Thai Firecracker Shrimp Recipe

Thai style firecracker shrimp. I'd say that this is the most requested appetizer amongst all my family, amongst all my friends. I recently cooked this on television and the entire TV crew just devoured it. Yesterday I was at a food and wine festival and Nathan and I had a fun time doing a demo and making these for the crowd and everyone loved them. Basically, it's incredibly simple. Chinese egg roll wrappers, shrimp, prepared pot Thai sauce that you can find on the grocery store shelf, and then just for more flavor we added fresh basil and chopped peanuts. The first ingredient is the wrapper. This is my favorite brand, Wei Chuan. You can find this at the Asian supermarket in the freezer section. They are very, very thin. These are egg roll sheets or spring roll sheets. The name is interchangeable. There's also another one called Spring Hill that's also very good too. But the kind that I like to buy are always found at the Asian supermarkets. They are just a different texture than what you would find in American supermarkets. Usually those are refrigerated, they're thicker, they're called pasta sheets. They're much thicker and when you fry them up they look really bubbly. It'll still work but I do absolutely prefer the ones at the Asian market. They're thin, they're crisp, they're light. Oh, I'm hungry just thinking about this. One package generally has 25 sheets and you cut them in half diagonally just like this. You're gonna make some triangles. They dry out super easy so keep them under wrap. Keep them under plastic wrap or a barely damp paper towel. Okay, here are the shrimp. Get the tail on shrimp. You wanna make sure the tail is still on because that's your little handle. And these are already shelled but notice that I am patting them super, super dry after washing them. This is an important step. You don't want them wet at all. Okay, now we're gonna straighten out the shrimp. Notice that a shrimp is a natural C shape. Well, if you take a knife, a paring knife, and just lightly score it at a diagonal right on the inside curve, just nick it just a bit. Don't cut through it, just nick it just a bit. They will straighten out. Place them on a plate with the tails sticking out because you don't wanna get the tails wet. I am using prepared pad thai sauce. Pad thai is one of the most popular Thai noodle dishes. There is prepared sauce and I just do a couple spoonfuls and place them on the shrimp, not where the tail is but just on the body of the shrimp, just a couple tablespoons. Okay, the last two ingredients are peanuts and fresh basil. This is corn starch. I'm not counting this as an ingredient because it's really my glue that's gonna hold everything together. Mix that with a little bit of water and put this on your work surface. Okay, your work surface needs to be dry. Lay the wrapper down the long diagonal edge to the right. Take a shrimp and just kinda pat it on a paper towel just to get rid of some of the excess moisture. Lay your shrimp with the tail sticking out of this triangle right here. I'm gonna put a little fresh basil, a few peanuts, and I'm gonna roll this up. Now watch how I roll this. I start from the bottom. I'm gonna roll up as tight as possible. I wanna make sure everything is very even. I'm gonna flip over the top and then just keep rolling and make sure that there's not a lot of extra space. Dip my finger in the corn starch slurry and finish rolling up and that's it. There you go. This is a firecracker shrimp. Place them in a single layer on a baking sheet or plate but make sure you cover them with plastic wrap so they don't dry out. Okay, I'm gonna show you how not to roll it. Now, this is what you don't do. This is too loose, way too loose. The looser it is, the more chance that oil's going to seep in and that's bad. So you wanna make sure it's super, super tight. Here's another thing not to do. See how the space, extra space where there's really no shrimp in there? There's a lot of air pockets. Don't do that either. Okay, so what you want to do is roll it up super tight and make sure there's no space at the top right there and go ahead and keep rolling. And if you need to, just kinda tuck it in because that little section right there you don't want a hole like that. You wanna make sure you tuck it in. Use your finger, just kinda push it in and just continue rolling. Add some cornstarch slurry and there you go. There's another firecracker shrimp. Here's a deep fryer that I have. I'm gonna set the temperature at 350 and once it's hot, go ahead and add a few in. It only takes a couple minutes. Once the wrapper starts getting golden brown, it's time to take them out. The shrimp will be done perfectly at that time. Don't overcrowd them. Just a few into the pot is just fine. After two minutes or so, your first batch is done. Go ahead and take them out and let them drain on a wire rack and that'll drain the excess oil. Now you might wanna make a whole batch of these and put some in the freezer. What you wanna do is put them in the freezer just like this or you can put them on a paper plate in a single layer. That's very important, single layer only and then put this in a freezer bag and freeze that. When you're ready to cook, they go directly from the freezer to the oil but you have to be careful. What you wanna do is heat up your oil to 350 degrees and carefully, very carefully, slide the frozen firecracker shrimp in and just add an extra minute to the cooking time. They'll cook beautifully and I do not recommend defrosting them first. For the full recipe or if you have any questions at all, head over to steamykitchen.com slash 177.