Take a break from the usual garlic butter shrimp. Instant laksa paste forms an aromatic, flavor-packed sauce for these juicy seared prawns.
This recipe turns laksa’s spicy, flavor-rich soup into a rich curry sauce for pan-seared prawns. Instant laksa paste does all the legwork, while coconut milk and a squeeze of lemon tames the hot spices. A swirl of cold butter at the end augments the sauce with a high-gloss, velvety body. Serve it solo, with rice or bread to soak up the sauce, or over noodles for a dry laksa situation.
Laksa’s robust flavor comes from rempah, or spice paste in Malay, which requires anywhere from 3 to 20 ingredients.
The exact ingredients can vary based on regional preferences. Here’s what you’ll often find: garlic; galangal; lemongrass; shrimp paste (or belacan); spices like turmeric, cumin, and coriander. These ingredients are pounded or blended together to form a paste. It’s a lot of work to prepare from scratch, even for locals!
For this recipe, you can use whatever laksa paste you find in the grocery.
When you finish a sauce with cold butter, it takes on a smooth, rich, and glossy texture.
In culinary terms, this technique is called monter au beurre, meaning "mount with butter". Cold butter, swirled bit by bit into a pan sauce, gives it a richer body. This process—most importantly, the swirling action—combines the butter and sauce into one homogenous mixture, forming an emulsion.
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You’ll need to serve this dish as soon as you’re done cooking, because the emulsion won’t last forever! As long as the sauce is warm, you’ll enjoy a butter-enriched sauce. But once the sauce is cooled or reheated, the butter will separate.
