Air-Fried Prawns a la Shanghai
by Val CucinaAir-Fried Prawns a la Shanghai
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Someone who recent purchased a “Val Cucine Air Fryer” wrote to us and asked, perhaps as a challenge, if we could do international cuisines in the air fryer instead of traditional kitchen wares such as a “wok”. We gladly took up this challenge and several Chinese inspired dishes such as “Prawns a la Shanghai” (this dish literally means “oil exploded prawns”.
The key when cooking is to fry the prawns with ample amounts of oil, very high in temperature and “quick-tossed” in oil. For obvious reasons, this dish would require more efforts in cleaning up the kitchen stove afterward.
We are encouraged with what we came up with as end-result; there isn’t much cleaning up required after cooking. More important, the prawns are quite delicious. We shall try more recipes like such in future.

Ingredients
- 6-8 good size prawns, cleaned
- 2 cloves of garlic, smashed
- 3-4 stalks of scallion
- Dash of cooking wine
- 2 tablespoon of oyster sauce
- 1 tablespoon of light or seafood soy
- 2 teaspoons tomato ketchup
- 2 teaspoons sesame seed oil
- 1 teaspoon of honey
Directions
- Set “air fry” function to “A4”; set temperature to “400F”; set timer to “16” minutes; place cooking basket in the middle of the air fryer when cooking; preheat the air fryer;
- Clean the prawns by washing thoroughly;
- If you are cooking with the heads of the prawns attached, bend the base of the head of the prawn and squeeze out the small dark sack and pull out the black line attached to the sack. After that, trim off the legs and the whiskers of the prawns and place them in bowl;
- Pour the cooking wine into the bowl at this point and marinate the prawns for about 5 minutes. After 5 minutes, pour in the rest of the ingredients, toss the bowl well so all the prawns are well coated with the marinate and leave the prawns in the bowl for another 15-20 minutes;
- After that, you are ready to air fry “Prawns a la Shanghai”;
- Place a piece of aluminum foil into the air fry basket and spread the prawns on the aluminum foil with the scallion and garlic on top of the prawns;
- Place the prawns in the air fryer and cook for half of the designed cooking time, 8 minutes;
- Take the cooking basket out after 8 minutes, turn the prawns over and place the basket back into the air fryer;
- When the cooking time is complete, remover the prawns and place them onto a plate;
- Serve immediately.