When a girlfriend posted a photo of this on her Facebook and said it was super easy to make, I just had to try it! But then I looked at the recipe for honey walnut prawns and it said to deep fry. I don’t deep fry. I’m a bit intimidated by deep frying and I think it’s a waste of oil. So, I scoured the internet to find a non-deep fried version. Of course, I found none.
So, I thought I’d give it a try anyway. It’s one of my favourite westernized Chinese dishes and I was willing to go against my “anti-deep frying at home” policy. So, I used as little oil as I could, deep frying in small batches. I heated the oil to 350 degrees F.
It wasn’t so bad. Not that I will go looking for more deep frying recipes.
And I didn’t have any walnuts so I substituted pecans. But I messed them up a bit. Cooked them a bit too long and they burnt a little although still edible. I think the colour of the caramel should look like the the top left photo when you add the nuts. But I think I probably should have taken the pecans out at the point of taking the next photo. It went from perfect to a tad burnt in seconds! So be careful with this part!
But the final results were amazing! The boy (almost 5 years old) took a bite and said, “Mmm… you did a really great job cooking this!” And the princess (6 years old) said, “This is the best prawns I ever tasted!”
So, there you have it! Yummy restaurant quality honey walnut prawns (if you don’t burn the nuts) at home for probably half the cost. It was worth the effort of deep frying and overall a simple recipe.
Do you deep fry at home? Is there a secret to it? I’d love to know!
I stumbled upon your blog for recipes as now I have more time to cook at home. I just noticed that you have the honey walnut prawns recipe. How interesting that I just made it a couple of weeks ago and it turned out not bad at all. I followed this recipe: http://userealbutter.com/2011/11/17/chinese-honey-walnut-shrimp-recipe/.
Yes I was against deep-frying as it’s not healthy and a waste of oil. but I tried it anyway. I guess you don’t really have to use a lot of oil and truly immerse the shrimp in it. Just a slight frying for me seems fine. =)
Thanks, Annie! I haven’t made this in quite some time. Still can’t bring myself to deep fry, I guess. And it requires some minimal amount of condensed milk for the sauce and I can’t keep a can of opened condense milk lying around because I will eat it! LOL
So… I ended up making this tonight and it turns out the link you sent is the same recipe I link to except it’s on the Rasa Malaysia site. But I didn’t make the walnuts. And now I have a lot of condensed milk in the fridge!!!