Steamed Prawn with XO Sauce Recipe. Steaming tiger prawn with XO sauce recipe is quick, simple, and easy within elegant and mind blowing delicious result. I love steaming any kind of seafoods, lots of practices made me pretty good at it. I’ve posted several Delicious Steamed Fish Recipe, two Steamed Scallops Recipe, two Steamed Crab Recipes, Steamed Lobster Recipe and also Steamed Clams Recipe, but ain’t any steamed prawn or shrimp recipe here, then boom; here it’s now!!!

Steamed Prawn with Spicy XO Sauce
XO sauce is a savoury bomb, that’s the correct definition for my taste buds. Chinese XO sauce made of several premium dried seafoods, including dried scallops or conpoy, dried fish and shrimp, sometimes crab and shrimp roe, Chinese ham/Iham, and abalone added too to XO Sauce. The roughly chopped rehydrated dried seafood then cooked slowly with chili peppers, onions, and garlic then added cognag or other old liquor, this is what XO (extra old) Sauce name comes from. I’m using Lee Kum Kee Brand XO Sauce for this recipe, it’s savoury enought even without any Iham at all (it’s also Halal). Lee Kum Kee penetrated Indonesia with their halal version sauces and condiments because the Indonesian majority population is moslem.

Steamed Prawn with Spicy XO Sauce
My fellow friend Conor Bofin on his Steamed Cod Fish with Saffron and lemon Recipe had a very fancy looking photographs because the pricey saffron threads is clearly visible laid over the sliced lemon instead of over the cod fillet for favouring photography session over flavouring function. Got me into a lil bit of dilemma, but then i decided that ain’t gonna did that on this recipe, that’s why you saw the chinese sausage as the main visible topping over my steamed prawn instead of some stringy dried scallops as the main ingredients of XO sauce. Yup, i put the damn expensive Lee Kum Kee XO Sauce (16 USD for 80 grams) directly over the prawn meat and stuffed some of it in the prawn head, the end result made me not feeling regret at all.

Steamed Prawn with Spicy XO Sauce
Very fresh tiger prawn or shrimp cleaned, the tail butterflied from the back side and then steamed with spicy chinese XO sauce.The savoury XO sauce acompanied with lots of chopped fresh chilies, garlic, ginger and white part of chinese chives then finelly topped with my Homemade Chinese Sausage or La Chang. Make sure you finely chopped all the spicy topping for steaming prawn to ensure all the spiciness goodness released once the prawn cook in the high heat steam. No need more oil added into the steamed prawn, beside the umami oil from the XO sauce, the chinese sausage fat rendered during the cooking too.
Steamed prawn recipe is easy, but a little bit tricky. Timing is the key of any steaming seafood. DO NOT OVERCOOKED! prawn or shrimp because the flesh gonna be tough and rubberry.. You should stop steaming the prawn until nearly done, the remaining heat will throughly cooked the prawn meat in the platter. When you throughly cooked the prawn in the steamer, it will be overcooked once you serving it in the dinner table. Medium size prawn or large shrimp that already butterflled need about 3 to 5 minutes to be cooked in the steamer.

Fresh Prawn with Spicy XO Sauce with Bamboo Skewer on it
The freshness of the prawn or shrimp is the key for making a delicious steamed prawn. First, you should choose the freshly catch prawn, or even better if you had live prawn that swimming in the tank, just the same whan you want to make Raw Shrimp or Prawn Sashimi Recipe. The meaty part of the tail butterflies and then the vein removed. I put some bamboo skewer from the body to the tail stighly through out the prawn to prevent the tail curled up once it cooked.
The steamed tiger prawn in spicy XO sauce is damn delicious. The tiger prawn is really sweet and succulent with all the savoury and umami flavour of the XO sauce and spicy bursting aromas and flavour of spices blended into an very seductive food porn scene. I love steamed chinese sausage too, it’s soften and the translucent fat give and extra kick into the whole dish.
Recipe Steamed Prawn with Spicy XO Sauce (Chili, Ginger, Garlic, Chinese Sausage and Chives)
Ingredients
- 500 gr, 8-10 medium size tiger prawn (you can replace with any kind of lobster or shrimp)
- 1 tbsp lemon juice or lime juice
- 1/2 cup 40 grams XO Sauce (I’m using Lee kum Kee Brand XO Sauce)
- 6 cloves garlic, finely chopped
- 4 or more chili pepper, finely chopped
- 1 thumb size ginger,finely chopped
- 10 chinese chives separate the green and white parts, finely chopped
- 1/2 Homemade Lap Cheong or Chinese Sausage, finely chopped
- salt and pepper to taste
- bamboo skewer
Garnish: chopped chilies and green part of chives
How to Make Steamed Prawn with Spicy XO Sauce:
- Preheat the steamer over high heat
- Butterfly the the prawn tail from the back without cutting the dorsal shells, devein and clean it under running water
- Springkle the salt and drizzle the lemon juice over the prawn, let it sit for 5 minutes and then discard the dripping liquid
- Spread the XO sauce over the prawn meat and stuffed some in the head
- Put another topping over the prawn and XO sauce
- Insert the bamboo skewer through out the prawn from the head straight to the tail
- lay the XO sauce prawn over heatproof and then steam the prawn for about 3 to 5 minute
- DO NOT OVERCOOKED the XO sauce steamed prawn , so check the prawn doness every minute
- Served the XO sauce steamed prawn immediately with the garnish