Chinese · Seafood
Kung Po Prawns
About this recipe
Chinese cuisine is regional rather than singular — the spice of Sichuan, the soy-and-ginger of Cantonese, the wheat dumplings of the north. A few foundational techniques (wok hei, double-cooking, the brine-then-roast cycle for meats) cross every regional line.
As a seafood dish, Kung Po Prawns demands timing precision: the difference between perfect and overcooked is often less than 90 seconds, and the result of overshooting is a textural penalty there's no fixing.
Set your servings in the scaler above and every line of the recipe rewrites itself with smart fractions and unit promotion. Open Cook Mode to step through it hands-free with timers running.
Recipe data is sourced from TheMealDB's open community database; ScaleRecipe handles the curation, the scaling math, the editorial commentary, and the conversion utilities woven into each page.
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Method
- Mix the cornflour and 1 tbsp soy sauce, toss in the prawns and set aside for 10 mins. Stir the vinegar, remaining soy sauce, tomato purée, sugar and 2 tbsp water together to make a sauce.
- When you’re ready to cook, heat a large frying pan or wok until very hot, then add 1 tbsp oil. Fry the prawns until they are golden in places and have opened out– then tip them out of the pan.
- Heat the remaining oil and add the peanuts, chillies and water chestnuts. Stir-fry for 2 mins or until the peanuts start to colour, then add the ginger and garlic and fry for 1 more min. Tip in the prawns and sauce and simmer for 2 mins until thickened slightly. Serve with rice.
Cooking notes
Scaling works best when you weigh ingredients rather than measure by volume — small differences in packing can compound at higher multipliers.
For volume-to-weight conversions of any ingredient — flour, sugar, butter, salts — use the ingredient converter. To translate the recipe's oven temperature between °C, °F and gas mark, see the temperature converter.
When you scale this recipe up or down, remember that cooking time does not scale linearly. A doubled cake takes longer, but not twice as long; a doubled soup takes roughly twice as long. The cooking-time guide gives sensible starting estimates by dish geometry.
Scaling notes
Scaling Kung Po Prawns
Kung Po Prawns is written for around four servings as it stands on this page — scaling it up for a party or down for a meal-for-one is the small math problem most home cooks face every week. Here's how this particular dish responds to scaling, what changes linearly, and what doesn't.
Seafood is the most scaling-sensitive protein because the overcooking window is narrow and the penalty is steep. Scale Kung Po Prawns per piece if you can — cook three fillets in two batches rather than crowd the pan into one. Sauce-based seafood dishes scale linearly, but always taste before adding more salt: brininess from the seafood itself doesn't scale predictably.
Because this recipe is built around flour and sugar, weighing in grams (rather than measuring cups) is what separates a consistent bake from a one-time win. A cup of all-purpose flour can weigh 113 g or 150 g depending on how you scoop — that's a 30 % swing that ruins texture.
Skip the math entirely — ScaleRecipe's scaler rewrites every ingredient line above with proper culinary fractions and smart unit promotion the moment you change the serving count. Open the scaler →
Beyond the recipe
Substitutions & make-ahead — Kung Po Prawns
Two things home cooks ask about most when they're outside the recipe's exact assumptions: what swaps work for which ingredients, and how the dish behaves when you make it ahead. Both depend on what Kung Po Prawns is doing structurally — here's the practical version.
Substitution ideas
Brown sugar
Brown sugar = white sugar + molasses. For 1 cup light brown sugar, use 1 cup granulated sugar + 1 tbsp molasses; for dark brown, 2 tbsp molasses. Coconut sugar is a near-1:1 swap with slightly less caramel depth — works for both light and dark.
Cornstarch
Arrowroot powder substitutes 1:1 and actually works better in acidic sauces (cornstarch breaks down under prolonged acid heat). Tapioca starch is also 1:1. All-purpose flour works but needs twice as much (2 tbsp flour per 1 tbsp cornstarch) and produces a slightly cloudier sauce.
For weight-based swaps and arbitrary quantities, the ingredient density converter and the cup-to-grams chart cover most pantry staples.
Make-ahead and storage
Seafood is the worst-tempered category for make-ahead — texture and flavour both degrade quickly after cooking. Kung Po Prawns should ideally be cooked the day it's served. If a make-ahead is unavoidable, prep components (the sauce, marinade, vegetables, garnishes) the day before and cook the fish or shellfish at the last moment. Cooked seafood develops a pronounced fishy off-flavour within 24 hours even when properly refrigerated.
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Kung Po Prawns
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Each opens in a new tab so the timer keeps running. The math is auditable on the guide page below each converter, with worked examples and where the numbers come from.
Volume
Tablespoons, teaspoons, cups, ml, fluid ounces — every culinary volume unit, with US/metric/imperial cups handled distinctly.
OpenWeight
Grams, ounces, pounds, kilograms — exact for any ingredient, plus the volume-to-weight conversions for ~40 pantry staples.
OpenTemperature
Fahrenheit, Celsius, gas mark — translate any oven temperature, with notes on conventional vs convection.
OpenCooking time
The cube-root rule for scaling up, the differences between meat / cake / soup geometry, and sensible starting estimates.
OpenPan size
9-inch round vs 8-inch square vs 13×9. The math is surface area, not diameter — and the converter shows you both.
OpenLength
Inches and centimetres — for when a recipe says “cut into 1-inch pieces” and your ruler is metric.
OpenIngredient density
A cup of flour weighs 120 g; a cup of honey weighs 340. The full table of ~40 staples, with sources.
OpenOpen in main scaler
Edit the recipe text, scale by serving count, and copy the result. Same parser as the in-page scaler, more room to work.
OpenFrom the journal
Original essays on the small details.
The why behind the technique — original writing on the ingredient and equipment choices that separate a good cook from a frustrated one.
Reading a recipe like a chef
The 30-or-so recipe terms that show up most often, decoded
Read essayMay 4, 2026
Cooking for one — scaling principles
The math, the practical realities, and the recipes designed for one from the start
Read essayMay 4, 2026
How long do leftovers actually last?
Beyond the USDA's 3–4 days: the variables that actually determine the safe window
Read essayMay 4, 2026
Go deeper
Where this recipe sits in the wider tradition.
Each guide below is a real essay on the cuisine or the category — pillars, staples, techniques worth learning — paired with a curated grid of recipes filed under it.
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