Sesame Prawn Toast

Blitzed prawns, spring onion, ginger and Shaoxing wine are spread thickly onto slightly stale white bread, pressed into sesame seeds and deep-fried until the crust shatters. The paste stays juicy and springy while the bread turns lacy-crisp rather than greasy. It is the single best fakeaway starter for a Friday night.

Sesame prawn toast lives or dies on two things: a prawn paste with real bounce, and bread that fries crisp instead of drinking oil. Get both right and you get that unmistakable takeaway crunch, the toasted sesame smell filling the kitchen, and a sweet, gingery prawn layer underneath. It is quick, cheap enough, and genuinely better fresh from your own pan.

Ingredients

• 300 g raw king prawns — peeled and deveined; defrosted and patted very dry if frozen
• 1 egg white
• 2 tsp cornflour
• 1 tbsp Shaoxing rice wine — dry sherry works just as well
• 2 tsp light soy sauce
• 1 tsp toasted sesame oil
• ½ tsp caster sugar
• ¼ tsp ground white pepper — black pepper will do, but white is the takeaway flavour
• 2 cm piece fresh ginger — peeled and finely grated
• 3 spring onions — finely chopped
• 6 slices medium-sliced white bread — a day or two old, crusts cut off
• 60 g white sesame seeds
• 1 litre sunflower or groundnut oil — for deep-frying
• to serve sweet chilli sauce

Method

1. Pat the prawns thoroughly dry with kitchen paper — wet prawns make a loose paste that slides off the bread.
2. Put the prawns in a food processor with the egg white, cornflour, Shaoxing wine, light soy, sesame oil, sugar, white pepper and ginger. Pulse to a thick, slightly coarse paste with a few visible chunks of prawn — about 15 short pulses. Do not blitz it to a smooth purée or it turns rubbery. Stir in the spring onions by hand.
3. Spread the paste over the bread in a thick, even layer, roughly 5 mm deep, right to the edges. Mound it slightly in the middle. Tip the sesame seeds onto a plate and press each slice paste-side down into them firmly, so the seeds embed rather than sit on top. Cut each slice into four triangles.
4. Pour the oil into a deep, heavy pan no more than one-third full and heat to 180°C. If you have no thermometer, drop in a cube of bread: it should sizzle steadily and turn golden in about 40 seconds. If it browns instantly the oil is too hot; if it just bubbles lazily, wait. Keep a lid to hand and never leave the pan — see our guide to deep-frying safely at home at /guides/how-to-deep-fry-safely-at-home/.
5. Fry in batches of four or five triangles, lowering them in sesame-side down. Crowding the pan drops the temperature and the bread goes oily. Fry for 60–90 seconds until the sesame seeds are pale gold, then flip and fry for another 30–45 seconds until the bread is crisp and evenly golden.
6. Lift out with a slotted spoon and drain on a wire rack set over a tray — not on kitchen paper, which traps steam and softens the underside. Let the oil come back up to 180°C between batches.
7. Check the first one before you commit to the rest: the prawn layer should be opaque, springy and cooked through with no grey translucency, and the toast piping hot in the middle. If the sesame is browning before the paste sets, drop the oil to 170°C.
8. Serve immediately, sesame-side up, with sweet chilli sauce for dipping. They are at their best within five minutes of leaving the pan.

Serve it with

• Sweet chilli dipping sauce
• Light soy with a splash of rice vinegar and sliced red chilli
• Salt and pepper chips
• Crispy chilli beef
• Egg fried rice
• A cold lager or jasmine tea

Why this works

The takeaway trick is slightly stale bread plus egg white in the paste: dry bread has less water to boil off, so it crisps almost instantly instead of absorbing oil, while the egg white and cornflour set into a light, springy bind that grips the crumb. Frying sesame-side down first toasts the seeds in the hottest phase of the oil, which is where that nutty aroma comes from.

Common swaps

• No Shaoxing wine? Dry sherry is the closest supermarket stand-in; medium-dry vermouth also works. At a push, use 1 tbsp water plus an extra ½ tsp soy.
• Swap half the prawns for skinless chicken thigh or firm white fish for a cheaper, milder version.
• Use black and white sesame seeds mixed for a striking two-tone crust.
• Shallow-fry in 1.5 cm of oil at 180°C if you would rather not deep-fry — flip once, and expect a slightly softer edge.
• Brioche or sourdough will work, but stick to a fine, soft crumb; open, holey bread lets the paste fall through.

Common mistakes to avoid

• Using wet or under-dried prawns, which makes a sloppy paste that slips off in the oil.
• Over-processing to a smooth purée — you lose the bouncy, chunky texture that makes it taste like the real thing.
• Frying too cool or overloading the pan, so the bread soaks up oil and goes heavy and greasy.
• Draining on kitchen paper instead of a wire rack, which steams the crust soft within a minute.

Storage, freezing & reheating

Storage: Best eaten straight away. Cooked toasts keep in an airtight container in the fridge for up to 2 days, though the crust softens. Uncooked assembled toasts can be kept covered in the fridge for up to 12 hours before frying.

Freezing: Freeze uncooked: open-freeze the assembled, sesame-coated triangles on a lined tray until solid, then bag for up to 2 months. Fry from frozen at 170°C for 2½–3 minutes, turning once, so the paste cooks through before the crust colours.

Reheating: Never microwave — it turns them limp. Reheat in an oven at 200°C for 5–6 minutes on a wire rack, or in an air fryer at 190°C for 3–4 minutes, until crisp again and piping hot right through.

Allergen notes: contains Crustaceans, Gluten, Egg, Sesame, Soya, Sulphites. Always check individual product labels.

Estimated nutrition

Per serving, estimated from typical ingredient values — not a substitute for precise dietary calculation.