Szechuan Shrimp Recipe

Whenever I’m craving spicy food, I go to my nearest local Chinese restaurant and order a delicious serving of Szechuan shrimp. Each tender shrimp is covered in a concentrated spicy sauce with green onions, bell peppers, and garlic for added texture and taste. It may look like a simple marinated shrimp dish with vegetables, but it’s actually sooo much more than that!

I’ve recreated a lot of Chinese shrimp recipes before like kung pao shrimp and shrimp lo mein. Those dishes satisfied my Asian food cravings, but honestly, nothing beats the strong and bold flavors of a traditional Szechuan style shrimp stir fry dish. You can get one of these at Tiger Noodle House, but I honestly prefer making this at home.

So, what is Szechuan food? Well, Szechuan or Sichuan cuisine is well-known for its hot and spicy flavors with just the right hints of sweet and savory goodness. It’s a bit different from Hunan shrimp and Imperial shrimp. These are other mild to hot and spicy shrimp dishes served in most Chinese restaurants. I’ve tried making some before, actually! Hunan shrimp doesn’t use any sweet ingredients. Meanwhile, a Szechuan shrimp recipe almost always uses sweeteners like sugar or honey, or sweet ingredients such as ketchup or hoisin sauce to balance out the spices. But, its flavors are far from the sweet and sour taste of the Imperial shrimp dish.

That’s why, when I was recreating this recipe, I wanted to focus more on lowering the spice level so that my family and friends would enjoy it as well. Not all of them could handle the heat! I didn’t use traditional Chinese spices like Szechuan pepper, Szechuan peppercorns, chili oil with fermented black beans, hot bean paste, or chili paste for this recipe. Instead, I used simple dried red pepper flakes so it’s still moderately spicy and delicious. Although, if you do want to retain some of the heat, then you can make your own separate hot Szechuan sauce recipe, which is what I did since I couldn’t miss out on the spice!

Besides the spices, you can also try and switch out the sherry wine with some Shaoxing wine for a more authentic flavor. It’s basically a Chinese rice wine with a distinctive flavor that’s somewhat sweet and vinegary. And then, mix in a bit of rice vinegar as well for a bit more tang. For the shrimp, I used medium-sized shrimps, but you can also use larger-sized shrimps like prawns to make delicious Szechuan prawns.

Lastly, if you want a more filling meal, you can include mixed vegetables as well. Other people would add baby corn, broccoli, water chestnuts, green beans, mushrooms, or even sugar snap peas into the mix. However, I decided to go with simple red bell peppers since I wanted to highlight the shrimp’s spicy and savory flavor more in this dish.