How to make Ebi Fry (Fried Shrimp) & Salmon Katsu 〜エビフライ＆シャケカツ〜 | easy Japanese home cooking recipe

Welcome to Taiji's Kitchen. Today I'm going to show you how to make Ebi Furai and Salmon Katsu. So Ebi Furai is actually a specialty of my hometown, Nagoya, because the prefecture it's in, Aichi prefecture, is famous for its shrimps. Very specific shrimp, or Kuruma Ebi. And because of these shrimps, we make a lot of shrimp dishes, and this is one of them. And what it is is just shrimp coated with breadcrumbs and deep fried. Even though it was originally a regional food, it just got spread out in Japan, and you can also find this as a frozen food, and this is also perfect for a bento box. And Salmon Katsu is something I learned very recently, and this is made exactly the same way, but instead of shrimp, it's made with salmon fillet, and that's how I can just show it in the same video. And we eat this Ebi Furai with two different kinds of sauces, one is a Worcestershire sauce, and the other is a tartar sauce. Neither of them are originally Japanese food, but nowadays it's quite common in Japan. And so I'm going to show you how to make that as well. So it's a fried food, so it has a little more steps, and it's not the easiest dish to make, but it's not that difficult, so I hope you give this a try yourself. Then, let's get started. Here are the ingredients for Ebi Furai and Salmon Katsu. Here I have three large shrimp and a fillet of salmon. And for both Ebi Furai and Salmon Katsu, I have salt and pepper, any kind of regular all-purpose flour. And here I have so-called Panko, this is Japanese-style breadcrumbs. You can buy in any Asian supermarket like this in a package, but also you can make it yourself. I show how you can make this with just regular bread yourself in another video of Tonkatsu, so please check that out if you want to make it yourself. One of the eggs is for the breadcrumbs. And I also have a little bit of cabbage for the side. Today I'm going to eat it with two variations of sauces, one with a Worcestershire sauce, and the other with a tartar sauce. For that I'm going to need an egg, a little bit of lemon juice, onion, and some kind of pickles. I like these kind of small pickles, but you can just use any kind of regular pickles. A little bit of parsley leaves, and Kewpie mayonnaise. I think it tastes best with this Kewpie mayonnaise, but if you don't have this you can just use regular mayonnaise of course. Then let's start cooking. Let's first cut up the cabbage for the side, and also the rest of the ingredients for the tartar sauce. I'm going to take the stem off. Today I'm not going to use this middle part, it's a little bit fibrous but also very delicious, don't throw them away. I'm going to use it for other cooking like miso soup or some kind of side dish. And this cabbage, I'm going to try to cut it as thin as possible. When you're trying to cut any vegetable as thin as possible, it's very important, one, to have a very sharp knife, but also having a finger like this. Don't have your finger like this because you're going to chop off your finger, but have a knuckle like this. We call this technique in Japan katsupo, or how you cut it is that you cut it like this, and then you slide your finger backwards. So the blade touches only the knuckle, and I'm sliding my left finger like this, backwards. So don't worry if you can't cut like this very thinly, I used to not be able to cut it like this thin myself in the beginning. Just keep practicing and then after a while, it gets perfect like this. Then that's done for that. And then the onion, I'm probably just going to need a fourth. And this, I'm also going to cut it in very small dices. So that's done for that. Then I'm going to use a couple of these conichons, only two or three is good. Take away the top. Then these I'm also going to cut into small dices like the onions. I'm just going to cut it in half like this. That's also finished. And lastly, the parsley, and also a lemon just into strips. Just like this. Then this is finished, cutting all the ingredients for the sauce. For the cut up onion, just get the tanginess away, I'm going to cook this very lightly in the microwave for 20 seconds or so. You don't necessarily have to do this, this will take away the spiciness and the tanginess of the raw onion away. So just very slightly like this. When the onions are a little bit see-through, then this is good. Let's make a hard-boiled egg for the tartar sauce. I'm going to make a small hole in here so that I can peel the egg easily, like this. And just put it in. So today I'm going to make a hard-boiled egg, and we're going to cook like this for 8 minutes. Then this is finished cooking, I'm going to turn the heat off, and put it into cold water. So while it's warm, I'm going to peel it off, and it peels off quite nicely like this. Now that the egg is boiled, let's make the tartar sauce. I'm going to cut the egg also in small dices. In this I'm going to put all the rest of the ingredients, the pickles, onion, also celery, not all this, just half of it will be enough. And lemon juice, about a fourth lemon is enough. And then in this about 3-4 tablespoons of Kewpie mayonnaise, or just any regular mayonnaise. And just mix it. Oh yeah, I almost forgot, just a little bit of black pepper. And this is finished for the tartar sauce. Now let's finally prepare the seafood. So I'm going to start with the salmon, because it's easier. Today I'm just going to need half of it, so I'm going to cut it in half. So for this recipe I don't want the skin, so I'm going to take the skin off. That's how you want to do it, you can just kind of peel it off from one side like this. And then stick the knife like this in here, oops, not doing a good job. If that happens you can do it like this. And then peel the skin off like this. And I'm going to cut this into bite-sized pieces, so probably just a third of it, like this. Now let's prepare the shrimps. I'm going to take the head off, and peel the scale. So for the every fry, it's important to have a little of this end part. You want to peel the scale off only to this point, and you want to leave this last bit like this a little bit. So I'm going to do the same thing for the rest of the shrimps. So all the shrimps are peeled off. So by the way, when you buy a shrimp with a head like this, don't throw away the head. These are also very very delicious. You can make a really good miso soup out of it, or you can peel away the main scale like this, and then wash it a little bit here, and you can fry it like this, and it's also very very delicious. If you want to see how to do it, you can watch another video on the tempura, I'm showing you can fry the head and eat it very deliciously. Now let's prepare the shrimps. So the shrimps have intestines on the backside. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to make a slit like here, and take away the inside organs. So these are intestines, you want to get rid of all this. This shrimp doesn't have an intestine, but, so I think this is an egg, and you want to get rid of this as well. So at this point, this shrimp has a little bit inside organs, a little bit left, so I'm going to quickly wash this. When you're doing this, be careful that you don't wash them ever with just regular water. So how you want to wash it, is that make a salt water, just about the same consistency or a little bit thicker than a salt water, and then wash it in here. And make sure you also clean the cutting board in between. And we're going to dry it with a paper towel. So as you can see, this is all the dirt, showing how important it is to wash in between. So the shrimp is peeled off and clean, there are two more things I'm going to do to prepare. So the first thing is I'm going to cut off the tail, the tip, like this. And what I'm going to do is getting rid of the water inside the tail. When you don't cut it off, when it's sealed, it can pop and splash the water, so you want to try to get rid of that. And then the second thing is, the shrimp muscles is running like this, and when they get cooked, they curl like this, because that's how they swim, they swim like this. And what you want to do is, you want to cut off the muscle, so that they don't curl up. So what I'm going to do is on the bottom side, right here, I'm going to make 1, 2, 3, 4 slits or so, depending on the size of the shrimp. And then what I'm going to do is I'm going to try to break off the muscle, like this. And then so, it's in a straight line. And then we're going to do that for the rest of the shrimps. Cutting off the tail, getting away with as much water as possible, and on the bottom side, making slits, and then I'm going to push it off, away, like this way. And we have it prepared, a shrimp. Make sure you don't make too deep slits, just small slits like this, and then you want to break away the muscle, like so. Another thing you may want to do, or you can do, is that getting rid of this pointy end right here, because every shrimp has a pointy end like here, and so you can cut them off at the same time, and then you don't have that pointy end that can get inside your mouth hurt. First, we're going to season this with salt and pepper, only very lightly, and then with pepper, flip to the other side. Next, we're going to coat this with flour, and also the salmon, and we're going to beat the egg. Now, let's coat it with the breadcrumbs. So these are all coated up with breadcrumbs, now finally, let's fry them. So in a medium-sized pot, I'm going to put in some frying oil, and I'm going to turn the heat to medium, and bring this to about 180 degrees Celsius. So finally, it has reached about 180 degrees, if you don't have a thermometer like this, you can put in a couple of the breadcrumbs like this, if it doesn't sink, and just flare, and stop bubbling right away like this, then this is about 180 degrees. Then let's first fry the salmon. And then we're going to cook like this at 180 degrees for about 2-3 minutes. So after about 2 minutes or so, when these start floating on the surface, this is ready. Oh yeah, this looks so amazing. Now let's cook the ebi fry. So when you drop this, drop away from you, not towards you, so when you drop like this way, then if it splashes, it splashes away, so drop it in like this. So also for this, after about 2 minutes or so, when they turn golden brown like this, this is ready. Oh yeah, it looks so good. So I'll turn the heat off. Oh look at that, that looks so delicious. Let's put it on a plate. So on the back I'm going to put in the cabbage, and on the front I like to put a little kitchen paper, try to make a little neat form like this, and the tartar sauce of course. Then this is finished for ebi fry. Let's eat. Oh this looks so amazing, can't wait to eat. Itadakimasu. Let's put a little bit of tartar sauce on it. Oh that looks amazing. Itadakimasu. Mmm. Oh this is so good. This is heavenly delicious. And the shrimp tail, many people throw it away, I like to eat it because it's very crunchy and it's very delicious, but if you don't like it, you don't have to eat it, it's a preference thing. So good. All this tartar sauce matches the shrimp very well. So good. Now let's have the salmon katsu with the tartar sauce. This matches also the tartar sauce so well. So delicious. Now I'm going to have the ebi fry with the Worcestershire sauce, this is also very common in Japan. Itadakimasu. Oh this is also delicious. So it's really a preference thing with which sauce you want to eat them. I personally think the Worcestershire sauce matches the rice better, and also salmon katsu with the sauce. Itadakimasu. Mmm. This is also good. And to eat the cabbage I like to put some Worcestershire sauce. Itadakimasu. Mmm. And what is also good is just with lemon juice, it's also very fresh and very good. Itadakimasu. Mmm. So with lemon juice you can really enjoy the really fine sweet flavor of the shrimp itself. I like ebi fry just with lemon also. And what you can also do, add a little bit of Worcestershire sauce, and then top it with the tartar sauce. So you just combine both of them. Itadakimasu. Mmm. This is also very delicious. So there's so many different kind of flavor inside, but nonetheless they're also in one harmony making it taste really just savory. Mmm. Oh, so delicious. So this cabbage kind of serves like a ginger on the side of sushi, where it kind of cleans up your palate and be ready for a different flavor. So in Japan it's just really common to have these thinly sliced cabbage on the side for ebi fry. And the last salmon katsu I'm going to have it with Worcestershire sauce and also tartar sauce. Itadakimasu. Mmm. Oh, that was so delicious. So filling. Gochisosamadeshita. Oh, that was so totally delicious. So as you saw, making this ebi fry or also the salmon katsu takes a little more steps than a bit complicated, especially if you want to make the tartar sauce yourself. But of course it's not mandatory. You can just eat it with this Worcestershire sauce or you can just squeeze some lemon juice and it's also okay and it's also very delicious. But if you want to be a little bit challenged and you want depth of this flavor, I suggest you give this a try because it's very, very delicious. If you enjoyed what you saw, I'd love it if you could hit the like button so that this video can be spread out to many people. If you have any feedbacks, I'd love it if you could write anything in the comments below. I always really enjoy reading your comments. Then, I look forward to seeing you in the next video. Bye.