch that later. The key is a good fry batter. We’re going to make a proper beer batter. And then I’m not going tarter sauce. I’m going remalot. I think it’s just like tartar sauce is kind of Cajun spicier cousin. So, we’re going to start doing that. We got a bunch of mayonnaise in a bowl. We’re going to hit some wellused crystal hot sauce. You want a lot of residue crusted at the top. That’s how you know it’s good cuz you’ve actually been using it. And we do love crystal cuz you get a lot of good acid from that. And then you’re getting a lot of the almost like sweeter kind of acid from lemon. And also when you squeeze lemon, this is a fun fact. Lily, don’t chime in. Fun fact. When you squeeze a lemon, the essence of it, the like per the perfume, the oils on the outside actually get into your food, which I think is really really fun. And then we’re going to drop in some fresh dill. I’m going to use a spoon. Dill is one of those things that pairs really well with fish. Dill. Does dill taste sour to you? No. All right, cool. Me neither. I was just talking to talk. Dill to me has like it like pairs so well with citrus and fish. We’re going to drop in a little bit of parsley. Want a lot of herbs in this. And then chives. Always a fun welcome addition. Boom. Going into the party. Capers. Capers are a fun thing that you can always keep in your fridge because they last forever cuz they’re just like pickled little berries or whatever. They berries. Not like a berry, but like Well, this is a berry. There’s caper berries. Those are different than cap. They’re good. Get capers. They’re fun. You get home like drunk one night and you just kind of start eating capers out the jar, creeping everyone out. That’s a good time. Drop some chopped capers in there. You can add pickles in there, but we’re actually going to add pickles on the side as well. This is Creole mustard. To me, this is like one of the kings of mustards. You can get the Zatarans brand. Do you guys remember Zatarans commercials? They just went Zadarans. Zatarans. And that’s it. It’s just a guy screaming Zatarans with a whole lot of pepper on it. It was great. I’m going to drop them into smoke paprika. I might be I might be ripping a lot of catchphrases today cuz I’ve had running through my head. Trust the Gorton fisherman. You guys remember that banger, right? Trust the Gorton fisherman. What do you mean, Maggie? What? Trust the Gorton fisherman. Lily, how much you know about Gordon’s fisherman? I recognize that. Yeah, it’s from It’s from Gloucester. Oh, Massachusetts. Yeah. Yeah. Just some uh New England fishing banter. You’re going to grate a lot of raw garlic. You add raw garlic to storebought mayonnaise. basically turns it into ioli and drop that in there. I’m going whole garlic clove, man. I’m ripping it. I would trust the Gordon’s fisherman with my life except the Gordon’s fisherman might also then sell me to a Japanese seafood conglomerate. And so that would be the only thing that I don’t know if I I would trust the Gordon Fisherman to do. No, I love I love the Gordon. I grew up like to me the gold standard of Cajun seasoning or Creole seasoning is Tony Sasher’s gold standard of frozen fish sticks. Gorton’s. When Gordon’s went on sale back when I was a kid, that was like Christmas, except I’m I’m Jewish, so you figure it out. But that was a really fun time for me because Gordon’s I think makes a really incredible product. Also, they have roots in the fishing business like literally dating back damn near 300 years at this point in America. So, it’s a lot of stuff to dump in here. Whole lot of fresh cracked pepper. And I mean a lot of fresh cracked pepper. Um, a lot of my Gordon’s knowledge is going to be coming from Mark Kuransky’s seminal book, Cod. It’s about cod. We’re not using cod, but we’re using an adjacent fish that was often passed off for a cheaper version of cod, but I think it’s good. More on that later. God, this is exciting. We once tested this on Myth Munchers. Gordon Ramsay said, “You have to let your beer batter rest overnight.” That is something I have never done before because I thought you’re going to lose all the bubbles if you do that. And then we actually tested it. It was significantly crispier when we rested the batter overnight. So, that is one thing you can do or seems counterintuitive, but what you can do, you’re going to want to really be violent with it because you’re trying to get the carbonation out. This is how I win. I want this to be like a like hard shattering crunch on the on the coating. And I don’t know, man. We’re going to do it. We’re going to do it. We’re adding a little bit of cayenne and salt. My theory is that by getting the carbonation out, it helps it stay crispier. And then we’re just going to start getting some flour in here. I’m going to whisk this flour in. And then I can kind of like estimate the amount of eggs that I need. There we go. Beer got that little bit of yeast in it. And then when you let a batter rest, that is actually going to like hydrate the flour. Because if you make a batter and then you estimate its thickness, right? If you uh did a uh what do they call? Come on. What do they call it? What’s scientific word for like a thickness of a liquid? Viscosity. If you were to do a viscosity test on a batter and then wait 10 minutes, it would be infinitely more viscous. Look at me go, man. God, he’s so smart. How does he do it all? Big muscles, able to recite many corporate fish brands catchphrases, except it’s really only one. This looks pretty good. This is about You want to go for like looser than a pancake batter. Again, this is going to hydrate up. We’re going to let this rest overnight. We have to do a full like deep fried myth munchers to see what makes a better fry batter because this is my best guess right now. And I think this is going to beat the expensive sandwich. Do you know that some languages don’t actually have a word for fresh cod? They simply have to say the fresh version of salt cod. And at the restaurant Laristraat, um the chef once put cababo on the menu, which is the French word for fresh cod, and it didn’t sell. But then when he said moru fresh, which is fresh salt cod, it did sell. Introducing fresh cod to the Michelin star dining market in France in the 1970s. All right, cool. So I have no one to talk to about these things. Uh anyway, so we have a nice fillet of hatock here. Like I mentioned, hadock is kind of seen as like a cheaper version of cod. I think it’s just as good. Also, cod to me has these big white flakes in I think it’s fantastic for fish and chips, but to me, if it’s a sandwich, I think it can almost be a little bit too chewy and if you overcook cod, it’s so lean that it’ll kind of end up having too much toothness to it. Uh, so hadock, I think you can really kind of hammer and try and get super crispy batter to hold up to all those condiments. So, I’m going to go ahead. This has been dried off. I’m just going to salt the outside. Then, I’m going to go quickly into some flour. My thought here, Gorton’s fish fillet is greatest product ever made in the history of man. Everybody knows that is like the model tea and then Gorton’s fish fillet. Those are the top two. Everybody agrees. Um there’s like this layer of goo between the fish and the crispy batter and that goo is what I want. The flour is going to become that goo. The salt and the fish juice from the hatock are going to melt together to form a paste or goo. And then that is going to be where your flavor is coming from. How did people let me host a cooking show? McDonald’s fileto fish is a delight. I’ve eaten a ton of them in my lifetime. If you go to a good McDonald’s that’s actually changing out their fry oil, it can be great. If you don’t, you go to ones where where you can taste like the nuggets and the burnt fries that have stayed in the bottom of that fryer, and I have been to those. It’s not a good product. So, we’ll see what kind of fileto fish I’m going up against today. And I’ve actually never had the fish sandwich at Daybird, but a lot of that cost is coming from the caviar. I got a trick, though. Putting on kind of a cheaper version of caviar onto our own sandwich that you can get for like 12 bucks at home. And I think we can beat it. Here’s the technique. Check this out. Make sure it’s all covered. What I’m going to try and do is pull it up, give it one shake, go immediately to the deep fryer and kind of waft it back and forth with the hips. Waft it with the hips. Check this out. Does someone zoom in on this? One shake, two shake. Uh-oh, he’s going for three and a half. Now we’re in. And now we’re wafting. Wafting with the hips. Let it go like a nice raft. Now I’m going to run quickly. Wash my hands. Is the camera still following me? Ah, they always do this. And they go wash Josh wash Josh is washing himself. Damn it. All right, so we’re gonna fry this fish and then we’re actually going to let it rest and we’re going to drop it in the fryer again before we put in our sandwich. Other condiment on the sandwich, we’re going pretty simply with this. We’re going to do some nice shredded iceberg lettuce. We have our remal and then pickles are the other thing you can really put over the top. We’ve made a lot of vinegar pickles on the show before, but a proper lacto fermented pickle is one super easy to do at home. Two, it’s it’s pretty safe. So, if you’re not like canning and storing this stuff for years, you can really just sort of like trust the science on your counter for a couple days. Uh, so that’s what we’re going to do right now. We are making a 3% salt brine. So, if you don’t know the difference between a lacto pickle and a vinegar pickle, uh, the acid in a vinegar pickle is obviously coming from vinegar, something that has been pre-fermented. Uh, and then in a lacto pickle, you are using there’s bacteria on the skin of every cucumber known as lactobacillus. It exists on the outside of most vegetables. If you ever see a purple cabbage that has a kind of dust on the outside of it, that dust is actually the lactobacillus bacteria that you can see. And so that is going to ferment uh with the addition of salt and then that is going to create the acid itself, which I think is really cool. And it gets a lot of umami in, a lot of glutamate. So this is a 3% salt rind. So if you have 100 g of water, you need 3 g of salt. If you have 500 g of water, 15 g of salt. Boom. Basic math. God, I’m good. So, we’re simply going to add that. Stir it. You don’t really need to stir it. Back sore. Been carrying this team all week. All right, take that. How’s this doing? That’s looking nice. Maybe I should add lemoning agent to it. We were going back and forth on lemoning agent. I think I want to fry two. One with leavenning agent, one without. And then choose between. I said I’d use gloves. You don’t want to get the bacteria from your hands. I just wash my hands. We’ll be fine. You don’t want to get the bacteria from your hands on the pickles. It’ll be all right. Also, always put your spices at the bottom of the jar. All right, check this out. We’re going to go in the middle. Going to pop some dill on there. Dill as in dill pickles. Boom. Check that out. Ever see that before? Uh, we’re adding some whole black pepperc corn. The aromatics are like really where you kind of went on this. And we’re adding some fennel seed. We’re going to add some garlic. Leave the skin on. Palmill strike. Pomeill strike. Pomeill strike. Bass rootin. And pop that in there. Whole coriander seed. whole mustard seed. Single bay leaf. Sandwich more cucumbers on it. That fish is doing good. Again, you don’t need like a perfect medium rare fish fillet. You probably don’t want to do that with a white fish. Anyways, give her a flip. See how she’s doing. That’s looking nice. Looking crispy. We’re going to let that fry. We take the salt water. Pour that over the pickles. Perfect. And then you don’t want to put a lid on it because the lactobacillus is actually going to create gases that kind of need to escape. If you have a real home fermentation setup, they have like call like a like a jar burper. You know what I mean? The things that like burp the jar for you where it’ll like let out pockets of air. You don’t need to do all that. What you can do is just take a piece of plastic wrap, stuff it in there, and just make sure this is pushing the pickles down and holding them under cuz you don’t want things to be able to float to the top and not be submerged in that salty brown because salt is effectively antimicrobial, right? Salt bacteria does not like salted things. Awesome. So, now you’re literally just going to leave this sitting out on a counter for 3 to 5 days. Um, I’ve talked to food safety experts who maintain that like a lacto ferment that’s that short of a time, even if it something else happens to it, it’s not actually going to be dangerous. And I tend to trust them. Uh, people have been lacto fermenting things for literally thousands of years. But if you want to be extra sure, take some salt like a margarita, boom, boom, boom, around it. Add some tequila to that. Drink it later. Fish done with the first fry. We’re going to drop it in there for a second fry before the sandwich. Let’s make a sandwich. I know what you’re all thinking. Josh, isn’t hadock technically part of the cod family? Yes and no. It becomes very scientifically ambiguous. What is and isn’t a cod? Also, cod is an English word. Many different nations fish. So, is that distinction even important? That wasn’t rhetorical. Is that distinction even important? No. It’s more complicated than that. Taylor, I’m going to pull this. And we’ve dunked our fish in for a second fry. It’s super super crispy. Wait, do the little Tik Tocker thing where they go they they hit their food. They go ah they slap their meat. They hit their food. They throw their knives. The tick tockers are out of control. Um, if you’ll see, we have a lot of batters right here. Uh, because we couldn’t decide if we should add lemoning agent to it, if we should add vodka to it, if that’s a myth. So, we’re kind of doing a mini myth munchers right here. I’m going to fry all this fish in different batters. We have uh this is the original, but we want this fresh. So, there’s no vodka, no bang batter in there. This one we’re going to add just a nice little shot of vodka to. And then this one we’re going to add a shot of vodka with the baking powder. The theory behind adding vodka is that alcohol has a lower evaporation point than water. And you want all that moisture to evaporate because that’s what creates crispiness effectively. And so, I’ve heard that from so many chefs. I generally add a shot of liquor to my batters. But I I’ve also kind of never thought that it actually was doing much. So now we’re going to see once and for all. We could do an actual myth munchers on this. We still might do an actual myth munchers on this. Uh stay tuned. But I just want to do this right now. So fish hatock cod family. Maybe Taylor thinks it is. I think it’s pretty messed up. But Taylor’s been allowed. Yeah, it’s the last time I asked. My bad. I forgot to add the baking powder sitting right there the whole time. There we go. Baking powder, also known as sodium bicarbonate plus tartaric acid. Okay. Fish fryer out. Okay, bye. We got our little experiment here. Look at how different these look. Man, this is crazy. Also, I realized I was completely wrong with my no leavenning agent hypothesis. Check this out. I’m doing the sound reverberation technique. You can listen to which one’s going to be crispier. Oh, if I was I will spit on it. Getting there. But you hear that? That’s the sound of greatness. That’s the winner right there. Okay, so the baking powder plus vodka. It does appear to actually work. I think that is going to be the best tasting fish fillet right here. I’m going to take this Remlad. This remod is just like seasoned to the brim. So damn good. I’m going to go remlad on the bottom. Oh, I’m not putting uh cheese on mine. I Fish and cheese do go together in a lot of context. Just like not this one. Like I want the acid. I want the spice. I want all of the fat to come from that crispy batter. I want just a little bit shredd. Dude, I’m gonna see if this technique works because that Mitchell Freeder dude put the greens in his hand and like twisted it. Twist this to kind of hold it together a little bit better. That didn’t really work. That’s whatever. Dude, it worked with dressed arugula. All right, now I got to sit here and fiddle at this for like 10 minutes. Take this big boy, right? Oh, perfect size. Look at that. All right. Now, this is my secret that I’m telling you all my biggest dirty secret. Everyone’s putting caviar on stuff these days. Rihanna’s putting caviar on chicken nuggets. People blowing half the rent money on things of Beluga Caviar. Or if they’re getting cheap stuff, it’s just paddlefish row, baby. Why not spend $12 and get salmon row? Salmon row tastes absolutely delicious. If you’re head sushi, it’s great. This is a lovely way to make your sandwich feel a little bit elevated. We’re just going to dollop some salmon row all around this bad boy. Now more ramalad to the top. And now our lacto fermented pickles. These are really the kicker right here. Is so much better than a vinegar pickle. And take just like a nice handful. Dollop these around. Flick some pickle juice onto the fish. Shout out to Hannibal Burrus. Anybody know that bit? You ever want the flavor of pickles on a sandwich? You know what the whole thing? So you just flick the pickle juice at it. Man, my millennial references, dude. They’re getting more and more arcane by the day. Okay, take this. Pow. Crown it on top. There we have it. The old fileo Josh. Taste the Josh. Now made with 80% more Josh. An all white meat Josh. Trevor Foster Wallace. Welcome to the kitchen. Thank you for having me. Anytime. That was reference to your bandana. Yeah. Before me, you have three fish sandwiches. One expensive, one cheap, one homemade. Your job is to sus them out. Do I have permission to feed you? Yes, of course. Do you think I should cut these in half? No. Unless you think that’s going to give me a better eating experience. No, we’ll just shove it in your mouth. Okay, hold on. Let me shuffle these around. Okay, I’m a little lightheaded cuz I haven’t eaten anything today. So, if I fall over, do you like fish sandwiches? Yeah. What are we talking? Is there going to be a fileo fish in here? There’s a file fish. Find out. First one coming in the hanger. It’s big. It’s big. Yeah. Yeah. You’re good. I’m I’m just holding. I’m not pushing. Okay. Wow. That ain’t no fail. You enjoy it? Yeah. What flavors are you tasting? I mean, definitely getting there’s some tartar sauce. There going to be tartar sauce on all these. Some variation. I can confirm that all three have at least some sort of variation of tartar sauce. Okay. Getting that. I don’t know. The the breading is nice. It’s crispy. I feel like the fish is is soft, flaky. I mean, it’s just a good sandwich. Yeah. All right, man. You ready for number two? It’s got a little pep and zing to it. I don’t know if there’s a little spice on there. I I ate it immediately after you. I don’t know if you could hear the wetness in my mouth. I could. Yeah. Boy, do I know that wetness anywhere. All right. Number two coming in the hanger. It’s a little smaller. [Music] See that? Feels like a file fish to me. Is that a file fish, guys? I can neither confirm nor deny. I I don’t It’s been a long time since I’ve had a file fish, actually, but I don’t know why it’s just bringing me back somewhere. I’m going to keep that. I don’t know. It could be super wrong. I wouldn’t be surprised if I’m very wrong, but that could be the expensive one. You don’t know. Could be. You don’t know. Ready for sandwich number three? Yeah. All right. This one I’m giving you. It’s a corner, but I’m I’m kind of going to have to shove it a little bit. Okay. Okay. Yeah. There you go. There you go. Wa! That fish almost just like disintegrated in my mouth. I felt like so flaky inside. It’s like I bit through the through the fried crispy outside and it was just like butter in there. Do you like that sensation? Yeah, I like that a lot. I was about to ask if your hands were also covered in sauce and then I realized that I’ve been feeding you. Yeah, I know. And if you could see right now, this is horrifying. Can I have another bite of that one? Yeah, of course. Is this out of joy or out of curiosity? Out of joy and I want to come in. That is the bite of an of a legitimately hungry man. I wasn’t joking. I haven’t eaten. Cuz what had happened was you know Mike. You know our friend Mike the sue chef? No. Mike formerly of being employed here. Oh, I thought you meant the microwave. No. Michael Chris Amana. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I know Mike. No, cuz what was happening is I was going to get lunch with him and then he’s like, “Yeah, we’re going to get lunch. to come with us. And then I get there and everyone had ordered ahead and just picked up food. Uhoh. And they didn’t tell me. So I just kind of walk in and everyone’s like, “Grabs their took orders.” And I was like, “Well, what the heck, man?” So I just didn’t get anything. I’m sorry. We treat you better. Yeah, there it is. I couldn’t see it from my angle. I felt it, but I forgot that. Well, the napkins. Yeah, the napkin’s also dirty. So now I wiped parsley into your mustache. There’s a little more there. Is there Is that my napkin? That was a napkin that was given to me to you. Trevor, it’s now our napkin. Okay. Are there any sandwiches you want to revisit? What are your thoughts? Um, I don’t think that there’s any that I that I don’t think there Sorry, I’m freaking out, man. I’m lightheaded. More fish. Dude, have doing this with my eyes closed is so weird. It doesn’t feel like I’m filming a video cuz I can’t see the cameras, you know? I’m like a baby. Like, I don’t see the cameras, so I’m not being filmed. Um, no. I don’t think there’s any that I want to revisit. I’m pretty confident that the second one you gave me was a fileto fish. That’s tough to tough to obscure. Um, should I can I say which one is my favorite now? Is it I think the last one is my favorite. It was I don’t know what about it. It’s just the flavors were very tasty, very scrumptious. That that fish was genuinely so soft and buttery in my mouth. Trevor, which one do you think was the most expensive fish sandwich? Here’s the thing, Josh, and I think that you made the one that I like the most because I think you’re capable of making the best fish sandwich here. So, I’m going to go with the first one was the most expensive. The second one was the fileto fish. And the third one was the homemade that you made. Trevor, open your eyes, but keep the blindfold on. That’s I did the opposite. Oh god, it’s bright. You are correct. That was indeed a fileto fish. What a distinct flavor that is. And then this right here, this is an $80 fish sandwich from Daybird. There is a ton of caviar mixed right into the tartar sauce. Okay, that makes sense. It was very I was getting a lot of that like little extra fishy like saltiness. So that makes sense. Yeah. But then I tried to somewhat recreate the luxuriousness of that by adding salmon row to mine. So the main difference is we did a wet batter on some hadock. This is like a nice panko crust on there. I didn’t go with cheese. I just wanted extra acid from Remalad. No, that’s incredible. This is something special, man. Thank you. Do you like it? I’ve had it. I actually really really like it. It’s really good. You get what I’m saying, right? Like it’s melting in my mouth. This is delicious. And I think it very much tastes like me. Mhm. M you know, it’s incredibly wet. It’s very spicy, overly acidic, and incredibly fishy. Those are all things that I love. No, I love it. You knocked this one out of the park, man. Thanks, man. I appreciate that. Thanks for coming by for lunch. I won’t I won’t stiff you and, you know, order food to go. Mike, Mike, take that. You You’re not invited to my Thanksgiving next year. Mike came to my Thanksgiving. It was funny. He was there with my neighbor Craig. He didn’t come to my Thanksgiving. Pretty messed up. Well, thank you so much for stopping by Mythical Kitchen. We got new episodes out wherever you got your episodes. Tell us what dish you want us to see make next against expensive versions of it. Dude, is this all Gwenna does? Yeah. She just comes in here and eats and now I get to go home after this. Actually, yes. This is the best gig ever. I know, man. I’ve been saying that. Trevor, you got a message for the fans? Hey, everyone. It’s good to be here. I’ll see you later. All right. Wonderhole season 2 is coming your way Sundays starting August 24th. You can get your tickets now for an evening with Rhett and Link, an exclusive Wonderhole season 2 premiere event at wonderhole.com.