Fried Shrimp Rolls 虾卷

Fried Shrimp Rolls (虾卷) are a Tainan (台南) snack of shrimp bound with fish paste and minced pork, wrapped in pig caul fat and deep-fried until golden, then cut into bite-sized pieces. In Anping (安平), which Tainan's mayor describes as Taiwan's earliest Han Chinese settlement, a shrimp-roll shop is the first stop in a 2023 Tainan City Tourism Bureau walk through the old street's traditional snacks.

Where it comes from

According to the Tainan City Tourism Bureau, Chou's Shrimp Rolls (周氏虾卷) in Anping traces back to 1965, when its founder Chou Chin-ken (周进根), a banquet caterer, ran a snack business in his spare time and shrimp rolls were one of his dishes. Around 1980 he reworked the roll around fresh huoshao shrimp (火烧虾), and it sold so well that he named the shop after it. Anping's shrimp crackers come from the same shrimp: the fishing village worked out ways to preserve huoshao shrimp in the season when catches peaked. SETN reported in 2020 that the film Little Big Women (孤味), in which the grandmother raised her daughters in Tainan by frying shrimp, had made Tainan fried shrimp rolls widely popular.

How it is made

A recipe by a cook from Tainan known as Teacher A-Wei (阿威老师), published by SETN in 2020, mixes diced shrimp with fish paste, minced pork, chopped celery and spring onion. The filling is placed on a sheet of pig caul fat, the sides are tucked in and it is rolled up; a batter of sweet-potato starch, egg and water is mixed, and the rolls are fried in oil heated to 180°C until golden on both sides, then drained and cut into bite-sized pieces. He calls the caul fat the soul of the roll, since it supplies the fatty aroma, and freezes the rolls before frying so the caul does not come away in the oil. He used white shrimp only because huoshao shrimp cannot be bought in Taipei. The doctor Chu Yi-chih (朱益智), quoted in the same report, says the crisp celery and spring onion lighten the rich fish and pork.