I found a great deal on huge scallops and immediately went on the hunt for a recipe. I had pinned several recipes that sounded amazing, so it was a tough choice. Scallops are a bit of a luxury for us, and I wanted the recipe I chose to be spectacular. After a lot of back and forth, I settled on Scallops with Spicy Curry Sauce and Couscous. It used the exact number of scallops I bought, it was a complete meal, and my husband and I love curry. Curried scallops look incredibly good!
You’ve never had scallops quite like this before! The spicy curry sauce gives this scallop dish an extra creamy kick and the bed of couscous ties it all together!
The Ingredients
After I lucked out and got 8 ginormous scallops for just over $12, I only had to buy a couple of things for this recipe. My super-short grocery list was couscous and coconut milk.
And it turns out I didn’t need to buy the couscous since I already had some in my pantry. Too bad I didn’t realize that until after my trip to the grocery store. Oh well. Couscous isn’t expensive, and it will be used eventually.
The Process
This recipe for curried scallops went somewhat smoothly, and I had it ready in 25 minutes. Making the couscous went very smoothly, but there were a couple of pain points.
First, I seared the scallops in a cast-iron pan, and some of them stuck. A lot. As you can see in the picture below, some of the sear peeled off a few when I flipped the scallops after 3 minutes. For reference, most meat I sear in this pan releases after 2 minutes or so.
My pan is well-seasoned, and I was so surprised this happened. I can’t believe I’m saying this, but I recommend a non-stick pan for this recipe. Scallops are just too delicate to risk. And yes, you can sear in nonstick pans if you make sure they are thoroughly heated before adding your scallops (give it 5 minutes or so after you turn on the heat).
The next difficulty came when I drizzled the curry sauce over the scallops and couscous. It was very thin and immediately dripped off the scallops and disappeared into the couscous. So much so that I had a hard time telling I had added the sauce at all.
To solve the problem, I heated the sauce in my microwave. Then I made a cornstarch slurry with hot water and added it to the sauce until it thickened. The cornstarch didn’t affect the taste of the sauce, and the thicker sauce clung to the scallops. This step added about 5 minutes to the recipe’s total time and can be skipped if you don’t mind thin sauce.
