How to Boil Shrimp

Shrimp is a delicious seafood dish. The shrimp meat is so tender and sweet that it only takes a few minutes to cook and just garnish with half a lemon. Here’s how to cook shrimp or commercial shrimp. For the best dish, you should use shrimp caught in the wild and fresh.

Table of Contents

Ingredient

0.45 kg of natural shrimp, still fresh
1/4 cup apple cider vinegar
1 pinch of salt
3-4 tablespoons Old Bay Seasoning for extra flavor
Ice
1 lemon, halved for garnish

Steps

Bring a large pot of water to a boil. The amount of water needed to cover the entire shrimp, should be more than 2.5-5 cm.

Add to water:
- 1/4 cup apple cider vinegar
- Pinch of salt.
- Spice. You can use Zatarain’s Shrimp Boil or Old Bay Seasoning, or a combination of both. Use a box of Zatarain’s seasoning powder, or 3-4 spoons of Old Bay, or 1 box of Zatarain’s with 1 spoon of Old Bay.

Boil the water for a few more minutes for the spices to dissolve. This step helps turn the filtered water into the broth or brine that you will use to put the shrimp in.

Drop the fresh shrimp into the water. Most chefs agree that boiled shrimp with the head and shell on (although it takes time to peel off the shell when eaten) is tastier and more flavorful. ^{[1] X Research Source}^{[2] X Research Source}^{[3] X Research Source} If desired, you can remove the black thread on the back of the shrimp before putting the shrimp in the pot.

Boil until a few shrimps start to float to the surface. Boiling time for shrimp is not fixed but small shrimp (more than 50 shrimp per 0.5 kg) takes about 2-3 minutes, large shrimp (about 30 shrimp per 0.5 kg) takes about 5-7 minutes. However, this is only a general guide.

If you want to check for doneness, you can see that the shrimp is cooked when the thickest part of the meat becomes opaque.
Do not overcook shrimp. Overcooked shrimp will be hard and chewy. Turn off the heat as soon as a few shrimps start to float to the surface.

Pour the shrimp into the sieve and immediately dip into the bowl of ice water. Just dip the sieve into a bowl of ice water and take it out immediately. This step will partly help prevent the shrimp from cooking further.

Drain the shrimp, arrange on a serving plate and garnish with half a lemon. Enjoy!

Advice

Do not overcook the shrimp as it will harden and lose its flavor.
You can add 2-4 cloves of garlic and/or 1-2 onions to the boiling water for extra flavor.
Shrimp stored for a long time or frozen are difficult to peel.
Prepare a cocktail sauce from ketchup, horseradish, lime juice, ketchup, Worcestershire sauce, and honey.
Processed into Low Country Boil style boiled shrimp, you can add potatoes, sausages and onions when adding seasoning and then boil until the potatoes are 2/3 cooked. Then, drop shrimp, whole corn, crab, crayfish in. These ingredients have the same speed of cooking as shrimp, so when the shrimp floats to the surface, you can take them out and put them on a ready-to-eat table.
Covering the pot helps to boil the shrimp faster, but you need to be careful not to overcook.

Warning

Be careful with boiling water.

Ingredient

Steps

Advice

Warning

Related Posts