Calories in Prawn Curry

The recipe is a coastal-style curry: 150 g of tiger prawns simmered with 20 g of coconut, 30 g of onion, 5 g of tamarind and 10 g of oil, all of it one bowl. That is a generous helping of prawns, more than many home servings where the same quantity is shared around the table. Restaurant prawn curries tend to have fewer prawns and more gravy, often thickened with coconut milk or cashew paste. The balance of prawn to gravy is the thing to check against your own bowl, because the prawns carry the protein and the gravy carries the fat.

Fat supplies 57% of the energy, protein 31% and carbohydrate 11%. The 19.8 g of fat comes from two sources, the 10 g of oil and the 20 g of coconut, and the coconut is why much of it is saturated. Prawns themselves are very lean, so nearly all of the 24.4 g of protein is theirs and very little of the fat. The onion, tamarind and coconut account for the little carbohydrate and the 4.5 g of fibre.

A bowl is about 15% of a sedentary man's daily energy requirement and 19% of a woman's, and it brings 24.4 g of protein, a strong contribution to a rice-based meal. With steamed rice or neer dosa it is a full main course. Two bowls come to 626 kcal and 48.8 g of protein. The fat is already high in one bowl, so the rest of the plate is better kept plain: rice, a vegetable, no fried side. Half a bowl, about 156 kcal, still has a useful amount of prawn.

Fat is the figure to notice, and it is not the prawns' doing. One bowl has 19.8 g, which supplies 57% of its energy, and it comes from the coconut and the oil; two bowls carry 39.6 g. Curries built on thick coconut milk go higher still. People with raised cholesterol or a heart condition should ask their doctor or dietitian how prawn curry fits their diet, and anyone with a shellfish allergy should avoid it.