Ebi furai
Prawns slit and stretched straight, crumbed with the tails left clean, and fried in two minutes.
Shellfish, Egg. Not vegetarian — contains shellfish, tonkatsu, which is a breaded pork cutlet.
Ingredients
the prawns
- 12 large prawns, shell on
- 1 teaspoon salt
- 1 tablespoon sake
- 80 g plain flour
- 2 eggs, beaten
- 200 g panko
- oil, for deep frying
to serve
- 4 tablespoons tonkatsu sauce
- 4 tablespoons mayonnaise
- 1 lemon, in wedges
- 150 g white cabbage, shredded
Method
- SLIT AND STRETCHED STRAIGHT, which is the only real technique in the dish. A prawn curls hard as it cooks and a curled one is a ring of crumbs. Make three or four shallow cuts across the BELLY, then bend it backwards until you feel the muscle give, and it fries straight.
- Peel the body but LEAVE THE LAST TAIL SEGMENT AND THE FAN ON. It is the handle and it is how the dish is eaten.
- SNIP THE TIP OF THE TAIL AND SQUEEZE THE WATER OUT of the fan with the back of a knife. That trapped water is what makes the oil spit.
- KEEP THE TAIL CLEAN OF COATING. Hold it between finger and thumb through the flour, egg and panko. Crumbed, it goes dark and bitter and there is nothing to hold.
- De-vein along the back, then salt and sake for 10 minutes and pat dry.
- Flour, egg, panko in the full three stages -- the same coating as the oysters in the last batch, but everything after it differs.
- Oil at 180C. Not the 190C an oyster wants, because a prawn is thicker and must cook through.
- TWO MINUTES AND NO MORE. Overcooked prawn goes hard and squeaky, and this is the commonest fault in the dish by a wide margin.
- Lower them in tail first, holding the fan, and let go once the coating has set so they stay straight.
- Drain standing on their tails. Sauce and mayonnaise mixed, cabbage and lemon alongside.
Our own recipe. This one was written for this site rather than taken from anywhere, so there is no source to point you at. The quantities and the order of the steps are choices, not the only way to do it.
Filed under Japan · All recipes