"Gulf Coast Shrimp"

Theophan

I've made this before, but I can't help sharing again -- GOSH I think this is a great recipe!  I don't mean any offense against any of you who are in California, but to some of us it seems kind of like a different planet, and Steve Raichlen sure is Californian.  It's just a different "feel" than down home BBQ in the South, for example.  And this is his recipe, but MAN I think it's good.  I recently got his Barbecue Bible just because I like this recipe so much (it's been posted here, by the way, if you want it) I figured it'd be worth trying some of his other stuff.

Last time I didn't have any Steen's Cane Syrup, which is an ingredient in it, so I used dark Karo and some molasses.  This time I had Steen's, and it's been too long to remember what the last one was like to compare, but it sure was delicious this way!  I'm going to order some more Steen's.  Other ingredients are shrimp broth you make from the shells (and heads in this case) and clam juice, a STICK of butter (how bad can it be!), garlic, scallions, hot sauce, Worcestershire, bay leaves, cayenne, paprika, thyme, oregano, salt and pepper.

Sorry I didn't take any pictures of them in the Egg -- the shrimp just weren't in the Egg very long and I had timing, etc., on my mind instead of pictures.  But I got before and after, anyway:





They hardly ever have shrimp in our stores with the heads on, but this time they did.  I thought I'd try 3 of them unpeeled and try sucking the heads out like people do with crawdads, but I was glad I only did 3.  The grilling seemed to GLUE the shell onto the shrimp, and the heads were kinda dry, nothing to suck out.  The ones I shelled and took the heads off of before marinating were wonderful!

UncleBilly

Looks amazing!  Grilled shrimp is one of life's simple joys.  These look next level!

td66snrf

@Theophan Please don't pin Steven Raichland to California. According to Wikipedia he was born in Japan and raised in Baltimore and lives in Florida. To generalize "California " as a single place is a very broad brush. 

Theophan

@UncleBilly, many thanks!    I agree, I do love grilled shrimp.  More of a pain dealing with a whole bunch of small things on the grill, whether individually or in a basket or on skewers, rather than one chunk of red meat, but gosh, they're good!

td66snrf said:

@Theophan Please don't pin Steven Raichland to California. According to Wikipedia he was born in Japan and raised in Baltimore and lives in Florida. To generalize "California " as a single place is a very broad brush. 

<laughing>  I'm sure you're right.  And the whole point of his Barbecue Bible I recently purchased (because it has that Gulf Coast Shrimp recipe in it, so I figured there must be some other great stuff) is that it's BBQ from all over the WORLD, and certainly not focusing on California.  I don't even mean to suggest, really, that there's anything wrong with California.  I have a step-daughter, son-in-law and 3 grandchildren out there just a ways outside of San Francisco, and they love it, and when I've visited, it's been very cool.  And I visited San Diego, once, and found it hauntingly beautiful.

It's just a very different "vibe," somehow, watching him on TV, his Project Smoke, a few times, compared to BBQ guys in the South.  Not a bad thing, but just really different.  And I've seen a few guys here kinda sneer at Raichlen, so I guess I was a little insecure about "confessing" that this was a Steve Raichlen recipe...  I really love this one, and am looking forward to trying some other ones from his book.

RajunCajun

Man, that sure looks like some good eating right there......good enough to lick your fingers in any fine white tablecloth restaurant.  Would love to have the recipe.

Theophan

RajunCajun said:

Man, that sure looks like some good eating right there......good enough to lick your fingers in any fine white tablecloth restaurant.  Would love to have the recipe.

@Qbabe posted it back in 2002, but there's a very small difference between that post and the book: Raichlen uses dark cane syrup, which apparently is a classic Southern cooking ingredient, but it's not in any of my local stores even in NC, so her version of the recipe used a combination of corn syrup and molasses, which probably is pretty darn close.

I Googled the recipe, though, and found it in an online version of his book, which Raichlen might not be super happy Google shared with the world, but there it is