Encocado de Camarón: Ecuadorian Shrimp in Coconut Sauce

The aroma of coconut moves dinner to the seaside

The moment you lift the lid, an orange sauce shows through the white steam. The red of the shrimp, the tartness of the tomato, the rounded fragrance of coconut. The pot is quiet, but on a plate spooned over freshly cooked rice, the outline of the flavor already stands out.

This dish, called encocado de camarón in Spanish, is a coconut stew of shrimp from Ecuador's coast. Camarón means shrimp, and encocado refers to a stew made with coconut. A version made with fish is also well known, and the ingredients, whether fish, shrimp or chicken, vary by region and household.

When you talk about this dish, Esmeraldas province in northwestern Ecuador can't be left out. Ecuador's tourism board presents encocado as a dish of fish or shrimp stewed in coconut milk and herbs. The province's food culture layers African, Indigenous and mestizo traditions, and the Esmeraldas tourism guide (in Spanish) also describes fish stewed in coconut milk and spices as a taste of the region.

Coconut is not only the scent of sweet desserts. When unsweetened coconut milk is poured onto a refrito of sautéed onion, bell pepper, tomato and garlic, its richness, just short of sweetness, absorbs the saltiness of the seafood. The orange from annatto infused into oil lays a sunset color over the white sauce.

Here, 500 g of shrimp stars for 4 servings. It comes with rice and fried green plantain, and the heat isn't put in the pot; each person adds as much as they like at the table. Whether to buy the unusual annatto for its orange color, try paprika first, or buy coconut milk can be decided by how often you'll cook this.

Note that this is a different dish from encebollado (in Japanese), Ecuador's sharp-flavored fish soup. The pairing of lime and seafood also echoes Peruvian ceviche (in Japanese), but with encocado the seafood is cooked in the sauce. It is sometimes mentioned alongside Brazil's moqueca baiana (in Japanese) as a seaside coconut stew, but the Ecuadorian version is built on the aroma of the refrito and annatto.

Sort the ingredients first and you can see what to buy

The amounts are a guide for 4 people eating the shrimp sauce. Prepare the rice and green plantain separately to suit appetites. If using frozen shrimp, thaw them slowly in the refrigerator and pat the surface thoroughly dry with paper towels. If they stay wet, the seasoning is diluted and extra water gets into the sauce.

Encocado itself

What to serve with it

Prepare about 150 g of white rice per person, 600 g for 4 people. For a more Ecuadorian table, add patacones, thick slices of green plantain fried. If fresh green plantain is hard to find where you are, a small amount of frozen unsweetened cooking plantain or salted plantain chips will do. Ripe, sweet plantain sharpens the contrast with the sauce's saltiness, so start with a small amount.

The herbs used in Esmeraldas cooking also include a strongly scented leaf called chillangua, which is separate from cilantro. It is hard to find, so this recipe uses plenty of cilantro stems instead. The stems keep their fragrance through longer cooking than the leaves and add a green scent to the refrito. If you dislike cilantro, omit the leaves and use a small amount of flat-leaf parsley stems in place of the stems. The flavor will be milder.

Annatto is an ingredient where it's hard to decide whether to buy the first pack. What this dish wants is not strong heat but the red-orange that passes into the oil and a faint earthy aroma. In the fish encocado presented by Ecuador's chefs' association as well, the refrito is made by infusing achiote into oil. For this amount, leave the annatto seeds in oil over low heat for 2 to 3 minutes and remove them once the color comes out. If you want to make it more than once and enjoy the difference in color, buying annatto makes sense.

If you're only trying it once, you can replace it with 1 tsp sweet paprika. However, paprika does not reproduce the annatto aroma. Adding yellow with turmeric or curry powder changes the direction of the aroma, so this recipe does not recommend it.

If you buy annatto, check that it is whole seeds and not a seasoning blend. It suits people who will also use it in rice dishes, bean dishes and stews. If you just want the color once, making it with paprika you already have is not a failure.

Choose unsweetened coconut milk for cooking, not a sweet drink, whose ingredients are mostly coconut and water. It's fine if the solids have separated in the can; mix well before measuring. If you only have thick coconut cream, mix 300 ml cream with 100 ml water to make 400 ml. With a sweetened drink, sweetness comes forward against the saltiness of tomato and shrimp.

The one thing to check is that it is an unsweetened can of around 400 ml. If you cook this rarely, buy it only if you have small containers to freeze the leftover, and if you can't think of another use, there is also the option of thinning unsweetened coconut cream with water.

Method: finish the sauce first

If you are serving green plantain, cut it first and soak it in water while the rice cooks. The encocado itself proceeds in about 10 minutes of marinating, 8 minutes of sautéing vegetables, 5 minutes of simmering the sauce and 5 minutes of cooking the shrimp. Rather than trusting the recipe's clock alone, move on by the state of the pot, which absorbs differences in shrimp size and stove.

Cooking tips and the Esmeraldas table

Three things that go off while cooking

While you sauté the refrito, the tomato may release water and the bottom of the pan may stay wetter than expected. You can still make the flavor by pouring in the coconut milk, but if the aromatics merely boil, the center of the sauce blurs. Cook two more minutes, until a wooden spoon leaves a line on the bottom for a moment. If it seems about to scorch, lower the heat and stir more often.

If the coconut sauce is thin, first check whether the 5-minute simmer was cut short. Adding starch before reducing makes only the surface heavy. Add a little starch slurry only if, after simmering 5 minutes, it still runs too much over rice. If it gets too thick, add water or seafood stock 1 tbsp at a time and stir over low heat.

If the shrimp curl tight and the bite becomes rubbery, they have been overcooked. Next time, finish the sauce before the shrimp go in, and watch the color of one shrimp once they're in. For a pot you are cooking now, add the lime and cilantro after turning off the heat and spoon it a little at a time over hot rice, and the toughness will be less noticeable. You can improve it, but it won't go back to a fully raw texture.

If the annatto turned bitter, you may have kept simmering with the seeds in the oil. Remove the scorched seeds and add a small amount of unsalted tomato to the refrito to broaden the flavor. If bitterness remains, it is easier to even out the outline with lime and salt after finishing than to add more coconut milk. Adding turmeric for more color takes you toward a different dish, so next time lowering the heat is the shorter path.

The Esmeraldas table, and substitutions in a home kitchen

Esmeraldas, on Ecuador's Pacific coast, is a land where sea, river and tropical plants are close together. The local cooking brings seafood, coconut, green plantain, rice and herbs into one plate, joining what came from the sea with what came from the field. Ecuador's chefs' association presents fish encocao as a signature dish of Esmeraldas, linking it with onion, bell pepper, tomato, garlic, achiote oil, coconut milk, rice and green plantain.

It is better not to treat this dish as one fixed recipe, so that the local range comes through. Households that use fish pick a white fish whose flesh doesn't fall apart. The shrimp version lets the sweetness come forward, and the chicken version takes a longer simmer. Some households don't add heat evenly to the whole pot but serve ají on the side for each person to add. To re-create the Esmeraldas table in your own kitchen, rather than making every ingredient an import, keep the unsweetened quality of the coconut, the color of the annatto, the refrito of aromatic vegetables, and the combination of rice and green plantain.

Even among coconut stews of the Pacific, the scent differs from Brazil's northeastern moqueca baiana. Moqueca is well known for being built around dendê oil and coconut milk, whereas this encocado first builds the aroma of annatto and the vegetables of the refrito. Because they are similar, not putting all the same oils and herbs into the pot protects the outline of the dish.

Think of substitutions one at a time. Unsweetened coconut milk is the base of the flavor, so use it as is if you can. Annatto can be replaced with paprika. For chillangua, cilantro stems work well, and without green plantain the dish still stands on rice alone. Frozen shrimp are fine once thawed and dried. Avoid simply warming pre-cooked shrimp in the sauce; the flesh firms before the shrimp flavor comes out.

Frequently asked questions

What should I choose if I swap the shrimp for fish?

500 g of a white fish whose flesh holds together, such as cod, sea bass or swordfish, is an easy choice. Cut it into 2 to 3 cm cubes and, even if you marinate it the same way as the shrimp, mix gently so the surface doesn't break. Finish the coconut sauce, then add the fish and simmer over low heat for 6 to 8 minutes, until the center is opaque and flakes lightly with chopsticks. Thin fillets cook quickly, so keep the thickness even. Cooking time varies with the type of fish, so go by the state of the center rather than the clock.

Can I make it with coconut cream?

Yes. Cream alone is too rich, so thin the unsweetened kind with water to a total of 400 ml. Avoid cans whose labels list sugar or flavoring for a stew. Even if you like a thick sauce, rather than cutting the water from the start, cook as written and judge the thickness in the last minute, so you can read the timing for the shrimp.

Is it a spicy dish?

The encocado in the pot is mild if you add no chile. If you serve Ecuadorian ají on the side and let only those who want heat mix it in at the edge of the plate, you taste the sweetness of coconut and seafood first. If you separate a portion for children, set aside a little of the sauce before adding the lime, which also lets you adjust the acidity.

Without annatto, do the flavor and not only the color change a lot?

The difference in color is noticeable, but the dish can still be made. Briefly warm 1 tsp paprika in the oil and add it to the refrito without scorching it. The earthy aroma you get with annatto seeds will be weaker. Turmeric and curry powder can stand in for the color, but they head in a different direction from encocado's aroma, so treat them as a different variation, not a substitute.

How many days does it keep?

Divide what you'll eat from what you'll store, move it to a shallow container and let the heat escape. The US Food and Drug Administration advises not leaving perishable food at room temperature for more than 2 hours and eating refrigerated leftovers within 3 to 4 days. The shrimp sauce follows the same idea: refrigerate early and reheat only what you'll eat, all the way through in a pot. Keep the rice in a separate container and add a little water when reheating. Do not eat anything whose smell, sliminess or color seems off, regardless of the number of days.

Encocado tightens slightly when reheated the next day. Add 1 tbsp water or coconut milk at a time, stir over low heat, then add a little lime, and it returns to how it was just before eating. Rather than adding more shrimp and re-simmering, combining the leftover sauce with freshly cooked fish or steamed vegetables avoids adding to the toughness of the flesh.

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