Ahoy there! I’m a sucker for anything fried (especially seafood) so for this lovely fall Friday in late October, I’m sharing with you 11-2: Fried Shrimp and Scallops. I’m usually a fan of eating out when it comes to frying (and fish) due to the…lingering odors left behind, but sometimes you gotta get in there and be your own captain of the seafood sampler.
Simply Delicious says to make this for appetizers, but I think it can be a whole meal. You also even get your choice of sauces!
Today, we would probably call these sauces aiolis (especially that garlic one).
Ingredients. I’m using frozen seafood for this, which works just as well as fresh. I’ve got some panko breadcrumbs for coating (my favorite type) and some sriracha for my chili sauce (I think THIS is what they intend you to use, but I like a little more kick to it). I’ve got prepared horseradish instead of just regular, but it’ll work fine for what we’re doing with it (in fact, that might be what they intend you to use, they just weren’t super clear about it).
After thawing my frozen seafood. Honestly, with prices and supply chains the way they are these days, frozen is probably the way to go.
Heating up the oil in my big saucepan. It takes a while because of how thick it is, but it holds the heat super well once you get it up to temperature.
There’s a saying when it comes to this process–wet your drys, dry your wets. A more refined way of referring to it is the 3-part breading process.
Drying my wets, wetting my drys.
After they’re breaded, I staged them on a parchment paper-lined sheet pan to get them ready for frying. Don’t try to do them one at a time (breading –> frying each one), you’ll end up with a big mess and burned food.
Moving on to the scallops.
Everything’s breaded and the oil is bubbly–time to fry.
Standard frying rules–stay back as much as you can and don’t stick your hand in there.
Now that’s some nice-looking shrimp. While I get started on the scallops, I’m also holding these on a rack on a sheet pan in the oven (as advised in the TIPS section) to keep them warm/crispy. The rack allows air to circulate around all sides of the shrimp instead of them sitting in their own oil getting soggy.
Scallops are in the oil–only a few at a time since you don’t want to crowd your pan or it will bring your oil temperature down too far, making your food soggy instead of crisp.
Pulled those shrimp back out of the oven.
Added my scallops to the rack and popped them back into the oven for a minute while I finished up my sauces.
Story time: when I worked in a restaurant a few years ago, we would have a song we would sing in the kitchen when someone would request to hold the aioli–it was called “NO AIOLI” and was sung to the tune of “Black and Yellow“.
No aioli no aioli no aioli
It doesn’t take much to amuse a kitchen staff…
Sriracha and horseradish seems like a lot together, but YOLO (if we’re keeping the theme of 2010s memes going).
Sauces are ready to go.
Final plate–looks delicious to me. It’s pretty hard to screw up fried seafood though.
Grade: A
