Gluten Free Sweet And Sour Prawn Balls

Prawn Balls

After the success of the Sweet and Sour Chicken Balls it was an obvious choice to move onto another old favourite from Chinese menus, Prawn Balls. There's not a lot to this recipe it's so simple to make these, so long as you're confident with deep frying this is a very quick meal to make with minimal effort.

Ingredients:

12 King Prawns

1 Cup Gluten Free Self Raising Flour (Must have Xanthan Gum in, I use Doves Farm)

1 Cup Cold Water

Big Pinch of Sea Salt
Vegetable Oil for Frying (Crisp n Dry blocks are great)

For The Sauce:

250ml Pineapple Juice (needs to be sweet, Tropicana used here)

1 Teaspoon Caster Sugar

1 Tablespoon Rice Wine Vinegar

To Thicken:

1 Heaped Tablespoon Corn Starch

1 Teaspoons Pineapple Juice

View Of The Encased Prawn Served With Egg Fried Rice

Directions:

• Devein the prawns
• Lay the prawns on a couple of sheets of kitchen paper to absorb excess moisture

Deveined

• Put a couple of sheets of kitchen paper on top and press down lightly to remove excess moisture from the top
• Mix the flour, water and salt in a container until smooth

Self Raising Gluten Free Flour

This Mess Does Turn Into Great Batter

Smooth Raw Batter

• Mix the pineapple juice, rice wine vinegar and sugar together in a container

Sweet And Sour Sauce Base

• Put the sauce mix into a small pan and bring to the boil
• Lower the heat and let simmer for 5 minutes
• Heat a large pan with vegetable oil halfway up the pan on high
• Put the prawns into the raw batter mix

Now You See Them

• Use a spoon to turn and coat them fully

Now You Sort Of Don't

• Mix the corn starch and pineapple juice together until smooth and runny
• Bring the sauce back to the boil and add the thickener, stir quickly until dissolved and sauce has thickened
• Lower the heat and simmer for a further 5 minutes
• Test the heat of your oil by dropping a drip of batter into it, if it floats immediately your batter is hot enough, if not leave to heat further. If the batter goes brown in a few seconds the oil is too hot, lower and wait until cooler. Test with more batter until the oil is at the right temperature
• Use a spoon to scoop and put each prawn into the hot oil, don't overcrowd the pan, cook in batches depending on pan size. Cook for 1 1/2 minutes turning halfway through
• Use a slotted spoon to remove the prawn balls from the oil and drain on kitchen paper

Gluten Free Prawn Balls Just Cooked

• Take the sweet and sour sauce off the heat and serve in a container

Not The Most Interesting Of Photos But You Get The Idea

Making the Prawn Balls and Sweet and Sour Sauce at the same time is relatively easy by yourself, add Egg Fried Rice to the mix and it makes things somewhat more difficult. Add photographing on top and yeah, not an easy task at all. Thanks to The Glutenite for taking all the (good) photos and thickening the sauce or else there is no way I could of put this meal together as a recipe post.

Balls Of Prawn And Batter

Recipe for the Egg Fried Rice is here.

So now I really am out of recipe ideas, though I'm being sent some intriguing gluten free food to review, I have no idea what it is so I'm quite excited, I'll report back with my findings.