OK, no more US bashing from me. I have a lot of recipes, that are original, and were posted on my blog for more than a decade. They were all type: "how can I copy this product without spending a fortune on the original?"
So, if you're interested, I will be happy to share all my "reverse engineering" with you.
First out is the prawn crackers, We all love them, but hate the price, no? :-)
There's a few items that you have to add to your kitchen for this. Most of them pretty cheap, some of them being a long term investment, but often you can get away with what you already have. Anyhow, here goes:
Ingredients:
200 g prawn meat
100 g water
12 g sugar
8 g salt
2 g ground white pepper
15 g vegetable oil or melted butter
300 g tapioca starch
More oil for frying
Method:
- Blend the prawn meat with the water to form a smooth shrimp paste.
- Put the tapioca starch in a large mixing bowl, then add the shrimp paste and salt, sugar, oil and ground white pepper.
- Continue mixing all the ingredients until the starch has been incorporated thoroughly with the prawn meat to form a stiff dough.
- Shape the thick dough into a log. Grease a bread tin with oil, then place the log in it and steam it for at least 40 minutes.
- Remove the log from the mould. Wrap it with cling film, tighten it and then keep it in the refrigerator overnight.
- Cut the block of the now hardened dough into thin (recommended setting: 2 mm) slices with a mandolin.
- Place the chips in a food dehydrator (at 60°C) until thoroughly dry, usually 8-10 hours.
- Heat the oil to 175°C. Place the dried chips into the hot oil. The chips will expand within a few seconds.
- Fish out the prawn crackers with a spider ladle as they float up. Drain them on paper towels or kitchen paper to remove the excess oil.
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