Not from the Shrimp's persective

Hola, Aloha, and Como Estas?


I just cooked some shrimp and they came out right.

Back sometime around 1984, I got the idea that I wanted to open a Seafood Restaurant. I worked for a short time at several different Seafood Restaurants and I started making a book of Recipes based on things I learned at each kitchen. I had recipes for Fried and Broiled Fish, Shrimp, Oysters and also the various ways to prepare and serve King Crab, snow Crap, soft shell Crab, Blue Crab, Dungeonous Crab, Crab Claws, Detliff Crab and more. I had a good recipe for Seafood Gumbo and also Clam Chowder. I determined which place had the best way of cooking French Fries, onion rings, and also baked potatoes. Then at some point a very dear friend to me decided that they would help me by offering me a job so I kind of lost my direction with the Restaruant idea. One thing I did learn about restaurants is that the owner has to be there all the time in order to watch the way customers are treated, food is prepared, and also make sure that food is not walking out the back door to feed the employees and thier friends. It is a real art to keeping food cost down. It costs money to throw away food also.


Fast forward to today:

I decided to cook some Fried Shrimp and I used the same basic recipe as a place called the "Crazy Crab". They have long since gone out of business but were located in the Westwood Mall area in Southwest Houston. Thier philosopy was to not put spices in the breading or on the shrimp but instead to have all the spice be contained in the "Cocktail Sauce".


Start out with Fresh Shrimp (if possible) but frozen will work.

Butterfly the shrimp and then after rinsing with water,

drop them into a bowl of flour.

After that dip them into milk/egg wash(Just mix an egg into a small bowl of milk),

Then coat them with Cracker Crumbs. It takes a little work to crunch up the saltine crackers (i used unsalted) Use something like a pie or layer cake baking pan and press then place the shrimp on top of cracker crumbs and then drop a handful of the cracker crumbs on top of the shrimp also. Press them down to make the crumbs stick but not hard enough to deform the shrimp too much.

Once you have all the shrimp prepared for frying, Then fry them in some cooking oil that is hot enough but not too hot. You want them to be golden brown and it is a good Idea to put enough oil in the frying pan that the shrimp will be submerged.

Then serve them with some good cotail sauce.

We ate ours with some green beans and microwave baked potatoes. It works better in the real oven but just clean some taters, punch holes in them with a fork (about 4 or 5 stabs) so they don't split and then coat them with olive oil.


I also have some dieting tips but I will share them in another post at a time of my choosing.


Rock Onward