Fish & Chips: A Tasty Introduction to British Culture! - English Like a Native Podcast

Hello and welcome to the English Like A Native Podcast, the

podcast that's designed for lovers and learners of English.

My name is Anna, and today we are ordering some fish and chips.

Are you feeling hungry?

Well, you might be by the end of this podcast as I'm just going to be

talking about food the entire time.

So if you look at any list of traditional British dishes, then

fish and chips will usually rank number one, if not in the top three.

It's a very British dish and in every single town in the UK, there

will be a fish and chip shop.

We often say a chip shop.

So you can say a fish and chip shop, or simply a chip shop.

"Is there a chip shop around here?"

Or even a chippy.

"Is there a chippy anywhere?

I really fancy some fish and chips."

Now here's an interesting fact that I don't think I've shared before,

I used to work in a chip shop.

Yeah, that's right.

I've done many jobs in my life, particularly when I was younger.

I would always look for work and get part-time jobs here

and there doing anything, and I learned a lot during that time.

I remember my days working in this chip shop fondly.

It was a chip shop in Manchester.

And I would work there at the weekends, I would do the night shift, so I

would be there on a Friday night and a Saturday night, and it was hard work.

I would work until closing time, which would be usually, I think

it was like 11 o'clock at night.

And after we closed, I had to do all of the cleaning, which was not just

cleaning the fryers and things like that.

I had to mop the floors.

Not just once, but three times.

They were meticulous when it came to their floors.

They wanted firstly, a wet mop, where you have to put loads of water

on the floor and make the floor really wet, and then two dry mops.

So you leave the water to kind of soak in and wet all the splodges of food that

have fallen on the floor during service.

And then once all that stuff is loose and moist, I would do a good scrubbing

dry mop, so I'd use a dry mop and scrub that floor, and then a clean mop with

clean water, one more kind of dry mop.

I say dry mop.

It's not dry.

It's wet, but there's not lots of water dripping off the mop.

So one wet mop and two dry mops, and then that floor would be sparkling

clean and the owner of the chip shop would come and inspect the floor

before I was allowed to go home.

It was very hard work.

I remember feeling exhausted after every shift I did at the chip shop.

But the good thing about working in a chip shop was that I could have anything

I wanted to take home for my supper.

Supper refers to a meal that you have before bed basically.

It's late at night, way beyond your normal dinner time.

Normally you've had dinner, you just have another meal before

bed and this is your supper.

So I'd take home my fish and chip supper from my chip shop job.

I did enjoy working there because I really enjoyed fish and chips.

But fish and chip shops don't just sell fish and chips.

In fact, they sell lots of things.

And depending on where you are in the country, you might have some

weird and wonderful things too.

I will tell you the weirdest and most wonderful thing at the very end.

So in most fish and chip shops, you will have of course, fish and chips.

The fish is white fish, often cod or haddock, and it's done in batter.

So, it's rolled in batter and then deep fried, and then

the chips are chunky chips.

Now, in British English chips refers to cooked potato chips.

We're not talking about crisps that you have as a snack out of a bag.

That's the noise of me eating crisps.

In America it's different and it becomes quite confusing for anyone

who's exposed to American English, when they hear British people talking about

chips, we don't mean the potato snack.

We mean the warm, like french fries, but much fatter.

So chip shop chips are fat, chunky chips and they're lovely.

Really lovely.

So you have your fish and chips, but then you can also get sausages,

and these are like saveloy sausages.

They are like hot dogs.

They're long and slim.

I mean, maybe some chip shops do different types of sausages, but you can

have battered sausage, so you can roll a sausage in batter and deep fry it.

It's probably not very healthy, but it tastes nice with a bit

of salt and vinegar and ketchup.

Now, when you go to the chip shop to buy a bag of chips or to buy

fish and chips, you have to have salt and vinegar on your chips.

It's kind of part of the culture.

Unless, of course you're sharing your bag of chips with a young child, you

probably don't want the acidic vinegar and the very salty salt on there.

It's not very good for the children, but it tastes delicious.

And then you might have some gravy on that as well.

And talking about sauces, many chip shops will also offer a curry sauce,

but the curry sauce that you get in a chip shop is very different to any

curry sauce you'd have anywhere else.

It's usually like a green sauce.

I don't know what they do to it, but it's a green, slightly spicy curry sauce

and yeah, I don't know where else you would find this type of curry sauce.

It's a chip shop curry sauce.

So we have fish, chips, battered sausage.

You can also find pies in a fish and chip shop.

Now, pies in the UK are a pastry...

like cup, so pastry around the outside.

And this is used like a shortcrust pastry, and it's filled with something

savoury, and then it has a lid on the top.

Now, the fillings of a typical pie that you'd find in a chip shop

would be, you might have a cheese and onion for the vegetarians.

There'll be a meat pie.

If you are in the north of England, you'd find meat and potato pies.

They're very popular, but you will not find meat and potato pies down south.

Something that I was very upset about when I moved from my hometown

in the north down to London.

I'd really missed my meat and potato pies until I became a

vegetarian, and then I didn't care.

But you can also find steak and kidney pies or even better,

a steak and kidney pudding.

Now, this is a suet pudding.

It's not the same shortcrust, crumbly pastry that you have in a normal pie.

A pudding is a suet pastry, so it's kind of thick and moist and yeah, it's gooey.

And we call it a pudding, which is a little unusual because

pudding is normally the word...

It's a synonym for dessert.

"Would you like pudding after your dinner?"

It's the same as saying, would you like dessert?

"Yes, I would love pudding, please."

Some specific desserts are referred to as puddings.

You can get a summer pudding, for example, or a tapioca pudding, perhaps.

So, a steak and kidney pudding is not sweet, despite the name pudding

and it doesn't come after the meal.

It's definitely the main feature of your meal.

So you can purchase these steak and kidney puddings at a chip shop.

What else?

Oh, sometimes they do things like, pizzas and things like that.

In Scotland, I believe this is still the case.

If you are a Scot and you're listening and I'm wrong, please

feel free to let me know.

But they will deep fry the pizza for you.

Normally a pizza is cooked in the oven, but in Scotland they will deep fry the

pizza for you, making it very greasy and uh, probably tastes quite nice.

You can also, and this is the most weird and most wonderful thing

that I was saving to the end.

You can also, in Scotland, get something called a deep-fried Mars bar.

Oh, what sounds crazy, doesn't it?

A deep-fried Mars bar is the chocolate Mars bar that's got...

I'm sure you all know what a Mars bar is.

It's got that kind of mixed filling of like a gooey, stringy kind

of caramely part and a, yeah.

I don't really know how to explain the filling of a Mars

bar, but anyway, it's a Mars bar.

It's covered in batter and then it's deep fried in oil.

And this is a very much a Scottish thing.

I did try one, I spent a lot of time in Scotland and I thought while I'm

here, you know when in Rome, do as the Romans do, I was in Scotland.

So I thought, let's do what the Scots do.

Let's have a deep-fried Mars bar.

And it was really nice.

I know it sounds horrid, but it was delicious.

Very sweet, but also fatty and mm oh, it's just lovely.

So if you're ever in Scotland and you have a sweet tooth, I would highly

recommend going to a chip shop and asking for a deep-fried Mars bar.

Some of the features of a traditional British fish and chips served from a fish

and chip shop are, as mentioned, you have to have the salt and vinegar, but also

fish and chip shops will wrap your supper, your dinner, or your lunch in paper.

Now it used to be newspaper, I think, and these days they still

do wrap everything in paper.

Often they'll put a fish and chips into a tray so that the fish

holds it shape, but not always.

And then they wrap it in several layers of paper.

In some fish and chip shops, they also sell their chips in cones.

So you have these like cardboard cones and a little, it used

to be a little wooden fork.

I'm guessing it now is a wooden fork because plastic forks and knives

are banned in the UK, I believe.

So it may be a plastic one if that's not correct, or a little wooden

fork with just like two prongs or three prongs to stab at your chips.

It's fine for chips, it's not very good for eating fish, it's a bit tricky.

But the idea is that you pick up your fish and chips and you go and

sit on a wall somewhere, or you go and sit on the seafront or on a

bench in the park, or just outside the shop, standing at the bus stop.

You pull back some of the folds of paper and you tuck in to your fish and chips.

Delicious.

That's the best way to have it.

Hopefully, you are not going to be attacked by any seagulls.

Now, seagulls, you know the very noisy birds that often live close to the coast.

That's why they are called seagulls.

They are notorious for stealing people's fish and chips.

The seagulls will swoop down as soon as someone opens up their wraps of paper,

pull it back to reveal the delicious food.

These seagulls will swoop down and snatch the food right out of the person's hand.

Now this is becoming even more of a problem because seagulls over

the years, have become more and more boisterous, more daring.

They just don't care.

They're not scared of people at all.

Even the local people who, you know, live there, they try everything to

deter these birds, to put them off.

You know, they might do things like covering their heads with newspapers,

waving their arms wildly to keep these birds away, but nothing seems to work.

Now I used the word notorious there when describing these seagulls.

I said, seagulls are notorious for stealing people's fish and chips.

Notorious means famous or well-known, but usually famous

or well-known for doing something negative, something unfavourable.

Okay?

In this context, it means that seagulls are well known for stealing

people's fish and chips, it's not limited to fish and chips either.

Seagulls will steal pretty much anything.

So if you've come out of the fish and chip shop with your battered

sausage, then you better watch out because the seagulls are about.

And ice creams as well, they will have a go at swooping

down and taking your ice cream.

Many a child has, unfortunately, been the victim of a seagull swoop and lost

their ice cream either to the seagull or the ice cream has fallen off its

cone onto the floor, leaving the child in bits, in tears, beside themselves.

So upset that they lost their ice cream that they probably queued a long time for.

Okay, so I'm getting distracted, pulled onto ice cream when we

need to stick to fish and chips.

Okay.

Time for some real facts now about this much loved British dish.

Hopefully you'll find these interesting.

So the first fish and chip shop, apparently, opened in London in 1860.

During World War II, fish and chips were one of the few foods

that were not rationed in the UK.

Isn't that crazy?

That's amazing.

They must have had, you know, an abundance of potatoes and an

abundance of fish even during wartime.

And so people talk about the war and there being huge queues of people, lining

the streets to get into their local fish and chip shop, to buy their supper.

Now, the world's largest serving of fish and chips was made in 2012 in

Yorkshire and weighed 105 pounds.

What?

What?

That's 47.75 kilograms.

I...

should I tell you my weight?

I am 61 kilograms.

So this was 47.75 kilograms.

What?

That's crazy.

Who on earth would eat that fish and chip supper?

A giant, I imagine.

All right, so the fish used for fish and chips, as I said, is typically

cod or haddock, but other types of white fish can be used as well.

Can you name any other kinds of white fish?

Hake comes to mind.

Uh.

I don't really know my fish, uh, sea bass.

I don't think they use sea bass in fish and chips, but I guess if the

others are running low, maybe they do.

All right, answers on a postcard.

If you know the name of any other white fish other than haddock, cod, and

hake, and sea bass, then let me know.

You can find me on Instagram and YouTube.

You can just send me a message and I'll be like, what's this person

sending me messages about fish for?

And then I'll remember this podcast episode.

Right, so the next fun fact is the chips are cut thick, much

thicker than regular fries.

This is so that they can hold up to the weight of the fish and

the vinegar used as a condiment.

So when the chips are being doused in vinegar and covered

in fish, you don't want them to break underneath all that weight.

So they're cut much thicker for this reason, apparently.

In the UK, fish and chips are often served with mushy peas, I love mushy peas.

I forgot to mention mushy peas earlier in the podcast.

Mushy peas are amazing, so they are very mushy, as you can guess from the name.

They are served as a side, so you can ask for mushy peas, and they're

often served in a little pot.

It's basically marrowfat peas that are soaked overnight, and they're

simmered with a little bit of sugar and a little bit of salt.

That's probably why I like them.

They're a bit salty and a bit sweet and they're mushy.

I do like mushy food, and so I like to have mushy peas on the

side of my fish and chip supper.

In 1999, the National Federation of Fish Fryers.

Yes, there is a National Federation of Fish Fryers.

I think there's a tongue twister in there somewhere.

The National Federation of Fish Fryers declared that Friday would be fish and

chip day in the UK to celebrate the dish and promote local fish and chip shops.

So if it is a Friday when you are visiting the UK, then to celebrate

this dish, you should go out and buy yourself some fish and chips.

So, next time you are enjoying some fish and chips, remember these interesting

facts that I've just shared with you about the history and culture

behind this iconic British meal.

So as we are closing in, just over 20 minutes, I think it's time to wrap

up our little fishy podcast episode.

I'm sure you are hungry now.

What you gonna have for dinner, fish and chips?

Now I'm going to go and record a bonus episode discussing some of the

amazing chip shop names that are puns.

So, we do like a pun in this country, a pun is a play on words, and I'm

going to be sharing some of the most interesting, interesting.

There's that word once again.

Interesting.

I'm going to be sharing some really fun chip shop, pun

names, in this bonus episode.

So if you are an English Like A Native Plus member, you'll get

access to that bonus episode.

If you are not a Plus member, then consider joining us.

I will leave a link in the description of this podcast.

Until next time, enjoy your fish and chips and I will see you in the next episode.

Take care, and goodbye.