The last long weekend of the year allowed me to experiment. My parents weren’t very adventurous with food, so when it came to eating out, it was either Filipino, Chinese or the occasional Spanish Restaurant. One of the must-haves next to the all-too-familiar sweet, sour pork and steamed Lapu-Lapu were the crunchy shrimp balls– covered in teeny-tiny bread cubes and deep-fried.
On a side trip to the grocery nearby, the affordable small peeled shrimps suddenly gave way to inspiration. I added a little ground chicken to make it budget-friendly. This recipe is definitely less oily and yet more crunchy, thanks to Japanese bread crumbs.
All you have to do is mix, shape into balls, roll bread crumbs and deep fry. How easy is that? Here’s the crunchy shrimp balls recipe you should try.
Crunchy Shrimp Balls Recipe
Ingredients
½ kilogram shrimp (prawn) - finely minced
¼ cup milk
¼ kilogram ground pork (minced pork)
¼ cup green onions (scallions or green shallots) - finely minced
1 dash salt
1 dash ground black pepper
1 medium egg
2 tablespoons all purpose flour (plain flour Australia and UK)
1 cup Panko breadcrumbs
⅓ cup vegetable oil
Instructions
- Put shrimp in a bowl and add milk. Let it sit for about 5 to 10 minutes to remove any fishy smell. Drain. Mince it. Add the ground pork or chicken, finely chopped red onion and minced green onion leaves.
- Season with salt and pepper. Add beaten egg and enough flour to make it paste-ey. Chill in the refrigerator for 30 minutes.
- Shape into 1 1/2-inch balls and roll in Japanese bread crumbs.
- In a pot, pour oil until about 3 inches deep and put on medium heat. You’ll know it’s hot enough when you put a tiny drop of water, and it begins to splatter. Put 4-5 balls at a time. I put the cover on for about 3 minutes and swirled the pot to move the balls around to ensure uniform cooking and golden colour. Remove the cover and let it cook for another 3 minutes.
- Drain and put on paper towels to remove excess oil. Serve with sweet chilli sauce. Don’t forget the yang chow rice!
- I put the balls in a bowl of Japanese bread crumbs (panko) and roll them about.
