Soy sauce prawns

Susan Jung, South China Morning Post

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. 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.

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.

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).
The sugar will break into unevenly sized pieces; use the larger ones for tong sui and the smallest crumbs for quickly simmered dishes such as this one. If you can’t be bothered, though, use granulated white sugar.

Aged soy sauce, as its name suggests, is aged before bottling. It is not always labelled as “aged soy sauce”; the brand I buy, Yuan’s, is called royal soy sauce. It is expensive but is only used in small quantities. If you can’t find it, use dark soy sauce.

Once the ingredients are prepared, the onions and prawns take just minutes to cook.

Soy sauce prawns

12 fresh prawns, with body size about 9cm
1 white onion, about 225 grams, peeled
75ml light soy sauce
10 grams sugar, preferably finely crushed Chinese rock sugar
10ml aged soy sauce
20 grams unsalted butter, chilled
20ml cooking oil, divided
1 spring onion
Freshly ground black pepper

Lay each prawn on a cutting board, then cut off the sharp spike at the tip of the head and trim off the long antennae. Cut through the shell down the back of the prawn (I use kitchen scissors for this), making a shallow slit in the flesh, and pull out the dark vein. Dry with a paper towel.

Halve the onion, then cut it into slices about 3mm thick. Mince the spring onion.

Heat a large skillet over a high flame and, once hot, coat with 10ml of cooking oil. Add the white onion and stir constantly for about a minute (or less), until it starts to wilt. Immediately remove the onion from the skillet and spread on a serving plate.

Put the light soy sauce and crushed sugar into a small saucepan over a medium flame and stir until the sugar is dissolved. Stir in the aged soy sauce, then turn off the flame and add the butter. Swirl the pan until the butter melts and combines with the other ingredients.

Over a high flame, heat the skillet used to cook the onion (no need to wash it). When the pan is hot, coat it with 10ml of cooking oil. One by one, arrange the prawns in the hot skillet, taking care to remember which one went in first. As soon as the last prawn is placed in the skillet, start turning them over in the same order they were placed in the pan.

Once you have turned over the last prawn, pour the soy sauce-butter mixture into the skillet and bring to a boil. Turn the prawns over again, working in order from first to last. After turning over the last prawn, turn off the heat. The prawns should be lightly coated with the sauce, which will be thick and glossy. Sprinkle freshly ground black pepper over the prawns, then remove them from the skillet one at a time, starting with the first.

Arrange the prawns over the bed of onions on the serving plate. Drizzle with a little sauce from the skillet and sprinkle with the spring onion. Serve immediately.