How to make soy sauce prawns, the Cantonese seafood restaurant classic
- Quick and easy, this recipe uses butter and sugar to give the prawns a rich, attractive shine
- White onion is another essential ingredient, offering more sweetness than a brown onion
Soy sauce prawns is a fast and easy dish that appears on the menu of many Cantonese seafood restaurants. This version has an ingredient you wouldn’t expect in a Chinese dish: butter. It adds a gentle richness to the sauce and contributes to its attractive shine.
Soy sauce prawns
It is essential to use white onion in this recipe, not the more common brown-skinned onion. White onion is sweeter, especially when it is barely cooked, as it should be for this dish. The onion should be cooked just until it starts to wilt and is still a little crisp.
Use prawns with bodies at least 9cm in length, or a little larger; if they are too small, they will overcook in the brief time it takes to sear and simmer them.
Chinese rock sugar comes as small, roughly shaped, pale gold lumps, which give a lovely glossy sheen to sauces. As they are hard, larger lumps take a while to dissolve, which is not a problem if you are cooking the rock sugar in a large amount of liquid, such as tong sui (hot dessert soups).
But as the two soy sauces provide the only liquid for this recipe, and will reduce too much if simmered for too long, the sugar lumps should be crushed so they will dissolve faster.
Instead of doing small amounts every time I need crushed sugar, I do a whole box (or bag) at a time. Put the sugar in a plastic bag, press out all the air and loosely seal it (if you don’t contain it somehow, the sugar will fly all over the place).
Place the bag on a heavy chopping board, cover it with a clean, dry kitchen cloth, then bash away with the flat side of a metal meat mallet (this is a good way of getting out your aggression).
