I love going to dim sum because, like tapas, you can order so many different kinds of dishes and have a small bite of everything. The key to a good dim sum experience is to go in a group of 4 or 6 or 8 because most of the dishes comes with 3 or 4 servings. If you only go with 2 people, then you won’t be able to order as many varieties because the portions would be way too much. Fortunately, dim sum is a good reason to get together with friends and family to have a nice slow-paced meal to chit chat and catch up, except when the seaweed shrimp roll is served. This dish must be eaten hot so the seaweed roll, which is deep fried in a light tempura batter, stays crispy and can soak up the sweet chili sauce – a perfect combo. So no time for chit chat, just grab your piece first and then talk later.
Everyone always orders the har gow and shumai but for once, trust me on this, try to order the seaweed shrimp roll, which can also be called fried shrimp roll with seaweed or prawn rolls in seaweed. In Chinese, this would be called 海苔蝦捲 or 紫菜蝦捲. And then after you have it, you’ll want to come back and learn how to make it because it’s as simple as our shrimp dumpling or shumai recipes.
Ingredients
- 1 lb shrimp paste *
- 3 full sheets of seaweed for sushi (nori)
- 1 egg
- 1 cup all purpose flour
- 1 cup ice water **
* The shrimp paste in the filling is the exact same recipe as our shrimp balls recipe so for more details, take a look there.
** for tempura batter, the water must be ice cold to help prevent gluten formation in the flour
Directions
Unless you want a giant shrimp roll, it’s best that we divide the sheets of seaweed into quarters. The easiest way I find to do this is to actually fold the seaweed and then reverse the fold – a few times of doing that, then it’s easy to rip the seaweed or you can use the fold as lines to cut using a pair of scissors.
Just like rolling up sushi or rolling up a burrito or egg rolls, you never put the filling right in the middle. The best place to put the filing is towards the lower half so that when you roll, you have plenty of wrapper left. Place about 2 tbsp of shrimp paste and roll up the seaweed sheet. Don’t worry about the sheet getting soggy, once it’s deep fried, it’ll return to it’s original crispy goodness. Smear a little bit of shrimp paste at the top edge of the sheet to act as glue. Repeat until all 12 rolls are complete. We need to finish all the prep work because tempura batter is very unstable and should be made right before frying. We also should heat up a pot with frying oil to 350°F prior to making the batter as well so that the oil will be ready to fry when we are done with the batter.
Now for the tempura batter, it’s very important to have ice cold water. I usually stick ice water into the freezer before I begin this recipe so that by the time I get to the tempura batter, the water is literally ice cold – you can even see some ice crystal formation. Now, take 1 cup of flour, add 1 egg. Some recipes asks for 1 egg yolk only, but I don’t feel it makes that big of a difference and besides, what am I supposed to do with 1 egg white? The key to good tempura batter is cold water and under mixing. Of course, in modern day, people add seltzer instead of water and add cornstarch or rice flour or even baking powder to improve the stability and duration. However, let’s just stick to the traditional 3 ingredient batter. You can experiment later. When flour is mixed, it produces gluten which makes the batter more bready than crispy so we actually want to under mix. Use either a pair of chopsticks or a fork instead of a whisk to mix. Add the cold water and gently mix. It’s definitely ok to have lumps of flour remaining. The batter should be more to the watery side.
Dip the seaweed shrimp roll into the tempura batter and then slide the roll into the frying oil. Turn the rolls periodically and fry until golden brown, about 3-4 minutes. Remove and drain the oil. You can serve it as a whole roll or cut on the diagonal so it’s easier to grab. As for the dip, I prefer Thai sweet chili sauce but you can use sweet and sour or duck sauce or even spicy mustard would all be great with this dish.
- 1 lb shrimp paste
- 3 full sheets of seaweed for sushi (nori)
- 1 egg
- 1 cup all purpose flour
- 1 cup ice water
- Cut the full sheet of seaweed into quarters
- Take about 2 tbsp shrimp paste and put on the lower portion of the cut seaweed sheet
- Roll up the shrimp paste and use a little bit of shrimp paste as “glue” to glue the roll
- Heat frying oil to 350°F
- Slightly mix 1 egg with 1 cup of flour and 1 cup of ice water to make tempura batter
- Dip the seaweed roll into the tempura batter so it’s lightly coated
- Slide into frying oil, turning periodically so it’s fried on all sides
- Drain and serve while hot