Ebi Mayo

Ebi Mayo is deep-fried shrimp coated in a honey mayo sauce. It's crispy, creamy, sweet, and just a little bit sour to counteract the richness. This was my first attempt at making ebi mayo and I think I got it pretty close to the restaurant.

My wife's friend recently invited us out to dinner and I got to try ebi mayo for the first time. It was really good but also not the best choice of appetizer because we were already eating really creamy ramen and everything was too rich together. That being said, I could still see myself ordering ebi mayo all the time.

What shrimp to use?

You will want to use a larger-sized shrimp. I'm using size 21-25 shrimp, which means there are 21 to 25 shrimps per pound. I would highly recommend anywhere in the range of 13-15, 16-20, or 21-25. I like shrimps in these sizes because they take a bit longer to cook so you have more time to get a golden brown color on the outside.

Tempura batter

For the batter, I went with a tempura-style batter with rice flour, tapioca starch, flour, cold water, and baking powder. One very important tip is to keep your water as cold as possible. This will give the crust a crispier texture after frying. I usually keep mine in the fridge until the very last second before I mix it into the dry ingredients.

Deep-frying

Shrimp cook very fast (between 2-3 minutes only). That's why I like using bigger shrimp so we can extend the cooking time a bit longer and get a better color and crispier crust on the shrimp. I found that deep-frying around the 350-375°F mark gives the best results.

What's in the mayo sauce?

At the restaurant I went to, the ebi mayo was described as "crispy shrimp tempura served in a honey mayo sauce." So without a doubt, there is honey and mayo. One thing to realize with restaurants is that when they list honey, they do not mean 100% honey. They usually dilute it with a lot of sugar because honey is expensive. Another thing I noticed is that the sauce was quite acidic so I'm adding fresh lemon juice as well.