What is Ebi Fry?
Ebi means shrimp, and fry comes from the English word for deep-frying. The dish belongs to yoshoku cuisine, Japanese dishes modeled on Western food, like tonkatsu or korokke. In Japan you get Ebi Fry as a teishoku set with rice, miso soup and cabbage, in a bento or in a sandwich. Ebi tempura is a different dish: there you dip the shrimp in a thin, runny batter, while for Ebi Fry you bread them with flour, egg and panko.
The right shrimp
Use large raw headless shrimp, for example black tiger or vannamei. The package gives the size as a pair of numbers such as 16/20 or 13/15. The numbers give the count per pound (454 g), so the smaller the numbers, the bigger the shrimp. For Ebi Fry, 16/20 or larger works. Thaw frozen shrimp overnight in the refrigerator and pat them dry. When peeling, leave the last tail segment with the fin on, so you can hold the shrimp while breading and eating.
For the coating, use Japanese panko. The coarse, airy flakes soak up less oil than regular breadcrumbs and stay crisp longer.
How to keep Ebi Fry straight
Shrimp contract in hot oil and curl. So make four or five shallow crosswise cuts in the underside, about 3 mm deep. Lay the shrimp on its back and press it flat with your fingers until you hear the fibers give. Also trim the tip of the tail fin at an angle and squeeze out the water inside it with the back of a knife. That way the oil spatters less.
Deep-frying without a deep fryer
A pot 20 cm across with 1 l of oil is enough. Use an oil with a high smoke point such as canola or peanut oil, and measure the temperature with a thermometer. Without a thermometer, hold a wooden chopstick in the oil. If fine bubbles rise all around it, the oil is hot enough. Fry 3 or 4 shrimp at a time, or the temperature drops and the coating soaks up oil. After 2 to 3 minutes the panko is golden brown and the shrimp is cooked. On a rack over paper towels, the underside stays crisp too.
Tartar sauce and other sauces
In Japan you eat Ebi Fry with a thick tartar sauce with egg. For 4 people, finely chop 1 hard-boiled egg, 1 pickle and 1 tbsp of onion and stir everything into 4 tbsp of mayonnaise and 1 tsp of lemon juice. Japanese mayonnaise tastes tangier and more strongly of egg yolk than Western mayonnaise. Instead of tartar sauce, tonkatsu sauce works, the fruity, savory brown sauce for tonkatsu and korokke.
What to serve with it
Shave white cabbage paper-thin and pile it next to the shrimp. Rice goes with it, with the method in how to cook rice, and a bowl of miso soup. The next day, put leftover Ebi Fry between two slices of toast with cabbage and tartar sauce.
