something queer going on

I only started using dried shrimp a few months ago, so I don't have a huge amount of experience with them, but I think they're a great ingredient.

There are a couple of different kinds of dried shrimp. One kind, which is whole (including heads and shells) and completely dried to the point of brittleness, is used in Mexican cooking and I haven't tried them. The other kind has the head and shell removed, is only partially dried (which means the shrimp should be kept refrigerated), and is used in southeast Asian cooking and apparently sometimes in Chinese cooking. That's the kind I'm talking about here. There are a lot of different brands; I've used Caravelle and BDMP brand and they both tasted about the same to me.

When I was talking about fish sauce, I said that you don't have to like fish to like it. The same is not true of dried shrimp. They are shrimpy. They are very shrimpy. Not in a bad/spoiled way--if your dried shrimp taste spoiled, they probably are spoiled--but in a highly concentrated way. Each tiny dried shrimp is an intense little burst of umami and seafood. I think of them as shrimp jerky, which is also a good approximation of the texture. They're not an ingredient you want to use in large quantities. A tablespoon or so per person is plenty, which is handy because they're not cheap. Where I live they run about $7 for a 3.5 ounce (100 gram) bag.

Although I have seen recipes that call for dried shrimp to be used uncooked, I think it's generally recommended to cook them before eating. If you cook them in oil you'll get the most flavor and also crisp them up somewhat. I usually stir-fry them in little oil over medium-high heat for a couple of minutes, until they're nicely browned. I gather that it's actually more usual in Thailand and Vietnam to deep-fry them, which makes them very crisp, but that's too much bother for me. One thing to note is that cooking them in oil will make your entire kitchen, the clothes you're wearing, and possibly the rest of your dwelling smell shrimpy. It's not a bad smell and it fades in a day or so, but it's disconcerting to find that your pillowcase smells like dried shrimp, so you might want to open some windows and use the exhaust fan, if your stove has one.

You can also roast them in a dry pan (use a medium heat), which produces less odor but the shrimp won't be as crisp or flavorful. I only dry-roast them if I'm going to be grinding them up, in which case the oil would make them grind less well.

Dry-roasted and ground, they're used in salads. I've only had them in cucumber salad dressed with fish sauce, a little sugar, lime juice, chile-garlic paste, and a little sesame oil, and topped with dry-roasted peanuts. It's fantastic. You can make the same salad without the dried shrimp, but it's not quite as good. I've also, in a lazier mood, just added whole dried shrimp cooked in oil to the salad, but I think I like them ground up better--the flavor is not so overwhelming.

Left whole and cooked in oil, I've used them in noodle dishes and Thai-style fried rice. One improvised dish I really like is to stir-fry some vegetables (bean sprouts, green onions, maybe some bok choy, gai choy, or other Asian greens), add soaked and rinsed rice noodles and stir-fry until the noodles are warm through, add fish sauce and chiles or chile paste to taste, clear a space in the center of the pan and scramble an egg in it, mix everything together and add the dried shrimp at the last minute. Squeeze some lime juice over the top right before serving. I actually really like this for breakfast on a weekend, but it's a great quick lunch or dinner, too.

You can also add them to soups. I used some in a butternut squash soup with Thai red curry paste, and it was delicious. You can soak them before adding or, if they're going to cook for a while, just drop them in right out of the bag.


As always, I welcome corrections from anyone with better knowledge/more experience of these ingredients. And if you have recipes you want to share, that would be great!

Next time I'll move off the seafood theme for a while and talk about curry leaves!