Easy Steps to Make Fabulous Rubio's Fish Tacos

Rubio's fish tacos are famous - and rightly so.

They taste fantastic - hot crunchy fish, cool sauce, spicy salsa and crispy salad all in a tortilla wrap.

The combination of textures, temperatures and flavors mingle together to give a superb eating experience.

The recipe is straight forward, but a little time consuming as it's best to make your batter an hour in advance and leave it to stand.

It uses a lot of bowls as well - but if you consider you can save yourself dollars by making this at home, it's well worth it.

You need 2 fillets of fish cut into sticks - about a pound (500g) in total.

Rinse them in cold water with a squirt of lemon juice and dry them on paper towel - dip into seasoned flour prior to battering as it helps the batter to stick.

The beer - use a dark beer, guinness, stout or similar - you only use 1 cup so you can exercise cook's privileges and drink the rest!

For the salad - the authentic Rubio's is shredded cabbage - I would add some grated carrot, shredded iceberg lettuce and maybe some finely sliced onion to that for a bit more interest.

The recipe makes 12 tortillas - you could halve these quantities if you liked or invite a friend or two depending on how hungry you are.

Rubio's Fish Taco Recipe

12 sticks of fish - prepared as above

12 corn tortillas

oil for deep frying

Batter

1 cup flour

1 cup beer

1 teaspoon garlic powder

few twists pepper

Sauce

1/2 cup mayonnaise

1/2 cup plain yoghurt

Salsa

1 garlic clove - peeled and finely chopped

6 ripe tomatoes - diced finely

Small red onion - peeled and diced

2 tablespoon cilantro leaves - chopped finely

2 jalapeno chillies - seeded and chopped finely

1 1/2 teaspoon salt

1/4 teaspoon pepper

Salad

Finely shredded hard cabbage

limes - cut into wedges - you'll need 12 pieces

First make your batter - whisk the ingredients together until they're well blended and then beat a little longer to make the batter full of air bubbles 'airy'. Set aside for an hour.

Mix the sauce ingredients together and put into the fridge.

Mix the salsa ingredients together - if you can't get cilantro leaves, use fresh chopped parsley, coriander, chives or similar to your taste - I used shredded basil leaves.

Have everything ready to assemble before you cook the fish.

Before you start cooking, give the batter another whisk - this will make it airy again - vital for crispy batter.

Heat the oil in a pan - when a cube of bread floats to the top, it's ready.

Dip each piece of fish into seasoned plain flour, then into the batter and fry until the batter is golden and crispy.

Cook the fish in one layer or it might 'steam' and the batter may go soggy.

Heat the tortillas in a lightly oiled pan until they are soft and hot.

Assemble as follows:-

Lay the tortilla on a plate and layer the fish, sauce, salsa and cabbage - squeeze the lime juice over it all and then fold the tortilla over the filling.

If you follow the instructions in order, the recipe will flow and you will not waste too much time hanging around waiting for the hour to pass - you could of course open another beer!

Liz Alderson is the webmaster of http://find-a-seafood-recipe.com which is a free fish and seafood recipe site giving advice on buying, preparing and cooking fish and seafood.

This Rubio's Fish Taco Recipe comes from one of the most visited pages on her site http://www.find-a-seafood-recipe.com/fried-fish-recipes.html where you will find many more recipes for frying fish - pan fried as well as deep fried.

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