Fried Ikan Billis (Anchovies)

Ever wonder how you can prepare a good bowl of soup in 25 minutes without using MSG or those ikan billis or chicken stock?? Well, Aaron going to teach you how and you will be surprise that how easy it is to cook!

Anchovies have plenty of health benefits that are valuable to people of all ages. They are rich in calcium, protein, Vitamin D and Vitamin E as well. It is said that three tablespoons of anchovies will give you about 180mg of calcium, which is about one-fifth of an adult's daily calcium requirement. You can read more about the health benefits of anchovies here http://hubpages.com/hub/Health-Benefits-of-Anchovies.

Here are the ingredients: (serves 2)

A handful of anchovies

Oil (4~5 tbsp)

You might need a small air tight container to store the fried ikan billis like the one shown in my picture on the left.

Directions:

Wash and soak the anchovies (as the dried variety has high salt content)

Dry it using a paper towel (If you need it to dry at a faster pace, heat up the wok without putting any oil and dry it using the heat of the wok)
Heat up the wok and pour in the oil

Once the oil is hot, place all anchovies into the wok and fry it

Reduce the heat as you don't want to over fry the anchovies

Once the anchovies turn to golden brown and crispy, remove and drain the oil from it

Cool and store in bottle

Note: Try not to store it for too long (not more than 3 days) as the the oil in the fried anchovies will spoil the taste.

You can use these fried anchovies to boil soup or as a topping on your fried rice, noodle or you can even eat it on its own. If you are planning to use it as a topping up, it is best to use those that are freshly fried rather than those that you stored in container. For me, I used it (half the amount in the container) for my noodle soup by boiling the anchovies for a good 15~20 minutes and putting in all my favorite ingredients. And when the noodle was done, I put some on top my noodles as well.

The soup was really sweet and it has all the natural goodness of the anchovies packed in it. The additional fried anchovies made my noodle more tasty as well! Stay tune for my next post where I will show you how you can prepare a simple noodle soup using these fried anchovies. =)

Nothing left!!