Salvaged prawn broth

Whenever we have prawns and there are shells, I always use them to make prawn broth and then freeze it until it's used to make a soup dish that consisted (thrown in sequence) onion, enoki mushroom and mock snow crab leg meat.

As with all broth, Ban can't stand the smell when I'm making it but he's more than fine to have the soup in the end. He especially loves watercress soup and ABC soup (with slightly more tomato) where I use homemade chicken broth.

There was this time, though, where his mum gave us some very fresh prawns. She bought them live and concussed them in freezer before passing some to us. These prawns emitted stronger smell. I didn't mind but not Ban. I thought that as usual the end product, the soup, would be fine for him but he complained about it. First time.

So the next time I cooked broth from shells of these prawns, I asked my family for advice on how to lessen the 'prawn-y' smell. Mum suggested ginger but we didn't have any that time. I just froze the broth, got some ginger few days later and then started cooking the snow crab meat soup but this time, I boil the thawed broth with ginger for a while first.

As I was cooking the soup, I was getting worried that the reduction in the smell might not be enough and so I drizzled some soy sauce, sashimi soy sauce and, right at the end, sesame oil. I believed the last one did most of the trick. Ban finished the soup and doesn't mind have it again. Success! 😀