Oven Fried Shrimp Nuggets for Bento - Hanpen

Method

• Put the chopped onion in a heatproof container, add the seasoning ingredients, cover loosely with plastic wrap and microwave for 1 minute.
• Leave to cool.
• Mash up the hanpen (until there are no more big chunks) in the packaging.
• The bag may burst open, so open it up a little bit before doing this.
• Peel and devein the shrimp.
• Chop up 4 of the shrimp into a paste, and mix with the mashed hanpen from Step 2 in a bowl.
• Cut the remaining 4 shrimp into chunks to retain their plump firm texture.
• Take the edamame out of their pods and chop up roughly (Remove the thin skins if you can).
• Add cooled onion, mayonnaise, flour, katakuriko, salt and pepper to the bowl with the hanpen and shrimp paste, and mix and knead well.
• Add the chunky shrimp and edamame from Step 4 and mix.
• Prep the flour for coating.
• Scoop the shrimp mixture with a tablespoon, press down, and take it out again using another spoon and drop it into the flour.
• Flatten the nuggets while coating them evenly with the flour.
• Put the flour in a container and add the milk little by little.
• Drop a nugget into the batter, coat with a spoon and pick up with chopsticks to transfer to the bread crumb bowl.
• Coat the nuggets with panko.
• They can be any shape you like, but they do puff up a bit so make them on the thin side.
• I formed them like this to imitate frozen nuggets.
• Deep fry in fairly low temperature oil, about 320F/160C.
• When they puff up a bit and become golden brown they're OK.
• It takes about 1 minute and 30 seconds.
• Freshly fried nuggets are soft and plump and delicious.
• To freeze, cool them down completely and store in a plastic bag.