King Prawns

rstans

Hi. I going to have a go at cooking king prawns for the first time. Any tips or recipes would be appreciated so I don't poison meself or others.
Thanks

Minder

Sichuan pepper and salt prawns are delicious and very simple to make. Combine equal quantities of sichuan pepper, white pepper and salt. Dry fry the spices in a pan for a few minutes. Allow to cool before grinding in a pestle and mortar. Add the sea salt.

Cook the whole (shell-on) prawns in a deep fat fryer or on the bbq until pink. If bbq, remove and brush with oil, then sprinkle with the spice-salt mixture before returning to the bbq for a minute or two. If deep fryed, drain and add to a hot wok or pan and sprinkle with the salt/spice mixture.

The dish works because some of the salt-spices on the shells finds it way onto the meat as each person peels the prawn with their fingers. It doesn't work with peeled prawns, I've found, because the salt-spices is too much - smothering the flavour of the prawns - and it's too salty.

Seaneh

Nice easy recipe.

350 grams peeled prwans.

5 desert spoons dark soy sauce
3 desert spoons ketchup
200mls water
2tsp corn flour
3 cloves garlic
thumb sized piece of root ginger
3 chillis
small hand hull fresh coriander
sesseme seeds for sprinkling

its piss easy

Grate your ginger, mince your garlis, finely slice your chillis (you can deseed if you dont like it too hot).

Sepretly put the soy, ketchup and cornflour in a small bowl and wisk together untill teher is no trace of lumps from the corn flour.

heat your wok/frying pan, add a drop of ground nut or toasted sesseme oil, add your gralic, ginger cook for a few seconds, add your chillis, then almost instantly add your soy/ketchup/cornflour mixture, let it cook for a wee bit more and then add the 200mls gradually and when it gets to a consistancy you want bring it to a gentle boil.
Add your prawns, they will take very little time to cook, maybe 2 minutes.

Serve onglass noodles which have been tossed in some tosted sesseme oil and the roughly chopped corriander leaves, and sprinkle with the sesseme seeds.


The Ketchup adds body to the soy and takes the edge off the soy, which would be too salty without it, its a total cheat but it makes this recipe really nice.


You could easily add stuff like pepers or other veg to bluk it up if you wanted.

The Sweeper

Prawns 101

Cooked prawns are pink and white, uncooked are grey and transluscent.

You can buy a number of different fresh or frozen types. The only thing I'd personally ever buy cooked prawns for is a salad/prawn cocktail dish, and then I'd buy the cooked, frozen variety from the supermarket deep freezer and allow them to defrost at home. I don't trust the cooked and chilled variety, because I've seen too many shelf-stackers leaving crates of chilled produce lying around to come almost to room temperature before it goes on the shelves...

ANYWAY. For a hot dish requiring cooked prawns, I'd always buy the raw variety. If I can get them fresh I will, but I find that the peeled or tail-on variety of king prawns is just as good if bought raw from the deep freeze - they don't cook into rubber. I'll buy whole, shell-on prawns fresh, but usually go for frozen for the peeled or tail-on variety.

Prawns have a vein that runs down their back that needs to be cleaned out. A raw prawn is curled like a C. The vein runs down the outside of the curl. In most frozen raw varieties this vein will have been cleaned out already. There's a smaller vein runs the inside of the curl - ignore it.

The vein that needs to be cleaned is really obvious, a thick stripe of a dark navy colour down the back of the prawn. If the vein is still in, make a small incision along the vein with a sharp knife and loosen one end - the vein can then be pulled free.

There are comprehensive videos on youtube that show you how to de-vein prawns (and even how to de-vein shell-on prawns without taking the shells off - fiddly, but worth it).

In terms of using frozen prawns for cooking, I find that if I take the amount I want and immerse them in a bowl of cold water at the start of my prep, by the time I've finished chopping or preparing and am ready to cook, the prawns have defrosted.

I buy tail-on, in case I want to use them in something like filo pastry and a dip, or marinate them, or just cook them and serve as finger food, but if I want to include them in a dish I take the tails off. By 'tail on' they literally mean just the end of the tail, so the last inch of prawn has a bit of shell and a tail piece. To take it off, you just pinch the shell where it meets the very end of the prawn, and pull. It comes off easy.

Cooking prawns doesn't take long. Whatever way you're cooking them, you can tell they are cooked because they will change colour. They'll go from grey and translucent and soft to white/pink and firm.

If you want them in a curry or a sauce, add them raw to the hot sauce at the end of cooking - try even just lying them on top and covering the pan with a lid - the hot sauce will cook the underneath, the steam will cook the top - if still translucent three minutes later, flip them or push them under for another two minutes.

If skewering them and grilling them, again just watch for the transluscency to disappear, especially where the skewer pushes through the prawn, and where the prawn meets other prawns. If using a griddle to cook the skewers, be careful that each prawn is touching the heat source - same goes for cooking chicken skewers on a griddle

They don't take long in a stir-fry either. I'd tend to add them at the start, in whatever flavours you like - with a little ginger and garlic, for instance, with a few drops of sesame oil just as they're cooked - then take them OUT of the wok and leave them on a warm plate on one side while you stir-fry everything else, then add them again at the end to ensure they're warmed through.

I like to pan-fry a couple of handfuls of prawns in one tablespoon of butter that's been melted with one tablespoon of olive oil. They take about 2 minutes on each side, then I add a teaspoon of garlic paste and a teaspoon of hot chili paste to the pan and cook those for long enough to take the rawness off the pastes. (I find I judge all of these things by sight and by smell more than by the clock.) I serve that, buttery oil and all, tossed with spaghetti, with a good handful of chopped fresh parsley and a few twists of black pepper. Meal in 10 minutes.

rstans

Thanks guys. I'll try a few recipes on myself before exposing the general public/wimmen to me culinary shellfishy talents.

neuro-praxis

I've also never cooked prawns. I am trying to eat more fish these days, so I thought I might try dipping some prawns in seasoned flour, then in egg, and then in breadcrumbs, and baking them, with a home-made dip.

Any tips to help me achieve succulent oven-baked breaded prawns? Would this even work? I know traditionally they're deep-fried but I'm trying to be healthy.