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- Hey friends.
Let's talk shrimp.
In this video, I'm gonna show you how to buy,
how to clean, and how to cook shrimp,
so by the end, you're gonna know that you can cook that.
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First question.
Fresh, frozen?
I know what you're thinking.
Fresh is always best, especially when it looks
so beautiful and pink like this.
I mean look at that, it's gorgeous,
but you're only gonna get stuff like this at the Gulf.
If you don't live at the Gulf,
you might as well buy frozen like this.
And I'm gonna tell you why.
These were caught fresh, right?
Everything was caught fresh at some point.
This was frozen directly on the boat.
It's at the peak of freshness.
Whereas if you're at the supermarket,
and you see some fresh stuff,
it's honestly probably thawed from frozen.
So you might as well just get this.
Skip the middle man completely,
and it's cheaper, which is amazing.
It's fresher, it's cheaper, win win.
Boom.
You may see shrimp in a variety of different sizes
when you're at the supermarket.
You'll see medium, small, large, jumbo, colossal.
Those are huge, they're not used very often, but anyway.
I'm gonna tell you something.
Those sizes are not really regulated.
The way to actually tell how large or medium,
or whatever size your shrimp are,
is to look at the count number on the bag.
For this medium shrimp you're gonna have
41 to 50 shrimp per pound.
And for jumbo, you have 16 to 20 shrimp per pound.
Different recipes are gonna call for different sizes,
but honestly they're all interchangeable,
as long as you adjust your cooking times.
There are two ways to defrost your shrimp.
First way is nice and slow in your refrigerator.
It's about 24 hours per pound,
and since we've got one pound here,
we're just gonna go for a 24 hours.
Easy.
Oo, do not thaw your shrimp at room temperature,
because of the temperature danger zone.
Next we've got our second way.
Follow me.
If you don't have 24 hours, you gotta make dinner tonight,
and totally forgot, thaw it really quickly
in your sink under cold running water.
Do not use warm water because that will cook your shrimp,
and you don't want that in the bag.
(water running)
And now my least favorite part.
Cleaning it.
When you're dealing with shrimp,
you wanna make sure you get that vein in the back of it,
which is also a poop shoot, you want to get that
out of it, because you don't wanna eat that.
So we're gonna remove the legs here.
Kind of go from the tail up to the head,
and when you take off the legs,
it'll kind of start to remove the outer shell.
Put that in there.
Run a nice clean line all the way down the back.
Oh my gosh, this poop shoot is actually not that...
It actually doesn't really even have one.
I don't even think this guy ever pooped.
Sharp knife, you can use a pair of scissors,
from the head down to the tail.
Ooo, yeah, look at that.
Look at that guy.
Peel that sucker out.
Look at that.
Got a nice clean buddy.
Now guys, this may be my least favorite kitchen job,
but it is honestly a necessary evil
to enjoy the sweet succulent shrimp.
A lot of people have been asking,
what do you do with the shrimp tails?
A lot of restaurants and recipes
will say to leave the tails on,
but honestly it's not for any culinary reason.
It's just because they look prettier.
And it is iconic, we wouldn't recognize
the shrimp emoji without his little tail.
But they're not purely for looks or for the trash.
You can same them with the shells,
and make a fortified shrimp stock,
which will make risottos, pasta dishes,
or your gumbos even better.
And some people even like to eat the tails.
They batter 'em up.
They deep fry 'em.
I tried it once, really wasn't for me, bad experience.
But what do you guys think?
Shrimp tails yes?
Shrimp tails no?
Let me know in the comments.
We are finally ready to start cooking.
Now, shrimp cooks really quickly,
so don't leave the room, don't go prep other ingredients,
don't leave the pan, or else your shrimp will overcook
or burn and all your hard work will be caput.
Now I'm gonna show you a basic shrimp scampi
with ingredients that you probably
already have in your kitchen.
So easy, so delicious.
You'll wanna make it all the time.
We're gonna start off with some butter.
Here we go.
I also like to put a little bit of olive oil with my butter,
so that way it doesn't burn as quickly.
We're gonna let that melt, get nice and foamy.
We're on a bit of a medium, medium-high heat.
Not quite either of them, just a little bit in the middle,
but we'll say medium for helpful purposes.
So now we're gonna add garlic thinly sliced,
and our red pepper flakes.
And the red pepper flakes are just for a little bit of heat,
not to make it super spicy.
This is gonna go for just like 30 seconds to a minute.
So we're coming up on it.
You see now the butter is starting
to get a little bit brown and nutty.
So now let's add our shrimp.
And that is a sound you wanna hear.
That sizzle.
Now that your shrimp are cooking,
you're gonna wanna know when they're done.
Now you can't really take an internal temperature
of shrimp with a thermometer,
so the way to tell that they are done is to know the color.
They're gonna be a fully uniform opaque color,
and they're gonna be in that curled "C" shape.
They're not quite done yet, but they're getting close.
You can still see that they are slightly translucent here.
This one's kinda like half and half,
so you've got a nice opaque side,
and a nice translucent side to see the difference.
Flip 'em over.
You wanna keep these kinda moving.
Almost similar to a stir fry because you
one, don't want the garlic to burn,
and second, it keeps the shrimp cooking
a little bit more evenly.
We are so close.
We are maybe less than a minute away.
Like I just did this whole video for you
in like five minutes.
We're pretty much there.
So we're gonna add our parsley.
Turn the heat down just a little bit.
Add some salt.
Now shrimp are already a little bit salty,
so you don't need to add a lot.
Now you add some lemon juice.
And, honestly, we're gonna add a little bit more butter.
You want your butter to kind of make
almost like a lemon sauce here.
Here we go.
We're done here.
We've got pasta, got shrimp, and that really yummy sauce.
So buttery, so good.
Garnish it with a little lemon.
Boom, dinner, done.
I hope this video has been super helpful.
I hope you learned a lot about shrimp,
and how to find it, and how to buy it.
If you have any questions, please leave a comment below,
and maybe we'll make a video about it.
But until then, thank you for watching.
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