Top 45 Prawn Recipes: Curries, Garlic Prawns, Rice and More

Fresh prawns should smell faintly of the sea, not fishy or ammonia-like, with firm flesh and shells that are not slimy or discoloured. Frozen prawns are a genuinely good option year-round and often fresher than the 'fresh' counter, since they are typically frozen at sea shortly after catch — just thaw them gently in the fridge overnight or under cold running water, never at room temperature.

Deveining removes the dark digestive tract running along the back, which is not harmful but can taste gritty and looks unappetising in a finished dish. Run a small knife along the curve of the back, lift the vein out, and rinse. Peeling before or after cooking is a matter of preference — shell-on prawns hold more flavour and moisture during cooking, while peeled prawns are faster to eat and better for folding into rice or noodles.

Pat prawns thoroughly dry before they go anywhere near hot oil, since surface moisture is what causes spitting and stops a good sear from forming. If a recipe calls for marinating, keep it brief — fifteen to twenty minutes is usually enough, since the delicate flesh does not need long exposure to acid or salt the way tougher cuts of meat do, and can turn mushy if left too long.

Prawns are done the moment they turn from translucent grey to opaque pink and curl into a loose C-shape — usually two to three minutes over direct high heat for medium prawns, and even less for smaller ones. Watch them rather than the clock, since size and pan temperature both shift the timing more than a recipe's stated minutes can fully account for.

In curries, add prawns in the last few minutes of cooking, once the sauce is fully built and simmering, then cook just until they turn opaque before taking the pan off the heat entirely. The residual heat of the sauce will finish them through in the time it takes to plate, so pulling the pan slightly early is safer than leaving it a minute too long.

For stir-fries, noodles and fried rice, cook the prawns separately first and set them aside, then fold them back in right at the end once everything else is hot and ready. This two-stage approach — a technique used throughout Chinese and Southeast Asian cooking — keeps the prawns from turning rubbery while the rest of the dish finishes cooking around them.

Garlic and butter are the most reliable pairing for prawns because they are strong enough to stand up to the shellfish's sweetness without masking it entirely. The classic method is to melt butter with a generous amount of finely chopped or sliced garlic over medium heat until fragrant but not browned, then add the prawns and cook them hot and fast, spooning the garlic butter over them as they go.

Soy, ginger and chilli-based sauces work the same way — built separately or bloomed briefly in the pan before the prawns go in, rather than dumped in raw at the end, so the flavours have a moment to come together. Because prawns cook so fast, there is limited time for a sauce to develop in the pan alongside them, so it pays to have aromatics and sauces at least partly prepared before the prawns hit the heat, with everything measured out and within reach.

In curries, the same rule applies at a larger scale: build the full sauce, get the seasoning and consistency right, and only then add the prawns. Coconut milk, tamarind and tomato all pair well with prawns because their acidity or richness balances the natural sweetness, but they need to be reduced and balanced on their own first — the prawns are the last five minutes of the dish, not the base it is built on.

Raw prawns keep one to two days in the fridge at most, tightly wrapped or in an airtight container on ice if possible — they spoil faster than most other proteins. If you are not cooking them within that window, freeze them instead, ideally in their shells, which protects the flesh better than peeled prawns during freezing, and keeps them fresher for up to three months.

Cooked prawn dishes keep two to three days in the fridge, though the prawns themselves will continue to firm up slightly over that time regardless of how gently they were originally cooked. Curries and sauced dishes hold up better than dry-fried or grilled prawns, which can turn noticeably tougher after a day in the fridge, so plan to eat those the same day if you can.

Reheat prawn dishes gently and briefly — a quick warm-through in a pan or a short burst in the microwave is enough, since any extended reheating cooks the prawns further on top of their original cooking. If a curry or noodle dish is otherwise fine to reheat longer for the sauce or noodles, consider adding freshly cooked prawns back in rather than reheating the original ones twice.