I have a tender place in my heart for lemon grass. My mother, a Thai immigrant, didn’t cook with the fresh plant a lot when I was growing up, but when lemongrass did make its way into our meals, there was no mistaking it. The warm floral aromas and vibrant citrus flavor, without the sharpness of citrus juice, bring a singular character to any dish. With three stalks of fresh lemon grass, our Coconut-Lemon Grass Shrimp with Rice is bright and vibrant without being acidic.

The shrimp might seem like the obvious main event in this dish, but I’d argue that the star is the mood-boosting gravy. It’s a sunny, turmeric-yellow sauce which, while thickened with roasted macadamia nuts and coconut milk, manages to feel anything but heavy. Lemongrass is blended directly into the sauce, extracting every bit of flavor from the plant. And there is plenty of flavor there, as long as you know what to look for in the produce aisle.

How to buy lemongrass

Years ago, my mom often went without lemon grass because it can be difficult to source, depending on where you live. (She grows her own now, which is surprisingly easy, if you’re into that sort of thing.) But, thanks to a growing interest in international cuisines, you can often find it in major supermarkets and small, independent, produce-centered grocery stores. If you have an Asian or Caribbean grocery store near you, that might be your best bet for fresh stalks.

Picking your bundle of lemon grass is just like shopping for any plant; it should look healthy and strong. The root end should not be dry and brown. It should be firm, white to light green, and the blades of grass should be tightly-wrapped at the base of the stalk. The tips of the blades will be thin and darker green. If you have a choice, don’t buy stalks with brown, cracking and/or dry tips. That plant either has traveled a long way or has been sitting on the shelf out of water for a long time. A dry plant will be less flavorful. If all the lemongrass in your market has dry ends, choose the one with the plumpest root end, as that’s the portion of the plant called for in this recipe.

How to prepare lemon grass

Depending on the store, you may find lemon grass with the sharp grass tips still intact or snipped off. If the blade tips are still attached, handle them carefully. Make no mistake, lemon grass is indeed a grass and, while flavorful, not all parts of it digest particularly well. It often is steeped in liquid to extract flavor and then discarded, but the tender root end can be ground or finely sliced. For this Coconut-Lemon Grass Shrimp recipe, the first five to six inches of the root end are roughly chopped and tossed into the blender, along with the other sauce components, and blended until smooth.

Only sear one side of the shrimp

We don’t flip our shrimp in the pan for a reason. Shrimp cooks quickly and overcooking follows closely behind. We sear one side in coconut oil until golden to build flavor with the Maillard reaction. Trying to get more of that flavor on the other side of the shrimp is not worth the trade-off of potentially overcooking it. Searing only one side now and finishing the shrimp in the sauce later allows us to gently cook the shrimp until just opaque, holding on to its natural sweetness and preserving its soft and delicate texture.

Hang onto those shrimp tails

In this dish, we build flavor, layer upon layer, to create unmistakable depth. As much as we love quick and easy recipes, you can’t get flavor like this without a bit of worthwhile fuss. You must blend, simmer, and strain your sauce, and you must get tail-on shrimp. Those tails are crucial for rounding out the flavor of the sauce.

If your shrimp was frozen, thaw them as per the package directions and gently but firmly squeeze the middle of the tail shell with your dominant hand while pulling the opposite direction with your other hand. The tail shell should separate from the rest of the body without detaching any of the meat. Keep the reserved tails nearby.

Frying the shrimp tails is the beginning of how we build that characteristic sweet and savory flavor we love from the crustacean. Shrimp tails (and shells) have both fat-soluble and water-soluble flavor compounds, so we do both. We start by frying them to extract those compounds into the coconut oil. The oil now has a shrimpy layer of flavor to it. Later on, the lemon grass sauce is added to the pan with the shells to simmer. The liquid in the sauce does the last bit of extracting for those water-loving compounds, adding even more flavor to the dish.

The last ingredient is a bit of patience

By the time you’re simmering the sauce for the last time, you’ve already fried your shrimp tails, softened your Fresno chilies and strained out the ginger fibers and lemongrass pulp from the sauce. The aromas are heady and you’re eager to get it all on a plate. Patience in this final simmer is key.

Before you even think of adding the shrimp into the sauce, scrape a rubber spatula along the bottom of the pan. It should leave a trail about an inch behind for a second before flooding back into the space. This ensures the golden sauce will actually coat the shrimp and rice when you spoon it onto your dish, not run right off.

We recommend spooning this fragrant sauce and shrimp over a fluffy heap of Coconut-Ginger Rice, but even the most plain, unflavored grains will sing in this sauce.

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Allie Chanthorn Reinmann

Allie Chantorn Reinmann is a Digital Staff Writer for Christopher Kimball’s Milk Street. She’s a Thai-American chef who earned her diploma for Pastry and Baking Arts at The Institute of Culinary Education and worked professionally for over a decade honing her craft in New York City at places like Balthazar, Bien Cuit, The Chocolate Room, Billy’s Bakery and Whole Foods. Allie took her know-how from the kitchen to the internet, writing about food full-time at Lifehacker for three years and starting her own YouTube channel, ThaiNYbites. You can find her whipping up baked goods for cafés around Brooklyn, building wedding cakes and trying her hand (feet?) at marathon running. She’s working on her debut cookbook and lives in Brooklyn, NY.