Crispy Breaded Shrimp with Asian Sauce

Recipe:

Ingredient Notes:

• Shrimp. This recipe uses raw frozen or fresh shrimp. Precooked frozen shrimp will not work. The weight in the recipe is for headless shrimp after defrosting.
• Soy sauce. For both marinating the shrimp and making the dipping sauce, use regular soy sauce with standard salt. Dark soy sauce is not suitable.
• Sweet Chili Sauce. This sauce gives the shrimp a slight heat and a little sweetness. When marinating the shrimp, you can substitute it with a few pinches of white sugar and a few pinches of chili flakes. In a dipping sauce, this ingredient is irreplaceable.
• Ginger. Dry ground ginger is used in this dish. Fresh ginger can be substituted if desired. This recipe uses 1 teaspoon of finely grated fresh ginger.
• Garlic. The dry granulated garlic that appears in the list of ingredients can be replaced with fresh garlic. 1 small clove will suffice.
• Flour. For this recipe, you can use any type of wheat flour except whole wheat. Rice or oat flour will also work well.
• Breadcrumbs. I used regular fine breadcrumbs. The crust is denser with them. You can substitute Japanese panko breadcrumbs – the crust will be more voluminous and light.
• Eggs. Instead of whole eggs, you can use the egg whites left over from making a crème brûlée, for example. Calculation for substitution: 1 egg – 50-55 g, one egg white – about 30 g.
• Sesame oil. Note that here you need toasted sesame oil with a bright flavor – it is the main aromatic tone in the sauce.

Let’s start cooking.

Peel the shrimp – remove the shells, leaving the tail – it will be convenient to take the ready shrimp and dip it in the sauce. Cut the tails along the back and remove the vein.

Place the shrimp in a bowl and add the soy sauce, ginger, sweet chili and dried garlic. Stir and let sit for 10 minutes.

Coat the shrimp in flour.

Dip in the beaten egg and then in the breadcrumbs. If you think the breading is too thin, do a double breading – dip again in egg and breadcrumbs.

Heat vegetable oil in a saucepan. There should be enough oil to keep the shrimp afloat. The temperature of the oil – about 170-180 °C (340-355 °F). If you are cooking without a thermometer, concentrate on medium-high heat. Ultimately, it depends on the size of the shrimp – the larger they are, the lower the heat. But no lower than indicated above.

Fry the shrimp in the heated oil for about 4-5 minutes at a time. Transfer to paper towels to absorb excess oil.

Make the dipping sauce. Combine all ingredients and mix well.

Serve the shrimp with the sauce.

Enjoy!