Shrimp Stir Fry

TOLD you we'd use the wok! We whipped up a very tasty shrimp stir fry last night... easy-peel shrimps were on sale for just $5.99/lb at S&S so we grabbed 2/3lb of those guys, a bunch of veggies, started some water and we were on our way!

Meat: shrimps!

Veggies: red pepper, scallions, green beans, mushrooms, bean sprouts

Rice: brown

The rice takes about and hour to cook - 5 cups of chicken stock and 2 cups of rice to a boil, then cover and simmer for 50 minutes - so that gets going as we set to peeling the shrimp.

We made a "rub" of crushed red pepper flakes, salt, and chinese 5-spice. The Chinese 5-Spice has a great asian flavor... just what ARE those five spices? Why ground cinnamon, fennel, star anise, cloves, and Szechwan pepper! Great combo.

Rice cooking, wok out, rub made, shrimp peeled, veggies chopped - ready to go!

Ingredients:


The whole set-up:


We tossed the shrimp in some of the rub (saving some for the veggies and for the final sauce that the entire combo will be finished with) and set to cooking them. We kept the wok over nice high/medium-high heat and cooked with Can-oil... stirring most of the time. Probably 4 minutes, shrimp come out!


We did the veggies in stages to make sure they had enough coverage in the wok. We par boiled the green beans to give them a head-start in a little pan, probably about 10 minutes in boiling water. Red peppers went in to the now-nicely seasoned (from the shrimp) wok with a little rub over the top - toss toss cook cook done! Remove to a big glass bowl. Then the green beans (previously par boiled) - same procedure! Then the scallions and mushrooms... and the bean sprouts. Toss toss cook cook awesome!



Throw the reserved veggies and the shrimp back in. Using the remainder of the rub to make a sauce, we added a little flour, soy sauce, and rice wine vinegar and stirred furiously until it was a nice consitency. Pour that in (only a couple tbls) and toss toss cook cook DONE!

Rice on plate, stir fry on rice, dinner is ready! Delicious!


SCORE: Stir fry - we're going with an 8.5 out of a 10 on this one... the shrimp were so plump and delicious and the veggie combo is perfect. A LITTLE too much salt ended up going in and the rice stayed in the water about 3 minutes too long, preventing the 10.

Tonight we'll take the leftover rice that we made (that's why we made so much!) and some chinese bbq pork and make Pork Fried Rice! Stay tuned for that one next...