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Meals · Skillet & sheet-pan mains

Butter-poached prawns

67

Prawns cooked slowly in warm emulsified butter, the way restaurants treat lobster, so they come out tender and sweet with no hard edges. There is more butter in the pan than on the plate, and what is left keeps for frying eggs.

Time
30 min (10 prep + 20 cook)
Servings
4
Per serving
220 kcal
Protein
27 g

Ingredients

  • 2 tbsp water
  • 12 tbsp (1 1/2 sticks) butter, cold, in pieces; weighed as what is eaten, since most of it stays in the pan
  • 1 1/2 lb shrimp, large (21/25), peeled, deveined and patted dry
  • 1/2 tsp salt

Steps

  1. Pour the water into a wide saucepan or deep skillet that will hold the prawns in one snug layer, and warm it over low heat until it steams.
  2. Whisk in the cold butter a few pieces at a time, adding more only when the last lot has melted, until you have a smooth, creamy, opaque sauce. Keep the heat low: it must never simmer. If you have a thermometer, hold it at 170–180°F.
  3. Season the prawns with the salt and slide them into the butter in one layer. The cold prawns will cool the butter; raise the heat just enough to bring it back to 170–180°F, and poach 3–4 minutes a side, spooning butter over the tops, until they are pink, opaque and curled into a loose C, 145°F in the thickest part.
  4. Lift the prawns onto warm plates with a slotted spoon and spoon about 2 teaspoons of the butter over each serving. Strain what is left into a jar and keep it in the fridge for up to 3 days, or freeze it for 3 months, for frying eggs.

Good to know

The butter split and looks oily. What now?

Take the pan off the heat and whisk in a teaspoon of cool water. It should come back together. Keep the heat lower from then on.

Not eating strictly carnivore?

A crushed garlic clove in the butter while it warms, and a squeeze of lemon at the end, are the usual additions.

Per

Calories
170
Protein
(49%)
21 g
Fat
(50%)
10 g
Carbohydrates
(0%)
<1 g
of which sugar
<1 g
Fiber
0 g
Sodium
397 mg

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Computed from the ingredients with our published formula, not yet kitchen-tested. How

As written, 881 kcal goes into the pot and 793 g of ingredients comes out as about 518 g of food: 170 kcal per 100 g. Cooking moves water and energy density is the score's biggest lever, so the dish is scored as cooked, not as an average of its parts. Every ingredient links to its food page, with the same data and score. The label's percentages are each macronutrient's share of the calories. The full formula.