Restaurant’s Daab Chingri recipe in 15-20 mins with video

Today I am making Bengali restaurant’s style most quick and easy Daab Chingri recipe in 15-20 minutes. Restaurant style daab chingri is a creamy, white, slightly sweet, fresh cream and coconut milk based prawn curry served in a tender coconut shell. Along with being scrumptious, the method is so simple and easy that a beginner can also easily make this dish at home.

Generally in Bengali restaurants, Daab chingri is made with medium-sized white prawns, tender coconut malai, coconut milk, fresh cream, curd, onion, ginger, garlic paste and green chilli. Finally, serve in a fresh tender coconut shell instead of serving in a bowl. Actually, in restaurants, prawns are not cooked in a tender coconut shell as we see in the traditional daab chingri recipe.

Here I used medium-sized prawns; however, daab chingri is also prepared with golda chingri or any large prawns too. As golda chingri is big, you have to surely make a big hole in the tender coconut’s mouth to easily put the prawns in and out of the shell. Otherwise, before cooking, Insert toothpicks in each prawn, which will also help you to keep the prawns easily in the coconut shell and take them out from the shell.

A fully grown tender coconut is perfect to use for this recipe as it contains a thick layer of malai. But very difficult to cut its mouth or to make a hole in its mouth, especially with our plain kitchen tools. So, better to ask the seller to cut the coconut’s mouth and make a big hole, which will be easy to fill with the prawns. Here I used a half mature tender coconut, which was easy to cut and easy to make a hole in. However, it contains very little malai, so I had to use coconut milk in addition.

If you are using frozen prawns, then, must defrost the prawns before cooking. Either defrost the prawns for 10 minutes in the microwave oven’s defrost mode. Or simply soak the prawns in water until prawns come to room temperature. For quick defrosting of prawns, you can even add a little salt to the water.

Sometimes prawns get chewy due to over-frying or over-cooking. So to keep the prawns soft and juicy, first shallow fry or lightly sauté the prawns just for a minute. Then slow cook them in gravy, keeping the prawns tender and juicy. Prepare it in a gas oven or a microwave oven, it doesn’t matter. Slow cooking and maintaining low heat entire cooking process are important and the secret to make best daab chingri recipe.

I made this recipe with 500 g of prawns. The ratio of the ingredients was also shared accordingly. If you want to make this recipe with more or less than 500 g of prawns? But confused about the ratio of the ingredients, feel free to ask me in the comment section below this post.

How to make Restaurant’s Daab Chingri recipe step by step

First, cut the mouth of a tender coconut, take out its water in a bowl.

Scrape the coconut malai with a spoon and blend it well.

Here I had very little malai, so I also used coconut milk. Need at least 1/2 cup of coconut malai for this recipe.

To make coconut milk, blend 1 cup of grated coconut with 1 cup of coconut water first. Then strain to take out the extract. However, you can use a cup of packet coconut milk instead, to save time and effort.

Blend 1 medium onion until it makes a smooth paste. Separately, make a paste of ginger, garlic and green chillies. Or use 1 tsp ginger paste and 1 tsp garlic paste.

Whisk or beat 3/4 of the curd until smooth and creamy, and keep aside.

To clean the prawns, make sure the veins are removed. (Here I used deshelled and deveined prawns taken from Licious.) 

Wash the prawns first, and drain the water well.

Heat a pan, and pour 3 tbsp of mustard oil. Once the oil is hot, fry the prawns for 1-2 mins, and remove from the pan.

Fry 1 onion paste with the same oil until release oil releases. 

Then add the ginger-chilli-garlic paste, and 3/4 tsp salt, mix well, and fry them until dry.

Next, add the curd, mix well, and cook until the gravy gets dry and leaves oil.

Then add coconut malai and coconut milk, and add 3/4 tsp sugar. Then add 2-3 tbsp of fresh cream. Mix well.

Once the gravy starts to boil, add the prawns to it and stir well.

Lower the heat, cover the pan and cook the prawns for 5 minutes.

After 5 minutes of slow cooking, remove the cover and add 1/4 tsp of garam masala powder.

Mix well and cook the gravy for hardly a minute until it is ready.

Then pour the gravy into the coconut shell and serve.

Bengali restaurants’ style daab chingri is ready.