You'll feel like you're on holiday when you bite into these delicious gluten-free coconut covered prawns!

 

Yield: 4 servings
Prep time: 30 minutes
Cook time: 25 minutes

Best Ever Gluten-Free Coconut Shrimp

No matter what you call them--shrimp or prawns--cover them in coconut and everybody loves them! This dish is a taste of the islands and if you close your eyes and take a bite, you'll feel like you're on holiday!

Coconut shrimp is one of those staple American dishes--popular all over the country in restaurants and bars. Whether you use teeny tiny baby shrimps or big king prawns, the combination of sweet shrimp with even sweeter coconut dunked in spicy and sweet Thai chili sauce is absolutely superb. Seriously, my mouth is watering just remembering how delicious this dish was.

A word of warning: the amounts given will easily feed four. But they're so moreish and since you'll likely pop a few in your mouth while cooking, you may want to double or even triple this recipe depending on how many you're cooking for.  

Ingredients:

For the coconut shrimp
3/4 teaspoon smoked paprika
1 teaspoon sea salt
2 cups desiccated coconut
3 egg whites
100 grams cornflour/corn starch
550 grams raw shrimp, peeled and deveined
750 ml vegetable oil
Thai sweet chili sauce
Need a conversion? Use this handy chart.

How to Make Gluten-Free Coconut Prawns

We don't get to eat prawns as much as we'd like because our son possibly has an allergy to them. So we took advantage of him being at a sleepover to get wild and crazy...and devoured these coconut prawns! It's funny the things you end up doing when your children are out of the house for a bit. It's never the things you plan on doing like getting a couple hours extra sleep or finally having time to read a magazine or a cookbook in relative peace. Standing in the kitchen, dipping prawns in cornflour, egg and coconut flakes definitely isn't what I had planned when I shipped Callum off to his nan's for a few days. But when husband said he was craving prawns, I knew exactly what to make!

 

Instructions:

1. Heat the vegetable oil over medium high heat.
2. Season the shrimp well with salt and paprika.
3. Dip the shrimp one by one in the cornflour, then the egg whites, then the desiccated coconut and fry for about a minute or until cooked through.
4. Rest the cooked shrimp on a paper towel lined plate to drain the excess oil.
5. Serve with sweet Thai chili sauce for dipping.