Saturday, August 11, 2007

Prawn Stock

I love recycling ingredients which normally would be discarded. Whenever I buy prawns from the market, I usually shell the prawns for noodles or fried eggs. I always keep and recycle the discarded heads and shell of prawns to make prawn stock. I use this flavourful prawn stock as an ingredient in my Fried seafood noodle, or as a soup base for my Prawn Noodle Soup or Tom Yum Soup. It's simple and easy to make. The stock is orange in color and full of prawn flavour from the layer of red prawn eggs floating on the top of the stock

Ingredients:
discarded heads and shell of 1 kg prawns
Garlic, 3 cloves, chopped
Onion, 1 medium, sliced
Ginger, 2-3 slices
Salt and White pepper to taste
Fish sauce, 2-3 tsp
Oil, 2 tbsp
Water, 8 L
Chinese Wine, 2 tsp

Method:
1. Heat a soup pot over medium-high heat
2. Pour in oil, fry chopped garlic and sliced onions as well as ginger slices
3. When fragrant, put in heads and shell of prawns. Fry until slightly brown and fragrant. make sure to bash on the heads with a wooden turner to release all the flavours, splash in Chinese wine
4. Pour in Water, bring to the boil. Season with fish sauce, sugar, salt and white pepper
5. Simmer for 1.5 - 2 hrs until the flavour deepens
6. Strain off stock and store/use for cooking

12 comments:

Anonymous said...

forgive my silly questions.. i've tried to make prawn stock according to your recipe.
i) how should i store it for future use? (just put in fridge or must freeze it?)

ii) how long can i store it for use?

thanks.
chinnie (a 2nd-time mom trying to learn how to cook)

Danny said...

Hi Chinnie,

You can keep it in the fridge for a bout 5 days. If you keep it in the freezer, it could last for 3 weeks or more.

How do you find the flavour and taste?

Anonymous said...

Thanks, Danny. I've used it immediately as gravy ingredient for a taupok dish, then kept the rest as seafood soup stock a couple of days later.

Maybe I used more water than required, so the soup wasn't as sweet as i hoped it would it. But when I fried the shells and head, the smell was heavenly!

I will try it again, but this time with less water! :)

Many thanks for sharing your recipe!

Chinnie

Anonymous said...

the best way to make this stock is to saute the shells in a litle oil aand then add water to cover and simmer for about 20-25 mins then check the streth of the stock and strain so this way you will have a better quality stock with more flavour instead of having litres of weak stock. it will last for about 3-5 days in the fridge and up to 3 months in the frezzer. when thrawning it out leave in the fridge the day before to kepp it out of the food danger zone which is between 6-60degree celuis because in that zone the bateria will grow at a fast rate and cause food poisoning

Patrick said...

Aside from using chinese wine, what are the other options in replacing chinese wine??

Patrick said...

aside from using chinese wine for the added flavour, what other possible liquid sauce can I use for its replacement

Anonymous said...

Hi Patrick, dry sherry can be used as an alternative.
cheers.
Great Stock recipe! thanks

Anonymous said...

Just came across this as I was searching for stock recipes. One thing I have found is that using shells of smaller north atlantic prawns/shrimp I get a much sweeter taste just from the shells alone. Since I usually make smaller batches of shrimp stock(vs. beef) this works very well.

Anonymous said...

Hi, Just in the middle of making the recipe and noticed step 4 mantions sugar but you don;t have it in the ingredients list.

Hoping it tastes as good as it smells!

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febmummy said...

You can freeze the stock in ice cube tray and whenever u need to add some stock for stir fry dishes, juz throw in a cube or two! ;)