Grilled Prawn (Ebi no Shioyaki)

Japan is surrounded by the sea, so we can enjoy various sea foods.
Prawn or shrimp is a popular sea food and is used in many kind of foods like ebi fry (deep fried prwan), tempura, sushi, chawanmushi (Japanese egg custard) etc.

The food of above photo is very simple one. It is grilled with sea salt.  It will be very good menu for BBQ on the beach in summer time.

Ingredients:

• Prawn
• Sea salt

How to cook:

1) Stab skewer into prawn.

 

 

 

 

2) Rub prawn with sea salt.  It is better to use large amount of sea salt.

3) Place prawn on a grill and heat it.  It will turn over sometimes.

 

 

 

 

When you eat, you should remove shells.  We don’t eat shells.
Because removing shell and salt is on the shell, it is not too much salty even you use a large amount of salt at step 2).

We usually use bamboo skewer which is also used for Yakitori (chicken BBQ).  If you don’t have it, please use stainless skewer.

Japanese word “ebi” about this food includes lobster, prawn and shrimp.  We don’t distinguish any size.  In Japan, ebi is often served at the celebration day such as January 1st.  I think it is because the color, red and white.  The combination of red and white is used at celebration.  For example, we can see a large curtain of red and white at the entrance or graduate ceremony of schools, red and white steamed bread (kohaku manju) for the gift of celebration day.
On the other hands, combination of black and white is used at funeral.

By the way, according to wikipedia, “ebi” originally means grape or color of grape.  This name of food is named after its color because it similar to color of grape.  I have never known about it.  It is an interesting story.

Enjoy meal!

Fish grills are available on Amazon.com. Please refer following links.