Prawn Crackers

This is my 2nd attempt and it’s a success. SO HAPPY!!!

Ingredients

500 gm deveined prawn (from 1kg prawns, buy the XXL prawns, bought this at OTK Supermarket, please don’t buy the white paper prawns, it’s salty and doesn’t have the prawn taste), After deveined from 1kg you’ll get 500gm prawns meat.
350 gm tapioca flour /starch (80 gm additional)
~~2 tbsp of salt (the last time i put 2.5 tbsp it’s tooooo salty, and recent attempt i put 1.5 tbsp it’s too bland so i plan to sprinkle some salt after i fried it), So judge by yourself.~~ (Update: 26/01/2013, 1.5 tbsp it’s okay as i’ve tested after frying, i just sprinkle garlic powder – homemade dried garlic under sun for several days and mill into powder, with black pepper, pepper and sea salt)
2 tsp of white pepper + black peppercorn
~~1/2 Chicken cube MSG (Well, i didn’t put this for health reason) Some said it’ll taste much better if you put MSG. (Optional)~~ No need to put.

Method

Wash prawns and remove head and tail. To remove prawn easily, turn prawn upside down, pluck it’s head down then you won’t squeeze out it’s prawn paste.
Put all removed heads and tails into a pot, boil with 1 cup to 2 cups of water to make into concentrated prawn stock broth for your crackers!
Use large knife and mince prawn meat until paste formed, approximately 5 mins will turn into paste
Add tapioca flour and ingredients and knead together with prawn meat paste and put in 2 tbsp or more of stock broth.
Dough shouldn’t be too moist, it should be cool and wet feeling, something like plasticine (easier for you to imagine)
Knead in add little more flour 20gm at a time. (P/s more flour means less taste, so becareful with the stock broth liquid, do not add too much)
After knead into log, split it about an inch in height. This amount, you’ll get about 3-4 logs
Lightly oil plate and place dough on plate and heat up wok and steam these logs for 30 – 40 mins
Remove from steamer and let it cool down
Store logs into fridge
On the next day, slice logs into 1 mm thick using big sharpest knife you can find
Sun dry each slices of prawn crackers for 3 days till it can snap into halves (Mine took about 2 days to dry up)
Store dried prawn crackers in room temperature until you’re ready to fry. (Always sun dry before you need to fry them).

Tips:

Always store into air tight container like those tin box Jacobs.

(Do not store into plastic containers, the texture will soften)

How to fry prawn crackers?

Pour enough oil into wok where crackers can float above, make sure oil is really HOT! You have to wait for a while for the oil to heat up….. WAitttttttt. Only then it’ll expand into double size.Once they expand, remove from oil. These prawn crackers are best eaten on that day you fry, you can keep up to 2-3 days, i haven’t tried keeping for more than 1 week though.