Crowds will converge upon the low-country town this weekend to feast on shrimp gumbo, meet Miss Yemassee and pay tribute to shrimp baiting. But even Lori Poston, who's chairing the 16th annual festival, cops to being slightly ambivalent about the peculiar regional practice of using a mix of clay and fish meal to lure thousands of wriggling shrimp.
"It stinks to high heaven," Poston says of the traditional bait. "It's the stinkingest thing you ever smelled. When my husband comes back from shrimp baiting, he takes his clothes off at the door."
Shrimp caught using bait don't return in much better shape than the shrimpers, she adds.
"The vein's the main thing," Poston says. "The meal gets into the shrimp and you have to clean the veins. It's nice when you can just free cast without bait."
Roasted broccoli with shrimp. Photo: Sarah LeTrent
Few of us want to make a complicated lasagna for solo dining -- by day six, you'll never want to see lasagna again! In this series, AOL Food staffer Sarah LeTrent taste-tests simple recipes suitable for a "table for one."
Grilling out defines summer, but after a busy weekday, few people feel like manning the grill or huddling over a hot grill pan. In this recipe, the oven does all the dirty work for you.
Enter this often overlooked and underrated method of cooking: roasting.
Try this method for broccoli and shrimp. Roasting caramelizes the natural sugars and brings out both ingredients' natural sweetness.
While shrimp is delicious on its own, deep-fried or sautéed with pasta and butter, it it seems to pack the most flavor -- and color -- when served as part of the classic shrimp cocktail.
Pleasing to the eyes as well as the palate, this single shellfish from No Recipes is dipped in an Asian-inspired twist on the staid red cocktail sauce, combining the usual fresh tomatoes and tomato sauce with Thai sweet chili and fish sauces, lime juice and wasabi. It sounds so good, we're tempted to try to pluck the perfectly pink crustacean straight off the screen.
Breaded shrimp, a classic bit of finger food, can be found on menus all over America ... but also Down Under, it seems. In this Aussie video, a perky chef makes a departure from the boring breaded prawns (large shrimps) so frequently found when dining out: pre-made, formerly frozen lumps of blandness, usually paired with an equally bland sauce.
This being a recession, making your own breaded shrimp at home is an easy, satisfying way to save some money. With great tips for breading (adding cream and freshly smashed garlic to the egg mixture) and a rather unique sauce you might not have tried before -- a combo of mayo, brown sugar, onion, capers, tomato paste, tomatoes, hard-boiled eggs, Tabasco sauce and lemon juice -- we're thinking this one looks pretty tasty.
But what about you Slashfoodies? Got a great breading secret for your shrimp dishes? Spill in the comments!
Shrimp are delicious hot, warm or cold, full of health benefits and perfect for summer grilling and beach side picnics. I start to feel like Bubba from "Forrest Gump" when I'm listing all the ways I cook them -- shrimp salad, shrimp skewers, shrimp dipped in coconut, shrimp with chipotle and orange -- but I think the guy was on to something.
In addition to their versatility, shrimp, also called "fruit of the sea," are high in tryptophane. That's one of the 10 essential amino acids, serving to soothe the nervous system and aid relaxation. They also contain high amounts of vitamin D, the new super antioxidant being touted for cancer prevention.
Read on for Jennifer's four-step method for devining shrimp and the reason she gets funny looks at the grocery store.
If you happen to be anywhere near Georgia this Saturday and have a hankering for grits -- consider a drive to Warwick. The town -- approximately 82 miles south of Macon -- holds its 12th annual National Grits Festival on April 11, complete with a cookoff, a Miss Grits pageant and the Grits Pit -- a creamy tub designed to get grits lovers, well, gritty (see photo above).
"That's a big attraction at 2 o'clock in the afternoon now," festival coordinator Bob Holland told Slashfood.
Warwick hosts this ode to the Southern larder despite the fact that it doesn't produce grits, though it does have a lot of corn growing amid the cotton and peanuts on nearby farmland, Holland said.
"You can do anything with grits," Holland said. "It depends on your taste and your imagination."
More gritty talk and the late great Bill Neal's recipe for shrimp and grits that turned me into a grits fan after the jump.
One of the most delicious ways to serve shrimp is to lather it in garlic butter. I learned this at a very young age, when my grandfather taught me the beauty of shrimp scampi and medium rare prime rib. The moment I had both, I became a gluttonous pig, making many servers double-take with my dinner orders. (And I never had to use a "doggie bag!")
Anyhow, most classic scampi recipes ask for some sauteed garlic that gets white wine and butter added to it. But have no fear -- if you have no white wines open or available, just use red. The flavor will, of course, be a little different, but it will still be darned good -- the wine flavor just works beautifully with the sinfully perfect melted garlic butter.
Back away from those tiny-shrimp platters! I don't know why, but every time someone throws a party, they pick up those rings of mini shrimp as if it's gourmet and delicious. Not only are those shrimp too tiny to enjoy, but they also offer barely a fraction of the taste of the freshly prepared, larger variety.
So, to help get you off the crappy shrimp ring bandwagon, I give you: How to Devein Shrimp. It's easy. It's quick. It just requires a short amount of time to get rid of the shell and devein, and a quick saute to cook. (Talk about an easy saute -- the shrimp turn pink when they're done, so there's absolutely no guesswork.) I swear -- it's better to have less shrimp and mouth-watering flavor than those little things with crappy flavor -- save those for your shrimp salad.
For your lunchtime pleasure, I'm presenting a series of my favorite bento boxes. Bento are Japanese home-prepared meals served in special boxes, usually eaten for lunch at work or school. These days, bento enthusiasts from all over the world share their creations on Flickr.
Here's another example of a Japanese mass-produced bento, from Payton Chung's photostream. We've got a nice fat shrimp, a small fish, bits of carrot and greens, shredded radish, noodles and a nice slice of hard-boiled egg. Seriously, could this not catch on in the United States? I'd take something like this over a turkey wrap any day.
For your lunchtime pleasure, I'm presenting a series of my favorite bento boxes. Bento are Japanese home-prepared meals served in special boxes, usually eaten for lunch at work or school. These days, bento enthusiasts from all over the world share their creations on Flickr.
As part of a Halloween-themed bento, Lorigami has put nori eyes to five large cooked shrimp, giving the critters a spooky, Jim Henson-gone-bad look. The shrimp appear to be emerging from a brakish pool of pesto like creatures from the deep.
I never thought anything could beat the combination of garlic, butter, and shrimp in scampi. But really, that's more because garlic and butter make most things taste great, rather than the trio being the perfect flavor combination. When my tongue got a taste of ginger shrimp, however, I discovered a true pairing. The crisp, spicy-yet-light ginger flavor is just meant to go with shrimp, and together, they're unstoppable. Put it in a stir-fry, pasta, pizza, or a wrap like above.
Seeing that I still have some homemade mayonnaise, I decided to whip together a quick shrimp salad. Some frozen shrimp was quickly sauteed with ginger, cooled, and then mixed with mayo, onions, orange peppers, and a little salt and pepper. Spooned into a wrap with some diced Swedish vodka currant cheddar, and you've got a great twist on the usual seafood salad.
For another twist -- add the ginger shrimp to some egg salad.
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