Easy Coconut Shrimp Recipe

Hey I’m John Cannell and today we’re making coconut shrimp so let’s get started. For this delicious recipe you’ll want two pounds of shrimp, sweetened shredded coconut, panko breadcrumbs, some eggs, flour, salt and pepper, oil for frying, and at the end we’re going to be dipping it in sweet chili sauce.

Preparing the Shrimp

First off I want to talk about the shrimp for just a moment. This recipe in my humble opinion is best when you have shrimp with the tail on—they’re like little handles so you can just enjoy them. If someone happens to buy you fully peeled shrimp that’s fine too; I’ll show you how to do it. It’s okay, still gonna be delicious. Even if your shrimp are totally cleaned when you got them, double check here. I found one with a vein; it’s actually a digestive tract. We remove those—they’re not delicious. Just make sure the shrimp are totally thawed if you bought them frozen and also give them a little pat, make sure they’re really well drained.

Setting Up the Dredging Station

Now we’re going to set up our dredging station. This is really easy and it goes by fast. So in my first bowl I want 120 grams or one cup of all-purpose flour to which I am going to be adding three quarters of a teaspoon of salt—just about measuring the way my mom does—and then a quarter teaspoon of pepper. Give this a little whisk to mix it up, and you can season this with whatever you’d like; extra seasonings are always appreciated. Set that aside.

In another bowl I’m gonna add three eggs; just crack them in. This is gonna be the glue that holds our delicious coconut panko situation onto the shrimp. Shrimp are one of my favorite things to eat. I love them in many different preparations, and you know I’m addicted to coconut, so this is like my dream recipe come true. Give that a quick whisk.

The last part of my dredging station is going to be the coconut panko breadcrumb situation: one and a quarter cup or 70 grams of panko breadcrumbs—they’re very light—and 125 grams of sweetened shredded coconut, that’s one and a quarter cup. I’m just gonna use my hands to mix this together because we want all the panko breadcrumbs to be mixed in, and the best way to do that is with your clean fingers. This smells amazing right now—so good.

Frying the Shrimp

Set your dredging station up and you’re going to want a wire rack; you could put it over paper towels or a pan. At the very end of my assembly line I have a cast iron skillet. Since this is gonna go quickly, I’m gonna start heating it up right now. I want one inch of oil and it’s going to be 350.

All right, let’s get started. Grab a shrimp; we’re going to dust it with some of the seasoned flour—that’s step one. Give it a bit of egg—that’s the glue—and now you want to cover and press a bit because you really want coconut panko breadcrumbs everything amazing on there. You’re going to repeat that process for all of your shrimp, and you can do a few at a time, one at a time, whatever you prefer.

My one tip for you is: if you’re using a fork or tongs or whatever to go from station to station in your dredge, press, press, press that coconut on the end, and then just use your hands to transfer them over here. That way they’ll be like fully coated because the tongs kind of rips them off.

Now we’re going to carefully add this into the oil. They cook really quickly—shrimp cooks fast—so just keep an eye on it and you’re going to flip them over once. I love that sound—one of my favorite things in the world. Golden brown and so pretty too.

Pan frying is super easy, but one thing to keep track of is the temperature. Whenever you add the shrimp in it’s going to drop, but then it’ll rise back up. Just be fully attuned to what’s happening or keep a thermometer handy so you can see, “Hmm, is this 350 still? It was a minute ago.” You never want to overcook shrimp. Perfectly cooked shrimp is like this melt-in-your-mouth, has a wonderful buttery texture. If you overcook it it’ll be rubbery. When you fry these, once the outside is golden brown the inside is perfectly cooked.

Serving and Storage Tips

They’re going to be amazing fresh out of the fryer. If people are running late for dinner—things like that happen—I like to warm them back up in my air fryer just a couple minutes at 400. Keeps them nice and crispy, kind of gives them a re-crisp; no one even knows. They taste like they’re fresh out of the fryer that way. They’re not going to do well in the microwave, so if you don’t have an air fryer just pop them into the oven on a sheet really quickly at a high heat.

These shrimp are delicious on their own, but they’re that much better with a little homemade sweet chili sauce. That is sweet, crunchy, spicy—amazing. There aren’t going to be any leftovers.

You can serve this with, like, a nice kind of mango coconut rice to go with this, or even a stir fry could be good too, or like a slaw with some peanuts in it. All these things are delicious options.

Maybe you could freeze these. It’s kind of interesting—I might give that a try and report back. If you do, though, you would freeze them on a sheet of parchment paper all separate so make sure they’re not like a big mountain, and then once they’re completely frozen you can pop them into a freezer bag and you would just have to defrost slowly.