Shrimp Show

Hi, y'all. I'm Paula Deen, and I'd love it if you'd join me today for a traditional Low Country, Savannah-style cookout

We're going to start by catching some seafood off of Tybee Island. Then we'll all go back, and I'll whip up a scrumptious southern shrimp salad

and then next I'll show you the secret to a plump, peppery shrimp platter that's guaranteed to please

Next, it's a ladies' own beer-battered shrimp fry recipe. And finally, I'll give you a peek in the pots that turns out a low country boil second to none

So move over, Bubba Gump. We got some shrimping of our own to do

Hey, y'all

I'm so glad that you've joined me for today's show. We're going to be in the Atlantic Ocean

that surrounds my home here on Wilmington Island, and we're going to be in a shrimp boat

along with Captain Michael Sullivan, and he's going to teach us everything

we always wanted to know about shrimping. So y'all stay tuned. I want you to go with me

Hey Mike. Good morning Paula. How are you? Welcome aboard the Flying Cloud. Thank you. I couldn't hardly wait. Okay. To get here. I'm so excited. Well let's go catch some shrimp. I'm ready

What kind of shrimp do you catch here in the Savannah waters

Right now, this time of year, we're catching a species called the Neocetiferus, which is a Georgia white shrimp

They're some of the best-eating shrimp in the world. The diet is mainly squid or calamari, and that's what makes them so much better tasting

So you're going to take me out, and we're going to catch a bunch of shrimp

These some beautiful shrimp we caught today. Oh, my gracious, we did so good

Your reward is we're going to cook some on the boat for you today. We just take them right off the deck, put them right in the pot, and drop them in this

Now, how long are you going to let those cook for, Michael? Well, that'll knock the boil off of it for a minute

I'll let them come back to a boil and let them have a nice white foam build on them

and then shut them off and let them simmer for two or three minutes until they're done to our taste

Okay, Paula, you ready? Let's try one and see how cooked they are. It's a dollar waiting on a dime, baby

All righty. Let's see where they at. Aren't these marvelous, the size of them

They're going to be a little warm now. That's all right. But I... Oh, my gracious

I can tell they're done just right by the feel of it

He slipped right out of that shell. Yeah. It's the best shrimp I've ever eaten, Mike

It really is. You've cooked them perfectly. It has the texture and the taste of lobster, doesn't it

It was absolutely great. It's out of this world. Thanks, Mike. I sure do appreciate it

I don't know what was more fun, catching them or eating them. Well, we sure enjoyed having you, and you're welcome to come back anytime

I wish I could stay, but I got to get to my kitchen. Okay, Paula, here's your shrimp

It's your bounty for today. Thank you, Michael. Well, you all enjoy them. I had a ball

Thank you. You come see me now. I sure will. Bye. Bye

I've had the greatest day today. We've been out on the shrimp boat shrimping

and I think that's probably one of the most popular fruits of the sea

Everybody knows about them. Everybody's familiar with them, and I've never heard a person that didn't like them

And I think the best way to cook this size that I have today is in shrimp salad, so that's what I'm making

a succulent southern shrimp salad. And we're going to start by peeling our shrimp

and we've already deveined them. We've already run a knife down the back. So all I have to do is just take the skin off

and you just pop the ends of the tails, and then they'll just come right on out

We're gonna drop these shrimp down into hot boiling water that has a bouquet of herbs

This is what they look like. It's crushed bay leaves and peppercorn and celery seeds

We're gonna go ahead and drop the bag in our boiling water so that those flavors can start blending

While I'm finishing up these last few shrimp, there's just, it seems like a hundred different ways to cook shrimp

But today, I'm gonna be cooking for you some of my very all-time favorite ways to serve them

We're gonna be doing a low country ball, which is very very indigenous to Savannah Every time I have my gang of family over I say now what do y want me to cook tonight And they say low country ball Low country ball is there anything else

So I always fix that for them when they come to the house

We're gonna drop these shrimp down into hot boiling water. Now the only way you can mess this dish up right here

is by overcooking your shrimp. I can't tell you how important it is

to just leave these in. no more than about three minutes. And I wish you were here and could smell that bouquet

The flavors are just yummy coming up out of that pot. And you see the shrimp are already starting to curl and turn pink

Our shrimp are ready now. And we're going to spoon these out

because I need this great stock to cook our rice in. All right, we've got our water back to a rolling bowl

And we're just going to dump our rice over in there. and we've left our bouquet of garnish in there

We're gonna stir it up. We're gonna put the lid on it

and we're gonna turn our heat down, and we're gonna cook it for about 20 minutes

And while we're waiting on our rice to cook, I'm gonna be mixing up the base for our shrimp salad

Now, at this point, you can take your shrimp, and you can take scissors or a knife and cut them up

but I'm gonna leave these whole because they're not too big that you can't pop a full one into your mouth

We're gonna start with just simple mayonnaise. A little Vidalia onion chopped up

Or a sweet onion. If you can't find Vidalia, just make sure it's a sweet onion

And we're gonna put olives in this dish. And the olives just give it a whole different flavor

It's kind of a little surprise. Oh, it's so good and it makes it kinda salty

Our rice is done now and we've let it cool. And I'm going to remove our little flavoring pouch here

And we're just going to dump our rice into our mayonnaise mixture

Now, if your water did not cook out of your rice, then you'll want to drain it

But ours worked out perfectly where all the water was absorbed. And we're just going to dump our shrimp into the bowl and toss

It's just that simple. And you know, adding the rice to this dish is a great way to stretch it

if you're trying to feed more people than you thought you were going to have

And that's all there is to southern shrimp salad. I've got a nice, crisp Boston lettuce ready here

and we're just going to line our bowl with a little of the lettuce. And this is wonderful to eat along with the salad

And we're just going to pile our shrimp salad right into the center of that lettuce

This makes a terrific Sunday night supper. It's not too heavy and a great way to finish up your weekend

And all it needs now is just a little garnish. And I'm going to do that using a little ground paprika

to give it that pretty red color. And I'm going to wedge a lemon to go on top

simply by inserting my knife into the lemon and pulling it out and going right back in, out, in

kind of like jack-o'-lantern teeth until we've made a complete circle around our lemon

See how simple that was? We're just going to nestle that right there

and all this little baby needs is some cracked black pepper, and we're ready to eat

Coming up next, I'm going to be doing our beer-battered fried shrimp

and our black pepper shrimp, so stay tuned because we're fixing to heat up

Hi, we're back, and I hope that y'all are hungry

because I've got two of the most delicious, easy shrimp dishes you have ever tasted coming up

The first dish I'm going to start with is black pepper shrimp, and it's really a Cajun dish

My Aunt Trina, who lives in Houma, Louisiana, taught me how to make them

And we're starting with just butter. I've actually got two sticks of butter in here

And we're going to take our garlic and we're going to toss it into our butter

We don't want to cook the garlic. We just want to let the flavor release in it

And I've got our shrimp. They're washed and ready to go. And as you'll see, they're in their jacket

This is one of the few dishes that you will eat with the shell on

Of course, before you eat it, you'll remove the jacket. But I'll show you the best way

at the end of the show how to eat and enjoy black pepper shrimp

So we're just going to dump these in our casserole dish, spread them out

You just won't believe how easy this dish is. This is probably my very, very favorite way to eat shrimp

All right, our butter has melted, so I going to cut that off and just pour it over those shrimp That butter and that garlic and your shrimp stock is going to make an unbelievable dip in sauce

for our French bread. And I'm going to use a couple of different peppers

just because I like the different textures. Now, this is a regular fine ground black pepper

that I'm using. And then I'm going to use some coarse ground

fresh black pepper. And there is no way that you can get

too much pepper on these. That looks like a lot, doesn't it? But it's not. In fact

I'll probably go back and add more. Now some of the different variations I've seen have

kind of a red tint to them. So I'm assuming that they'll use like a hot sauce or something

like that, which you could do. But like I said, out of all that I've tasted, this is

still my favorite. We're just gonna toss those around until they're well coated. And just

when I think I've got enough black pepper, I'm going back for more. And I'll probably

start sneezing on y'all in just a couple of minutes. I can feel the pepper going up into

my nose. Now all we're gonna do is pop this in a 350 degree oven and we're gonna let them

cook until they're pink and done, which will probably be 15 to 20 minutes

While our shrimp are cooking now, I'm going to beer batter these fat, plump shrimp

All we're going to do is start with a cup of plain flour or all-purpose flour, and we're

We're gonna add a cup of beer to it. And I'm gonna pour this very carefully so I'll have as little head as possible

And that's all we do. And the yeast from that beer is gonna activate the flour, giving us a nice, nice, light batter

And then we're gonna sit it just on the counter and let it sit for about three hours

It needs just a few hours for that yeast to activate the flour

And I already made some earlier, so we're ready to fry. And the first thing we're gonna do is take our shrimp and pat them dry

We just wanna make sure they're dry so that that batter will adhere to them

Before we start frying the shrimp, I'm gonna check on our black pepper shrimp in the oven

because as I told you, it doesn't take long and we don't want to overcook them. And they are ready

Look at those succulent shrimp. Unbelievably out of this world. All right, now we've got all of our shrimp dried

and ready for the fryer, and we're going to fry them on 350, and I usually work about four shrimp at the time

All right, we're just gonna take our dry shrimp, dip them in our batter, and kind of knock them

on the side of the bowl, and just drop. And you wanna work pretty quickly

because these are gonna cook very, very fast, and you don't want your shrimp staying in there

any longer than they need to. So that's all I'm gonna put in this round

and I'm gonna start checking. And see how beautiful and brown they're already

brown they're already turning. The first ones that we've put in are already done. See how quick

And we can see they're done because you can see how the shrimp are kind of busting open. If they stick together on you, just kind of pry them apart

but be very careful because that grease is terribly hot. And that completes our beer-battered fried

I want to show y'all how I serve these succulent black pepper shrimp

I give everybody a bowl, their own bowl, and I just pile them up in there

And I want to make sure that everybody gets their fair share of butter

See, I'm not selfish at all. And I serve this along with a crisp green salad

and a chunk of hot French bread for dipping, a lemon wedge for those that like a tangy shrimp

And that's all there is to it. And, of course, the fried shrimp

you just serve those along with your favorite sauce. And your family is just going to love you

Now that I've showed you how to plate these up and what I serve with them

I think it's only appropriate that I show you how I eat them

First of all, you take them with their shell on. Mmm. You suck all that butter and garlic

and the flavor of the shrimp out. Now, that makes it easy for you to peel

It's no longer messy, because you've already eaten the messy part. Then you dip them back down into your butter And it just doesn get any better than that

If you think these are good, come back and see what I'm going to do with a Low Country Bowl

I hope y'all are ready for the grand finale of our meal today because I'm ready for y'all

The first thing we're going to start with is the proper pot. And I tell you, I wouldn't recommend doing this dish unless you had this type of pot with a basket

Because otherwise, it's going to be too hard to dip your food out, and then your shrimp might get too done

And we're going to start with a good seasoning. I've got Old Bay here, and I'm not going to be bashful

I'm gonna put three quarters of a cup in here. The next thing I wanna talk to you about

is the order in which you drop your food into your pot

Now it really depends on what size potato you have. So if these were real large potatoes

we would drop them in probably about 20 minutes before we did everything else

But since they're small, I'm gonna drop them in at the same time

that I dropped the sausage in. because those sausage is gonna be the flavoring to this pot

And I'm gonna take our corn and I'm just gonna snap it in two

And doesn't it look just out of this world? When I'm cooking this for my family

usually there's 20 or 25 of us. So we do this outside over a gas flame

This is definitely one of those great outdoor meals that feed a crowd with very, very little sweat

All right, it looks like it's ready for the shrimp. And you'll notice that these shrimp are still in their shells

which is the way you want to do it. You want to keep them in those jackets so it'll seal in their flavor

And you can see as I scoop some up, see how quickly they cook

They're already turning nice and pink. All right, we're ready to pull our seafood feast out of the pot

and we're going to tilt it and let a little of that water

pour off of it. And if you're cooking for a real crowd

girls, you'll want to whistle for your man for this one. But I'm a sturdy girl

so I can handle it. And all we're going to do is just dump this

onto the newspaper just like that. Doesn't that look delicious? Now, I'm going to finish it off just

because I like the seasoning. I'm going to sprinkle just a little bit on

and it's ready to eat. I hope y'all have had a good time with me today

on our shrimp show. I hope maybe I've shown you a few things that you hadn't thought about

or thought was maybe too hard for you to do. And before we leave, I want to share just a couple more tips with you

I've made lots and lots of southern shrimp salad, and we won't eat it all tonight

So tomorrow, I'm going to take this very same shrimp salad, and I'm going to stuff it into these red peppers

and top it with Parmesan cheese, and I'm going to bake them

And my family will think they've got a brand new meal. And the next tip I'd like to share with you

If it's at all possible when you're getting your shrimp, if you can get heads on, by all means do it

because that's where your stock and your flavor really comes from. But if you don't have the heads, you can take the shells

just as I've done today, and cover them with water and cook them for two or three hours

and boil all that flavor out of them. That will give you a nice stock for soups and sauces

All right, I want to tell you how my family and I eat this

There's no pretense to it, nothing fancy, but it's so, so easy for Mom

We just put whatever we want on our paper plates, and I would have all the condiments around

That would be tartar sauce, cocktail sauce, and drawn butter for those that like their shrimp dipped in butter

which I have to say I'm guilty. and to complete the meal today

I've got a southern shrimp salad with rice. I've got our fried shrimp and a green salad

and of course the succulent black pepper shrimp bathed in garlic butter

Michael Sullivan, thank you for a great day on the water today

catching these beautiful shrimp and all of my friends in Savannah. And until next time, America

best dishes from my kitchen to yours