How to make EBI CHILI (Prawn in spicy sauce) 〜エビチリ〜 | easy Japanese home cooking recipe

Welcome to Taiji's Kitchen. Today I'm going to show you how to make ebi chili or shrimp in a chili sauce. So ebi chili is actually not Japanese, it's very Chinese. I think this originally comes from China of Sichuan region. But this is also another Chinese recipe that we cook quite often at homes in Japan. And this was also another of my favorite recipes growing up. My mother didn't make this so often but I was very excited when she made it. So I hope to give this a try as well. Then let's get started. Here are the ingredients for ebi chili. So here I have pretty big prawns. I'm not quite sure what the difference between prawns and shrimp are. You can of course use shrimp for this. I also highly recommend buying shrimp or prawn with the shell. Because when you buy the shrimp or prawn without the shell, they start losing the flavor. So if you can, try buying with shell. It will make a big difference in the flavor. And also I have scallion, celery, ginger and garlic, some cherry tomatoes. And for the seasoning I have salt, pepper, and a little bit of frying oil, sesame oil. If you don't have sesame oil, then you can use regular frying oil and just regular ketchup, soy sauce, and dou ban jiang or chili bean sauce. If you don't have this, then you can use other chili sauce such as sriracha or something. Then I also have starch kind of as a batter. Let's prepare the ingredients. Then I'm going to cut up the bottom off. And for the scallion, I'm going to use a little bit of green part as a garnish at the very end. So I'm going to cut these up in small pieces. So like in other recipes, I'm going to make your slits. It doesn't really have to be perfect. Then cut this in small pieces. Then the garlic and ginger. Like I showed in another video, you can put the garlic with the skin on in a garlic smasher. And then if you squeeze this, you have a smashed garlic and the skin will stay inside. So it's kind of like a cooking hack. And then for the ginger, I'm going to cut off the dried part. And also with a garlic smasher. So if you don't like the fibery part of the garlic, you can throw this away. But I personally don't like to waste these. So what I'm going to do is I'm just going to try to make it smaller pieces. And then put this also in here. And the cherry tomatoes, I'm just going to cut into small pieces. And the celery, I'm just going to cut into kind of diagonals that have like a nice form. So as you might have noticed already, all these ingredients have high content of umami. So this is going to be very delicious. Just to speed up the process, I'm going to microwave the celery because this can take a little bit of while to be cooked thoroughly. Just for 30 seconds or so. Okay, this is good. And let's prepare the prawns. So I'm just going to peel this off. So easy way to peel a prawn is that you want to put your thumb right in the bottom part of the prawns. So the stomach part of the prawns tends to be softer. And so you can peel this like this very easily. So what you want to do is put your thumb right in between here. And then this is going to peel very easily like this. And the tail part as well. So you can open this bottom part like this with your thumb, and then open like this. And then when you pull from the tip of the tail like this, and inside the tail will come out so that you don't lose any part of the prawns. So all the prawns are peeled. Now let's take out the intestines. So the intestines of the prawns are located on the top. So what you want to do is you want to make a small slit on the top like this. And then you open, then you see the intestine right here. So you always, always want to make sure that you take out the intestines because this is going to ruin everything. So before you want to cook prawns or any seafood, you want to make sure that you wash this. To wash any kind of seafood, you never want to wash this with just regular water. You always want to wash this with salt water. And especially when you peel the prawns yourself, then what you want to do is you want to sprinkle some salt, more than you may expect. And then just kind of wash this like this. And kind of rub the salt against each other. And then here pour the water. And kind of wash in here. So you see this color. So this is all the unwanted odor and also the dirt from the shrimp that you don't want in the cooking. And so you want to wash it like this. And then for any seafood, what you want to do is make sure that you take away all the water, all the liquid. So you want to use a paper towel or something. And then dry this as much as possible. So I'm going to season the prawn a little bit. So in here I'm going to sprinkle a pinch of salt. Just a tiny bit. And also a pinch of pepper. And kind of mix it well. And then here about a tablespoon of starch. And kind of mix this in. So what the starch does here is that one, it prevents the prawns from losing its flavor. But two, also at the very end, the sauce will stick the prawns much more. So this is finished preparing. Let's start cooking. I'm going to turn the heat to high. And here I'm going to put in about a tablespoon of frying oil. So right before you see smoke coming out, I'm going to fry the prawns. Make sure you put the prawns on the oil, otherwise it'll stick to the pan. I'm going to turn the heat to medium. Once the other side looks kind of crispy like this, I'm going to turn to the other side. And I'm going to flip one more time. And then we're going to flip the other side one last time. So as you can see, both sides are golden brown. Then we're going to take this on a plate. And then we're going to take away the oil with a paper towel. Because you want to use a fresh oil for the sauce. Now we're going to make the sauce with the same frying pan. And here I'm going to put in about a tablespoon of sesame oil. And then heat to medium. And here I'm going to put in the grated garlic and ginger. And then right away in this, I'm going to put in the scallion. So you may think this is a lot of scallion, but don't worry, they'll shrink and they'll give out a lot of umami. So you don't want to be stingy with the scallion. After you fry the scallion, I'm going to put in here a teaspoon of chili bean sauce. If you like it more spicy, you can also put in two teaspoons of chili sauce. And then here I'm going to put in the cherry tomatoes. So once the cherry tomatoes gotten softened, I'm going to put in the celery. And now after a couple minutes frying, I'm going to put in here two tablespoons of water, two tablespoons of tomato ketchup. If you don't put in the cherry tomatoes, then you want to put in three tablespoons of ketchup. Then in here, one teaspoon of soy sauce. I'm going to mix this up well. After about a minute of heating, the sauce is finished. I'm going to put back in the prawns and just mix it well. So after about a minute of heating, this is finished. I'm going to turn heat off and then put this on a plate. Try not to waste any of this sauce. It's so delicious. And I'm going to sprinkle a little bit of green onion at the top. And then I'm going to just put a little lettuce, a little on the side, and this is finished. Let's eat. Oh, this is smelling so good. Let's eat. Itadakimasu. Oh, this is looking so delicious. Oh, this is so divinely delicious. Oh, this is so delicious. Oh, this is totally savory. Oh my God. It's so delicious. So these prawns are so delicious. This sauce with the ketchup and scallion and garlic and ginger, a little bit of kick from the chili bean sauce and the celery gives a little bit of bitterness to it. Oh, this is just perfect combination. This is so delicious. Oh. And so what I also like to do is kind of wrap it up in lettuce because lettuce will give this little freshness to it. Oh, this is so delicious. Oh, and this matches rice so perfectly. Make sure you put the sauce on it. Oh, itadakimasu. After a while, it may happen that you're kind of tired of just eating the same thing, then you can squeeze in the lemon. Then it'll give a little bit another layer of the freshness to it. That's also something Japanese people like to do. It's kind of change up the flavor in the middle so that you don't have to eat the same flavor the whole time. So this lemon adds another layer to the flavor. So delicious. Oh my God. Oh, the last bites. Oh, this is so delicious. Just beyond words. This is just a mix of all umami together. Oh, that was so delicious. Oh, that was so savory. Totally delicious. So this does require a little bit of work, a lot of frying and cutting the ingredients, but it is definitely, definitely worth the effort. And so I really want you to give this a try. So I got a question from someone what I'm saying. In the beginning and at the end of eating and also what it means. So in the beginning, I'm saying itadakimasu, which is directly translated as let me eat or let us eat. It is a non-religious prayer saying thank you to all the lives I'm about to receive. And not only that, we also thanking for all the human work that is put in to make this dish. There are fishermen that's catching the shrimp. There are farmers that are growing the vegetables. There are people who are working in the manufacturing of ketchup and all everything else that is put in that is making this possible. So with a small phrase of itadakimasu, we're saying thank you for all the life, all the work that is put in to make it possible for this dish. And so next time you have a chance to go to Japan or a Japanese restaurant, or even when you make Japanese food at home, put your hands together and say itadakimasu as a little non-religious prayer. And then at the end, I'm saying gochisosamadeshita, which is directly translated as that was very delicious. It's kind of like the same lineage of itadakimasu, but when we say it's more focused on the person who cooked the dish. In this case, I cooked it, but still I say because it was very delicious. And this is a thank you for all the lives, all the work. With that, I hope you liked the video. If you like what you saw, please hit that like button. I look forward to see you in the next video. Bye.