If there’s one thing that makes everything better…it’s deep frying! And there’s nothing better than a deep-fried, battered prawn. These battered prawn recipes will have you coating, frying and straining your prawns every night of the week!
But if there’s one thing battered prawns don’t have to be, it’s boring. There is so much to be done with a battered prawn…you can dunk them in sauce, toss them through a stir-fry or even use them top top your soups and noodle dishes.
These battered prawns are the ultimate crowd pleasers and are perfect for when you need to entertain a crowd. Don’t be shy, dig in!
Should I boil prawns before deep frying?
Nope! There’s no reason to boil or even cook prawns before battering and deep frying them. In the scheme of things, prawns don’t take very long to cook (lookmat all the prawn dumpling recipes that use raw prawns). And they are also quite easy to tell when they are cooked from when they are raw, so it is unlikely there will be any confusion. When prawns are raw they tend to be a translucent blue/grey colour, and they change to an opaque pink colour once they are cooked through.
Because of this easy identifier there is no reason to boil prawns before battering and frying, simply batter away, plop them in the hot oil and wait for them to have a golden, crispy coating with a pinky/white interior! Easy peasy!
Can you batter frozen prawns?
Not exactly! Whilst some prawn recipes like prawn curry recipes or even prawn noodle recipes allow you to save time by cooking the prawns directly from frozen. When battering prawns you do want them to be completely defrosted. This is so that the batter can evenly coat each prawn, if you try to batter frozen prawns, you may run into an issue with the batter becoming too thick, or two thin in particular places and cooking at different times during the deep frying process.
What is the difference between battered prawns and tempura prawns?
Tempura prawns just use a different batter. Whilst the battered prawns you might be accustomed to are beer battered or even crumbed using bread crumbs or panko crumbs, tempura batter uses ice water, eggs and flour.
Tempura batter tends to be quite light, and is typically the way seafood and vegetables are battered and deep fried throughout Japan.
