NEW RECIPE: Guinness Braised Prawns

© Constantine William Spyrou

One thing I love doing is centering a dish around an ingredient and building off of it to give it a great and new flavor. One of my friends, Sinja, suggested I make a dish with prawns, one of her favorite ingredients. This dish takes prawns and makes them incredibly tender while cooking them in an odd way- New Orleans barbecue style.

New Orleans has this amazing dish of barbecued shrimp in a homemade barbecue sauce that the shrimp are cooked in and served with the sauce, which is very messy but very delicious. I'm putting an Irish spin on it with a Guinness-based sauce to give it a deep, bold flavor that takes the prawns to a whole new level. 

Recipe serves one.

Ingredients:

1 cup Guinness Beer (any dark stout works just as well)
1/2 tablespoon unsalted butter
1/4 cup fresh chopped parsley
2 tsp cayenne pepper
1/2 tablespoon brown sugar
Juice of 1 lemon
1/2 tablespoon Worchestershire sauce
1 clove of garlic
1/4 cup diced onion
6 large tiger prawns (head-on or not doesn't matter)
Salt and pepper to season

Cooking/Assembling:

1. Add olive oil to a pan on medium high heat. Add your onions and garlic.
2. Season with salt, pepper, and cayenne. When the onions start turning translucent, add your brown sugar to speed up the caramelization process.
3. Deglaze the pan with Worchestershire sauce. Add your Guinness and butter soon afterward. Bring to a boil, and begin to reduce.
4. When the sauce has reduced to 2/3rds of its original height, add in your shrimp. Cook for 5 minutes.
5. 30 seconds before the shrimp are done, add your lemon juice and 1/2 of the parsley. Quickly mix, then take off the heat. Serve and garnish with the rest of the parsley.

This is a simple and quick dish but hits so many flavor profiles - dark and rich from the beer, sweetness from the sugar and shrimp, brightness from the lemon, and freshness from the parsley. It's essentially an Irish spin on barbecue sauce that has a good balance.

I hope you enjoyed this recipe! Let me know what you think and what you would change. If you make it at home, let me know how it turns out! Enjoy! =)