#FoodNetworkStar Episode 4 Recipe: Ketchup Shrimp

Oh I know what you were thinking when I said I was making ketchup shrimp on Episode 4. 

Ew, ketchup? That’s an insult to shrimp. 

But trust me, ketchup shrimp is a nuanced and complex dish. If I didn’t mention its main ingredient in the title, you wouldn’t even know it had ketchup. 

But I think ketchup is great, so I let the dish wear its name loud and proud. So what’s the story behind it? 

Ketchup shrimp is a treasured Tom family recipe. I’ve eaten it for as long as I can remember. Without fail, my dad makes it for Thanksgiving and Christmas, but he’s also known to make it just because. And why not? It just takes a few pantry ingredients + shrimp. It seriously takes 10 minutes or so. 

But ketchup shrimp isn’t a Tom family invention. In fact, it’s a staple in many Chinese-American households. When you think about it, ketchup is a magical ingredient. It’s sweet, a little tart, and has tons of umami, a “meatiness” that fills your mouth. 

When Bobby and Giada announced that our challenge was to make a typical weeknight meal, I immediately thought of ketchup shrimp. It's fast, interesting, and has a bonus: if someone else got the shrimp before I did, you can easily use this same recipe (with some considerations for the meat) with chicken or pork. 

RECIPE
Ketchup Shrimp 

1 lb shrimp, cleaned with shells on  
10 cloves garlic
3-inch knob of ginger
1 tbsp vegetable oil 

½ cup ketchup
2 tbsp hoisin sauce
2 tbsp Chinese black vinegar (if you don’t have this, you can substitute rice vinegar or even balsamic vinegar) 
1 tsp Worcestershire sauce 

Peel ginger. Finely dice the garlic and ginger. Heat a frying pan on medium. Add oil and heat until shimmering. Add garlic and ginger and saute until fragrant and golden, about 2-3 minutes. Remove the garlic and ginger, while keeping the oil in the pan. 

Increase heat to high. Add the shrimp in the fragrant oil and saute for 2-3 minutes on each side, until the shells have a bit of color on them. Remove the shrimp and add them to the garlic and ginger. 

Mix all the remaining ingredients together -- ketchup, hoisin sauce, black vinegar, and worcestershire sauce. Add to the hot pan and reduce for one minute, until just slightly thickened. Add the shrimp, garlic, and ginger and stir, coating the shrimp with the sauce. Keep stirring until the sauce is thick and clinging to the shrimp, about one minute more.    

TIPS & TRICKS 

• One of my goals as a cooking teacher is to eliminate the need for a cooking teacher. So I try to explain why steps are the way they are. For example, why do you cook the garlic and ginger first, remove them, and then add the shrimp? Well, garlic is notorious for burning and turning bitter, so it needs to be cooked at a medium heat. Shrimp needs a high heat to achieve browning. When you saute the ginger and garlic on medium first, you ensure you don’t burn the garlic, and you also flavor the oil for the shrimp. 

• This dish is endlessly adaptable. Honestly, I don’t think I’ve ever made the same version twice. Sometimes I’ll add sriracha, sometimes soy sauce or fish sauce. Sometimes I’ll add sesame oil. The proportions are very flexible, so feel free to experiment.  

• Yes, keep the shell on! The shell has so much flavor. Think of it this way -- seafood stock is made from crustacean shells. By keeping the shells on, you are getting both the meat, and a super-concentrated “broth”. 

• So you have the shell on, how do you eat it? That's up to you. Personally, I suck the sauce and use my tongue and teeth to finagle the meat out. Sometimes some shell will accompany your bite… just spit it out. My husband peels the shrimp, and then swipes up the sauce on the serving plate. Whatever floats your boat, but remember -- shells are your friend! 

Miso Ginger Slow Cooker Chicken

It’s that time of year again. The sun has a kiss of heat. The birds are singing. The flowers are blooming. And your nose can’t. Stop. Running.

For about a week a year, I’m knocked out by allergies and the last thing I want to do is cook. You might think of slow cookers as a winter tool -- stews and casseroles and all that. But I find the slow cooker useful when I’m sick, too.

Slow cookers have a tendency to create murky flavors, but not so with the savory miso, sharp ginger, and assertive garlic. Between the three, they’re enough to make you forget about your stuffed nose and make you feel normal again.

Miso ginger slow cooker chicken is actually the most popular recipe on my blog. Here's the original post. It doesn’t even have real measurements! So this time around, I’m getting more detailed but keeping the same spirit. No cheffy flourishes. No pre-heating or fussing. Just a quick make-ahead dinner you can prepare in the time it takes to make your coffee.

8am

12pm

3pm

4pm - done!

RECIPE

2 lbs air-chilled chicken thighs and/or drumsticks
1 to 3 inch ginger knob (less if you want a milder flavor, more if you want to bring the heat)
1 head of garlic
3 tablespoons miso

Peel and finely chop ginger. Peel and finely chop garlic. Mix miso with enough hot water to loosen it up, about 3 tablespoons. Add chopped ginger and garlic and mix.

Add chicken to slow cooker. Coat with miso mixture. Cook on low for 8 hours. 

Taste the sauce. Depending on how watery your chicken was, you may want to reduce and concentrate the sauce. To do so, place the chicken in a separate bowl and add the sauce to a saucepan. Simmer on low until reduced.  Re-mix sauce with chicken and serve. 

TIPS & TRICKS

• Why air-chilled? Unless otherwise noted, all chicken is water-chilled, meaning it was dunked in cold vats of water, resulting in diluted, watery meat. Air-chilling uses no additional liquid, meaning a stronger flavor and better textured meat. Air-chilled is a great way to go all the time, but especially for slow cooking. When sauteing or roasting, excess liquid can escape as steam. But in a slow cooker, the steam is trapped, so a water-chilled chicken will quickly go from water-logged to water-drowned.

• For a complete meal, add some veg to the sauce as you reduce it. I like enoki mushrooms, bok choy, or even broccoli. You can also do this if your sauce is too salty. Noodles (or zoodles) would also make a great addition. 

• Boneless dark meat is okay. I accidentally bought boneless chicken thighs, even though the “rule” is to only slow-cook meat on the bone because the bone helps keep the meat moist. Well, you know what? The sauce and moisture from the chicken kept the chicken moist. It all worked out, so don’t sweat bone/boneless -- as long as you use dark meat.

Cooks vs Cons Round 2: Korean Beef with Toasted Quinoa, Quick Pickles & Miso Egg Emulsion

Round 2...candy! Oh boy. I don't know about you, but I've never cooked with candy before. As Bruno and Geoffrey Zakarian pointed out, it's hard to know how candy will cook. Will it melt? Hold its shape? Curdle? 

I once tried to brûlé gummy bears and it was a disaster. The heat seems to toughen the gelatin, making an impossibly tacky bite. 

So instead of opting for licorice, gumdrops, or  jelly beans, which contain mysterious ingredients with unknown properties, I used clean and simple lollipops. Sugar, flavoring and coloring. Not ideal, but not horrifying either. 

We weren't allowed to make desserts (too easy), so my mind immediately went to Korean food. Korean food is actually pretty sweet, but it's tempered by salt, spice and funk. No one-note sweetness here. I called on my go-to flavors: miso, soy, ginger, garlic and sesame (the same flavors that are in one my most popular recipes of all time). I chose pink lemonade and lemon lollipops, thinking that citrus flavors were better than, say, cherry or grape (gag). 

Once I knew how I'd feature the surprise ingredient, I worked from there. What works best with sweet and spicy marinated beef? 

Bibimbap! Concepting the rest was easy. I'd adapt the classic Korean rice-and-veggies dish with my own spin. A quick pickle added some brightness and crunch, toasted quinoa with nori contributed an earthy, umami base (and mimicked the delicious burnt rice in the bottom of a stone bibimbap bowl). I also made a miso-egg emulsion, a hollandaise-like sauce that nods to the raw egg that is traditionally stirred into bibimbop. 

The recipe below is sequenced for a tight 30-minute cook. There's no wasted time waiting for things to cook. But if you want a saner experience, then you can always make each component one by one.

RECIPE:

Beef: 
1/2 cup of sugar -- ground-up citrus candy or actual sugar
1 small onion
8 cloves of garlic
1 ping-pong-ball-sized knob of ginger
1/3 cup soy sauce
2 tablespoons sesame oil
1 Scotch Bonnet chili 

1 lb thinly sliced top sirloin 

Toasted Quinoa: 
1 cup red quinoa
10 sheets of roasted seaweed

Quick Pickles:
4 radishes
3 baby cucumbers
1 tablespoon salt 

Miso Egg Emulsion:
4 egg yolks
1 heaping teaspoon miso paste
1 teaspoon rice vinegar
½ teaspoon chili powder
1 tablespoon butter 

2 tablespoons black sesame seed
¼ cup chopped chives

Rinse quinoa and place in pot with two cups of water. Bring to a boil on high, then cover and simmer on low until nice and fluffy. The "tails" of the quinoa should be sticking out. (This didn't happen during my episode... perhaps because the stove was so hot the water boiled off too quickly and/or the quinoa was old and took longer than normal to "bloom".) 

For the marinade, blend the onion, garlic, ginger, soy sauce, sesame oil and chili. Place in saucepan and reduce on medium-high. 

For the miso egg emulsion, blend the egg yolks, miso, rice vinegar, chili powder and butter. 

For the quick pickles, slice the cucumbers and radishes with a mandolin on the thinnest setting. Salt and let rest. 

Slice the beef and place it in the reduced marinade. While the beef is cooking and picking up the glaze, toast half the quinoa in a frying pan with a teaspoon of olive oil. Add the other half of the quinoa, add sliced nori and reserve. 

Assemble your plate. Squeeze out the excess water from the pickles and place. Add the toasted quinoa with nori and Korean candy beef. Pour miso egg emulsion on top, or serve on the side. Add chopped chives and black sesame seeds. 

RELAX because that was an intense 30 minutes of cooking.