Big, succulent shrimp, green onions, garlic, crunchy celery, a little cilantro, soy sauce & a chili paste make this Asian-Inspired Shrimp Omelet (a main meal, served for lunch or dinner) something that’s not only light & comforting but a cinch to make.
Omelets served in Chinese restaurants vastly differ from their cousins the cheese-laden omelets served for breakfast & brunch across the US. As a kid I remember eating omelets in Chinese restaurants in Sydney. Simple but with that quintessential Cantonese flavor, familiar in many of the stir-fries we all love.
I love these Cantonese-style omelets. More free-formed than the omelet pictured – the Chinese make their omelets in a wok, I opted for a small, non-stick pan so the omelet resembles more a frittata in looks than a folded omelet most of us are familiar with.
The shrimp are the stars. The other ingredients are merely there to enhance their flavor & to add texture. Not one who likes cooked celery in stir-fries, I love the celery in this omelet; it adds a crunch, often missing in egg meals – I’m all about texture.
Once cooked, the omelet is drizzled with a little oyster sauce – a necessary ingredient for a more authentic Chinese taste. Oyster sauce is used extensively in Chinese – especially Cantonese, cooking. If you’ve eaten Chinese food you’ve eaten oyster sauce many times but not realized. So don’t despair if you’re not an oyster fan: if you didn’t know what sauce it was, you’d never have guessed.
I suspect omelets – or egg foo young as they’re called here in the US, aren’t traditional Chinese fair but does it really matter? What matters is they’re easy to make, inexpensive & you can throw almost any veg or protein into one – making an Asian omelet a wonderful recipe for the-day-before-grocery- shopping, as you can grab whatever bits & pieces you have for veg lurking in the fridge. And if you don’t have shrimp then make it veg or add bacon. Simple.
Toodle pip, Lovoni xo
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Asian-Inspired Shrimp Omelet
Ingredients
- 6 large eggs
- 1/4 cup thinly sliced green onion plus extra for garnish
- 2 tablespoons chopped fresh cilantro plus extra leaves for garnish
- 1 tablespoon sambal oelek (chili paste) plus extra for serving
- 1 tablespoon soy sauce
- pinch of salt
- 2 teaspoons sesame oil
- 14 extra large shrimp, peeled & deveined
- 1 cup thinly sliced celery reserve some leaves for garnish
- 2 fat garlic cloves, minced
- 4 teaspoons butter
- 2 tablespoons oyster sauce
Instructions
- Whisk eggs in a medium sized bowl until broken up. Add 1/4 cup green onion, 2 tablespoons cilantro, 1 tablespoon sambal, soy & salt; whisk to combine.
- Heat half the sesame oil in a 9-inch non-stick frying pan over medium-high heat. (The pan measures 9 inches across the top & about 7 inches across the base. If you have two pans this size you can reduce the amount of cooking time. I used one pan.) Add shrimp & cook, stirring, for 3 minutes or until shrimp have changed color & are almost cooked; remove from pan.
- Heat remaining oil in the same pan. Add celery & garlic. Cook, stirring for 2 minutes or until celery has turned bright green. Remove from pan.
- Heat 2 teaspoons of butter in pan, swirling it around until the butter has covered the whole bottom of the pan. Pour in half the egg mixture – this is just a little shy of 3/4 of a cup. Scatter half the shrimp & half the celery mixture over the egg mixture. Reduce the heat to medium-low. Cook, covered, 5 to 6 minutes, swirling the pan occasionally so the uncooked egg on the top moves out to the side of pan & goes under the omelet so the whole thing cooks evenly. Do this twice, covering the pan again each time. Gently place a heat-resistant spatula around & under the omelet to release it easily. Slice the omelet onto a serving plate & keep warm in a warm oven. Repeat with remaining butter, egg mixture, shrimp & celery mixture.
- Drizzle both omelets with oyster sauce, add a dollop of sambal & scatter with celery leaves, green onion & cilantro. Serve immediately.
Other easy egg dishes: Artichoke, Spinach & Feta Frittata & Rainbow Chard, Leek & Gouda Crustless Tart.
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