Teriyaki Prawns in a Lettuce Wrap

My beautiful wife, Jennifer, loves Asian food. Well, any food for that matter! ???? But if she had to chose which particular Asian cuisine was her favorite there is no doubt that she would choose Japanese. Now, when I say Japanese cuisine, I mean Jen would happily jump into a bowl of raw sea urchin or salmon intestine. For me though, I’m not so keen ????. However, being the wonderful husband that I am I will happily compromise…

To this end, and as I little surprise for Jen, I knocked up a quick teriyaki prawn in a lettuce wrap recipe this evening and well received it was too…

You’ll note from the picture that I went very healthy today and wrapped the teriyaki prawns in lettuce. They were wonderfully fresh tasting and I would say relatively healthy!! Certainly low carb and low cholesterol!!

I’m going to show you how to make the teriyaki prawns below but note that you don’t have to serve these with lettuce, or any salad for that matter. Traditionally, I would serve them with rice. However, I did a little appetizer before the teriyaki prawns that I highly recommend. Not Japanese at all but, if you can get hold of them I really do suggest you try my Padron pepper dish. So yummy and 3 ingredients and 5 minutes to make. Fantastic!

Right then, less of the waffle and onto the cooking. Teriyaki prawns…

1. Get the ingredients together

As usual, I like to get all the ingredients measured out and prepared before the cooking starts. It just makes the whole cooking process a bit less stressful. For the teriyaki prawn recipe, there is only one bit of what I would call proper food preparation, and that’s the prawns. The rest is just measuring the ingredients out…

2. The Prawns

A quick word about the prawns. Get big ones!! I used my local mail order seafood gang at The Cornish Fishmonger and bagged me some great Tiger Prawns. Now, many of you will be reading this from outside of the UK, and probably how better access to big prawns than me. To this end, just get what you like but make them pretty big! This is not a potted shrimp recipe after all… Now there’s a thought!

You can use cooked prawns for this but I used raw whole prawns and removed the heads, tails, and shells and then de-veined them. You can leave the tails on if you want but as I was making a wrap, and not finger food, I removed them for this recipe.

3. Prepare the teriyaki sauce

Firstly take the cornflour and a splash of water and make a smooth milky paste. Note that you need hardly any water for this. A dessertspoonful is probably enough. Pour this into a small saucepan bowl and then add all other ingredients apart from the prawns.

Mix all of the ingredients together and then place on low heat.

Now bring to the boil for about 1 minute, stirring the mixture gently. Be a little careful here because when the mixture boils it can rise up the saucepan and tip over the sides. If this mixture starts to rise just take it off the heat.

Once it has boiled for a minute then just set aside to call for 10 minutes.

4. Marinade the prawns

Put the prawns in a heat resistant bowl and, once the teriyaki sauce has cooled a little, pour half of the sauce over the prawns.

Mix well and set aside.

You can marinade the prawns for any time from 10 minutes to overnight. If the later, however, cover with clingfilm and keep in the fridge. As I was making a quick dish, I gave these around 30 minutes while I prepared the lettuce and Jen and I had the yummy Padron peppers.

5. Cook the teriyaki prawns

To cook the teriyaki prawns simply take a frying pan and place it over a medium to high heat. I used some spring onions to add a little flavor and cooked these through first for 1-2 minutes. You could easily use mange tout or chopped green beans instead if you like. Then add the marinated prawns and the rest of the teriyaki sauce.

Now, cook these in the pan for 3-4 minutes, or until the prawns are cooked through and serve. I added some finely chopped spring onions and sesame seeds as a garnish. These wraps were fantastic!

OK, my Foodie Friends, that’s it for now. I hope you enjoyed this recipe and let me know how you get on cooking it. It’s very easy and very tasty.

As always, thanks for reading and until next time…Steve

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