Spicy Sweet Garlic Shrimp

Ingredients:

1-2 lbs uncooked large shrimp, peeled and deveined
6 tbs plus 2-3 tsp cornstarch
2-3 tsp water
1/2 cup corn oil
4 large garlic cloves
3 tbs sugar
1 tsp cayenne pepper (more if you like heat)
1 tsp salt
3/4 cup tomato sauce
2 tsp unseasoned rice vinegar
2 tsp dry cooking Sherry
1 cup thinly sliced green onions

Step 1:

Peeling a garlic clove is simple: pound the heck out of it with the flat blade of your knife. The husk falls right off, simple as can be.

Chop your garlic...

As you can see, this recipe uses lots of fresh garlic. You can set it aside for now.

Step 2:

Chop your green onion and set it aside also. This will be used for garnish. A very tasty garnish.

Step 3:

Get all your ingredients together. I like to have everything in little plastic cups because you need to put these ingredients together in your pan in very quick succession. Have the 6 tbs of corn starch in a bowl as pictured. Make a slurry out of the 3 tsp corn starch/3 tsp water. This will be used at the end to thicken the sauce.

Also, thaw, peel and devein your shrimp under running water, and set them on a paper towel. They should be moist as pictured. You'll see why. You can use 1 lb of shrimp to feed 2 people, or 2 lbs to feed four, the recipe will not suffer either way. I am using 1 lb here.

Step 4:

Get your rice going. Most rice says to use 1 cup to every 1 3/4 cup of water, but I have found you get better results (at least in Arizona) if you cut the water down to 1 1/2 cups. Bring it to a boil on high, then immediately set on your stove's lowest setting and let it cook for 15 minutes.

Step 5:

Not pictured: Get a huge pan and put the corn oil in it. Heat the pan on medium high until frying temperature (~300F). Have tongs at the ready.

Coat your shrimp on both sides with corn starch.

Step 6:

Place the coated shrimp in the hot corn oil to fry.

Step 7:

Shrimp will fry VERY fast, turn your shrimp after only a couple of minutes at most.

Step 8:

Your shrimp is done when it is all curled up and has no opacity. Do not overcook your shrimp or it will be rubbery. We are going to have this shrimp cooking a little bit more later, so even if its slightly undercooked here, it's not a problem.

Step 9:

Remove shrimp from oil and drain on a fresh paper towel.

Step 10:

Pour off corn oil until all you have left is 2 tbs or so.

Step 11:

Add the garlic, cayenne, sugar and salt. Stir it up.

Step 12:

Let this fry up for a few minutes until your garlic starts going a bit amber.

Step 13:

Add the tomato sauce, vinegar and sherry. Stir it up.

Step 14:

When this has heated through (mere minutes in all of these steps, really) add your corn starch slurry and stir to thicken.

Step 15:

Stirred:

Step 16:

Add your shrimp and stir to coat.

Step 17:

Coated:

Step 18:

Plate over rice, garnish with green onion. DELICIOUS!