Britain and Ireland · Volume 35, The Pie, the Pluck and the Girder Drink
Deep Fried Mars Bar
Stonehaven, Aberdeenshire
An illustration of the dish, not a photograph of it cooked.
- Time
- 10 minutes
- Researched
- 10 sources cited
- Reviewed
- Not yet reviewed from inside the tradition
- Cooked
- Not yet cooked and reported
A frozen chocolate bar dipped in chip shop batter and fried, invented more or less by accident at a single Stonehaven chip shop in the early 1990s and turned, by press coverage rather than appetite, into international shorthand for Scottish diet.
As tradition built it
Serves 1. About 10 minutes, plus freezing.
Ingredients
- 1 standard Mars bar
- as for the fish supper plain chip shop batter, as for the fish supper (flour, salt, sparkling water)
- as needed oil or beef dripping, for frying
Method
- Freeze the Mars bar hard, at least an hour, so it holds its shape in the fryer rather than collapsing into the oil.
- Dip it in a plain chip shop batter, the same flour, salt and sparkling water mixture used for fish.
- Fry at around 175°C for 2 to 3 minutes, until the batter is golden and the bar inside has softened without fully liquefying.
Notes
This chapter treats this dish honestly as what it actually is: a documented, dated invention from a single chip shop in Stonehaven in the early 1990s, popularised by press coverage rather than by any older Scottish appetite for it, and worth including here precisely because pretending it is either ancient tradition or beneath serious attention would both be dishonest.
What a modern chef changes
A caramel and nougat bar built from scratch, then battered and fried as a composed dessert
Rungs 3 and 4
Method
- Six by Nico's own "Chippie" menu is the real precedent for taking this dish seriously rather than as a joke, rebuilding chip shop staples with fine dining technique.
- Build a proper caramel and nougat bar from scratch: tempered dark chocolate, a soft caramel cooked to a precise temperature, and a whipped nougat centre, rather than using the supermarket original.
- Freeze, batter with a lighter tempura style mix, and fry exactly as above.
- Serve it deliberately as a single, composed dessert course rather than a chip shop novelty, the same ingredients, entirely different intent.