15 minutes are all you need to whip up this sumptuous claypot yee mee noodles (prawn) (煲仔鲜虾伊面). This recipe is a very local style of cooking and serving noodles in a claypot. Making this dish at home has two benefits for me as compared to eating it at the hawker center or coffee shop. For one, there is no MSG in the soup and two, I use premium large prawns (shrimps) to make this dish.
The advantage of cooking & serving in a claypot is that the dish remains hot throughout the meal. There is also one less bowl to wash up :p
This is the yee mee (yi mein/伊面) I used. They are actually dry egg noodles. The usual packet comes in bigger bundle of noodles of about 75g each. I prefer this “shabu shabu” pack as the noodles come in smaller bundles. With the one I bought (pictured above), one bundle of noodles is about 35g. For small eaters like me, one bundle is enough. For people with normal appetite, use two bundles instead or buy the other bigger pack.
This is the prepared prawns. With the sharp edges are trimmed, only the body shell is removed for ease of marinating and eating. Leaving the head and tail on helps the prawns remain plump after cooking.
Keeping the prawn head while cooking has another benefit: The umami of the prawn head provides an additional oomph to the soup.
Cooking and serving the dish directly in a claypot ensures the dish is piping hot throughout eating. If you don’t have a claypot, you can also use any single-sized casserole, such as the light aluminium pans sold at daiso. You can also use any regular pot and dish out the noodles in a bowl to serve.
Cooking Note(s):