A great fusion ingredient that my wife bought me while on a “girls weekend”. The smell is out of this world – garlic, ginger, soy sauce…and bourbon ! Perfect to try out some shrimp on the Kamado wok.
Jumping straight to the recipe on this one. Essentially Stir-Fried shrimp tacos, with a little inspiration from some of the more modern American “taco restaurants” (Quiubo in Naperville springs to mind).
The star of the show here is the bottle of Kentuckyaki sauce – as per the title. But a shoutout also for the Kamado Joe Junior. This is the little brother in the Kamado Joe family in terms of size, but I’m impressed with its ability to deal with these quick, hot cooks, so the Kamado Joe cast iron wok is a perfect partner for it.
Enjoy !
Kentuckyaki Shrimp Tacos
Shrimp tacos steeped in Kentuckyaki marinade, served with pineapple and sriracha, candied bacon and jalapeño and queso fresco. Cooked on a wok – outside of course.
Equipment
- Cast Iron Wok
- Kamado Joe Junior
Ingredients
Kentuckyaki shrimp and pineapple
- 1 lb peeled jumbo shrimp about 30-40
- ½ cup Kentuckyaki sauce
- ¼ cup pineapple juice
- ¾ cup fresh pineapple cut into chunks
- 1-2 tbsp sriracha sauce according to taste
- 1 tbsp brown sugar
- 2 tbsp peanut, canola or grapeseed oil for stir-frying
- 2 tbls chopped coriander leaf (cilantro)
Candied jalapeño and bacon
- 4 strips thick bacon
- ½ cup sliced, pickled jalapeños
- 1 cup "sugary substance" e.g. maple syrup, brown sugar, honey
- ½ cup cider vinegar
- 2 cloves garlic finely sliced
- ½ tsp coriander seeds
Dressing / to serve
- salsa your choice
- queso fresco crumbled and put in a serving bowl
- sriracha mayonaisse mayonnaise mixed with sriracha, to taste
- 10-12 small taco-sized tortillas corn or flour – your choice
Instructions
Candied jalapeño and bacon
- This can be made ahead of time (day before, for example) but if you put it in the fridge, make sure you bring it back to room temperature to serve.
- Fry the bacon as normal, and get it to a nice crispy state. Cut the bacon into ¼-½ inch squares and set aside.
- Take some sliced jalapeños (pickled are good for this) – cut so they're the same sort of size as the bacon squares. Set aside.
- Pour all the ingredients into a pan. Set on medium heat and bring everything to a boil. The sugary substance (maple is good here if you have it) should melt. Turn the heat down and simmer until you're left with sticky bacon and chillis ! Don't overdo this otherwise you'll get toffee. The mixture will "set" a little, so don't worry if you don't think it's sticky enough.
- Turn off the heat and store the mixture until ready to use.
Stir-fried shrimp and pineapple
- Mix together the kentuckyaki marinade with some pineapple juice in a bowl. Don't be too creative here – the point with this marinade is that the experts already mixed it for you.
- Defrost / clean / de-vein the shrimp and put them in the marinade for a few hours.
- Load up the Kamado Joe Junior (in my case) with charcoal, and fire it up for direct heat. Open the vents to allow it to go as hot as you can. On a KJ-Junior this will probably take less than 30 minutes to get to temperature.
- Cut the pineapple into ¾" cubes and mix with some sriracha sauce to bring some heat to the sweetness. Sprinkle some brown sugar onto the cubes and toss to cover.
- Set the Kamado Joe cast iron wok on the Joe Junior rack and splash in about half the stir-fry oil to heat up. Test the oil by dropping in a cube of pineapple into the oil. If it sizzles…
- …then drop in all of the pineapple/sriracha/sugar cubes. The point here is simply to heat up the chunks and get the sugar to melt/caramelise into a slight crust. Once done, remove the pineapple and all juices from the heat and keep warm in a bowl.
- Put the other half of the oil into the wok and let it heat up again. When hot and smoking, drop in all of the shrimp. Cook for 2-3 minutes or until the shrimp has turned pink…and maybe a slight caramel crust. Don't overdo it, otherwise the shrimp will be rubbery. Take the wok off the heat.
- Return the pineapple to the rapidly cooling wok and stir it all up. Tear some coriander leaf and toss the whole lot together. Tip out onto a warmed serving dish.
To serve
- Warm up the tortillas. If there's residual heat in the wok then use this.
- Take a tortilla, put in three or four shrimp and some pineapple. A spoonful of salsa, and the candied bacon/jalapeños on top, then a sprinkle of queso fresco and a dash of "heat" in the form of sriracha mayo. (We also have some nice harissa mayo, which works !).
- Wrap. Eat. Repeat.
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