How to make the perfect fish finger sandwich – recipe | Food

I must be the only person in Britain not to have grown up with fish finger sandwiches – we always had them with mash and peas – but after discovering them on pub menus as an adult, it wasn’t hard to see the appeal. These crunchy batons of firm, creamy fish in soft white bread, often topped with a tangy sauce, are surely the UK equivalent of Mexican fish tacos or West African fish rolls – a quick, nutritious and very satisfying light meal or snack.

(NB: if you’re skim-reading this before leaping below the line to demand to know who needs a recipe for a fish finger sandwich, I can assure you a lot of people online seem to feel there’s a demand.) Given their popularity (indeed, this column was a reader request), I must echo Helen Graves, who prefaces her recipe thus: “I am bracing myself for the comeback on this one, because everyone (or at least everyone in the UK) has an opinion on what makes the perfect fish finger sandwich.” As ever, all feedback much appreciated!

The fish

The classic and, of course, the easiest choice is to use readymade fish fingers, as Signe Johansen recommends in her book Solo. For some, nostalgia makes this the only option, and I certainly wouldn’t knock it; modern fish fingers tend to be much chunkier than the weedy grey sticks of my childhood, in which the filling always looked mysteriously ready-chewed.

However, there are advantages to making your own, principally that you can choose your own fish and precision engineer the coating. Most recipes I find call for cod or haddock, or both if you’re Graves, but Edinburgh’s Little Chartroom chef Roberta Hall McCarron uses sole, and north London “sandwich genius” (I quote About Time magazine) Max Halley throws the door wide open, writing in Max’s Sandwich Book that “cod is back in vogue, but who knows? Haddock? Whiting and sole would be delicious”.

As so often with fish, the best option is generally the one that looks freshest on the day, and is most sustainable. My preference, however, if it’s available, is for anything that comes in thick fillets, because I find the sole and the end of one of the haddock fillets too thin: it throws off the ratio of fish to crumb. Go for whatever fits the bill, though – I suspect hake would be an excellent choice.

Graves salts the fish for half an hour before cooking, “to firm up the texture, so what you get is really satisfying flakes of well-seasoned fish, not mushiness”. Though they’re rinsed afterwards, I like the way this seasons the dish from the inside out, but I actually prefer the softer texture of fish salted just before cooking – it shouldn’t be mushy. If you have similar textural objections, however, this is a step you may like to consider.

The coating

I’m relieved to find that no one batters their fish fingers; this is not a fish supper in portable form, but flour, egg and breadcrumb territory. Graves, Hall McCarron and Halley all plump for panko, the large flaked, white, ultra-crisp Japanese variety that’s taken the western crumbing world by storm in recent years; only Kirsty Scobie and Fenella Renwick, proprietors of Ullapool’s Seafood Shack and authors of an award-winning book of the same name, recommend the fluffier kind made from fresh bread.

For me, all breadcrumbed fish is delicious, but for this purpose I slightly prefer the crunchier texture of fried panko – if I were baking the fish, I suspect I might go for fresh crumbs instead, because dry breadcrumbs will inevitably become even dryer in the heat of the oven. (Home-dried breadcrumbs would, of course, be a perfectly acceptable substitute.)

Flavour-wise, you could just stick to salt and pepper, as Halley does, or you could capitalise on the freedom of making your own to spice things up a bit. The Seafood Shack chefs suggest chopped fresh herbs such as parsley and dill, while Graves describes her mix of panko and cayenne pepper as “super-crisp with just a tiny bit of warmth”, before going on to explain: “We also added a titchy pinch of MSG because we like to live on the edge in this house. That’s totally optional, just as long as you know that being scared of MSG is pointless.” Hall McCarron, meanwhile, mixes her panko with blitzed oats and pumpkin seeds, then flavours them with garlic and onion powder and nutritional yeast, on the basis that, as she points out in her book The Changing Tides: “You can’t go wrong with a fish finger sandwich. And you certainly can’t go wrong when the fish is coated in breadcrumbs and yeast flakes.”

All of these are very valid options – my testers and I particularly like the savoury notes that the yeast and MSG bring with them. And, though I haven’t included them in my recipe, I’d also urge you to give the pumpkin seeds in particular a go; they give the crumb an interestingly nubbly texture.

The sauces

Personally, like Scobie and Renwick, I’m a tartare girl; the combination of rich mayonnaise cut with acidic pickles, savoury alliums (they use shallots, I like chives) and salty capers is perfect with fried fish. It seems, however, that this is not the will of the people – Graves describes tartare as “the fancypants choice” (guilty as charged, Helen), explaining that the key to a perfect fish finger sandwich “is to use a mayonnaise-based sauce and ketchup. I know. You are reeling,” she continues kindly. “The reason it works is because the ketchup offers something I was always missing in the fish finger sandwich: sweetness. People tend to go OTT on the acidity, I find, adding lemon juice, capers, vinegar et al, but let me tell you once more – double-sauce is where it’s at.”

Halley agrees, but he uses salad cream (a mayonnaise-adjacent sauce, I suppose?), describing the mix of that and ketchup as “SO good”. Mind you, he goes on to boast about blending a whole pork pie in the stuff to make a dip, so he’s definitely a salad cream superfan, whereas it reminds me of early 1990s school lunches, and not in a good way, I’m afraid.

Confession time: I find ketchup too sweet and vinegary in most contexts – like chocolate, it’s a flavour bully, dominating everything it touches – but I’m well aware this is a minority opinion. My own second choice is Johansen’s punchy green Nordic dill salsa, which also contains parsley, anchovies, gherkins, capers, horseradish, lemon juice and olive oil. “Admittedly,” she writes, “a good old fish finger sarnie tastes incredible with just a good squirt of ketchup, but once in a while I like a fresh green sauce to grace those crispy little fish sticks. This dill salsa is a great way of using up any odds and ends you have in the fridge – such as sad, forgotten herbs, condiments and pickles. Treat the recipe as a guide and please do play around with the flavours to make it your own.”

Lest you be in any doubt that ketchup is not the only choice available, Hall McCarron gilds her fish finger sandwich with a two-ingredient roasted garlic mayonnaise, bringing back happy holiday memories of mountains of fried seafood dunked in aïoli. No doubt most of you will probably shake your head at such notions, but don’t knock them until you’ve tried them.

Graves favours the cool crunch of iceberg lettuce, while Halley prefers the oily one of crumbled Scampi Fries (a particularly noxious, yet undeniably moreish brand of pub snack, for readers outside the UK). Hall McCarron makes a celeriac and butternut squash slaw flavoured with crushed wakame, which delivers crunch and a more subtle touch of the sweetness that Graves feels is missing without ketchup (it is also much less work than it sounds (grate both vegetables, add salt and seaweed powder).

My favourite extra, however, is the Seafood Shack’s minty peas: frozen petits pois, blitzed with mint and lemon juice, which brings sweetness, freshness, and comforting echoes of my childhood (not that we pureed them). As this is not your childhood, you should feel free to replace it, or indeed eschew any sort of garnish as an unnecessary complication of what should be a simple pleasure.

The cooking

If you’re using bought fish fingers, baking is the way to go; it’s classic and low-faff. If you’re making your own fish fingers, however, I regretfully share the ill tidings that the baked versions are a poor second to the fried variety, and drier inside and out. You don’t need to deep-fry them, though; a few centimetres of oil in a frying pan will do the job, and if you’re going to the trouble of making your own fish fingers, you may as well cook them right, too.

The sandwich bread

When I see that more than half the recipes call for toasted bread, I begin to question everything I thought I knew about fish finger sarnies – surely most of the pleasure comes from the contrast in textures between bread and filling? For this reason, I will only countenance soft, fluffy white bread (a white tin loaf from my local bakery for me, though you may well be in the Halley Mother’s Pride camp). Or, Hall McCarron’s white roll would work (she mentions brioche, but I think a bap would be nicer). You can fight me on this in the comments; I won’t change my mind – though I will make an allowance for Johansen’s happy suggestion that: “If you’ve had a really rotten day, or spent it doing seriously strenuous exercise, fry the bread in butter”. That I might come round to.

Perfect fish finger sandwiches

Prep 25 min
Cook 8 min
Serves 4

For the tartare sauce (or use ketchup and/or mayonnaise)
200g mayonnaise, bought or homemade
1 tsp dijon mustard
1 heaped tbsp chopped capers
1 heaped tbsp chopped cornichons, or other vinegary gherkins
1 heaped tbsp chopped parsley, or dill
½ tbsp chopped chives

For the fish fingers (or use eight ready made)
2 skinless fillets thick white fish (about 400g) – eg, cod, hake, haddock
Salt and pepper
50g plain flour
2 eggs
125g panko breadcrumbs, or other dried breadcrumbs
20g nutritional yeast flakes, or ½ tsp MSG powder (optional)
Neutral oil, for frying
8 slices good soft white bread, or 4 soft white rolls
Butter, at room temperature

For the minty pea puree
200g frozen peas
1 small bunch fresh mint, leaves picked
½ tbsp lemon juice
1 tsp horseradish sauce (optional)