Grilled Garlic & Herb Shrimp - How to Make Grilled Garlic Herb Shrimp Skewers

hello this is chef john from food wishes comm with grilled garlic and herb shrimp that's right don't let the generic name fool you this is one of the finest grilled seafood recipes in all the land and since we just showed you how to plant your own herb garden I thought we'd post a video that really illustrates how awesome it is to have those fresh herbs around so let's go ahead get started with the marinade we're will be using four of those herbs we're going to go with some basil some oregano and I have two kinds Greek and Italian and we're also going to do some Italian parsley and some lemon thyme oh man is that stuff good on grilled seafood and above and beyond the fresh herbs and garlic one of the real secrets to this recipe is to use a mortar and pestle to make the marinade and I'll go into detail about this amazing tool on the blog but for now let's just go ahead and prep these herbs for processing and all that's going to entail is taking the leaves off the stems which is very easy for everything other than the time which does take a minute or two to strip those little leaves off and yes when you first start your career as a prep cook in a kitchen picking thyme leaves is one of the first jobs they give you because everybody hates to do it but it really isn't that bad and when you taste these the effort will be well worth it so we'll go ahead and we'll pick our herbs at which point we can move on to making the rest of this mixture so first off into the border we're going to play some kosher salt followed by just a little bit of lemon zest and then more than a little sliced garlic that was about three cloves and what we'll do before we add our herbs is give this a little crushing first so we'll grab the pestle and we'll give this the old smash of smash' and we don't really need to go to fine we just want to get this started so go ahead and pound that until you have something that looks like this and at this point we can add in our herbs but not like this very critical we're gonna have to cut them up a little bit first just start with the biggest basil leaves and kind of use those to wad everything together and once we have a nice tight package we can take a sharp knife and slice across this way and then the other way and we'll give that a little chop and it may seem a little odd that we're chopping this before crushing it but it only takes a couple seconds it really does work a lot better so we will add in herbs and we will give that a crushing and I'm not going to stop the camera here but at home all that herb you see flying out you're going to want to put back in and I believe I mentioned earlier that the mortar and pestle is kind of key here and it really is while you can't get something that looks similar to this with a food processor or blender you'll just never be able to achieve the same flavor so in other words if you want to crush this you have to crush this but anyway we're going to crush those herbs into that garlic mixture until we have something pretty fine I mean we're not going for a total paste here but basically something that looks like this at which point we can add the last ingredient the olive oil but we're not going to add all of it we're just going to start with a drizzle and we'll mix that in first before adding the rest and the reason is when you're working with a mortar and pestle the rule of thumb is the thicker the mixture the easier it is to crush so we'll just start with a little splash and we'll grind all that together for about a minute and once it's been crushed to about this point we can stop and add in the rest and as you can see I'm also switching to the freakishly small wooden spoon and basically we're just adding in enough oil to achieve the proper thickness which I think should be right about here and believe it or not that's it our garlic and herb marinade is done so we'll set that aside while we go ahead and grab our shrimp and what we have here is a couple pounds of peeled and deveined 1620s which are the size I'm recommending here and all 1620 means is that's how many come to a pound so in my opinion for this recipe the bigger the shrimp the better and at this point we want to coat our shrimp with our herb mixture but not all of it we only want to add in 2/3 at this point we must save 1/3 to finish the dish with so we just want to transfer in about 2/3 of that mixture and then we'll grab a spoon Nilla or something similar and give this a very very thorough mixing are a shrimp are famous for their nooks and crannies so you really do want to make sure you get in there and get in there good until these are all perfectly coated and then once that's at what we'll do is we'll transfer that into a plastic bag because we're going to let these marinate in the fridge for at least a couple hours and of course you want to transfer this in carefully so you don't spill anything whoops but anyway we'll transfer that into a zip-top bag and transfer that into the fridge for three hours and what if you go for a little less or a little more it'll probably be fine and we will also wrap up that last third of that marinade because we're going to need that for later of course plastic wrap does not stick to wood which is why I like to seal those little shower caps from hotels and motels and use that instead but that's another video so like I said we're going to let our shrimp marinade for about three hours at which point those are ready to skewer and I will be using the metal ones for these but some soaked bamboo skewers will also work and we will use the standard once through the small part once through the big part method which is pretty basic I would be lying if I said scaring shrimp was hard and I'm going to do for these because apparently I only have four skewers but don't worry I'll cook those later so our shrimp have been secured and at this point they're ready to cook and I highly recommend you do that on a very very hot charcoal grill what about gas grills not a big fan but anything hot will work and the reason I want a very very hot fire is because I'm going for some serious caramelization well I've never met a grill mark I didn't like so a lot of grilled shrimp recipes recommend medium heat but that is not me I want a very intense heat very close to the shrimp but anyway I cook those for a few minutes per side until they were just barely cooked through and looking awesome which point will pull those off the grill and if everything's gone according to plan you should be looking at one of the most beautiful platters of grilled shrimp you've ever seen and at this point we're ready to serve but wait we have one last step to do we have to take that third of the herb mixture we saved and use that to make a quick sauce to go over the top so let's go ahead and transfer the rest of that mixture into a mixing bowl to which we'll add some red pepper flakes I'm using a Leppa pepper but just red chili flakes will work I'm also going to give it a little pinch of cayenne you know that's good for you as well as some freshly squeezed lemon juice and one last drizzle of olive oil and we'll take a whisk and we'll give that a mix and in just a few short seconds you're going to be looking at a very gorgeous and incredibly delicious sauce to finish our shrimp with so let's go ahead and spoon that over our shrimp which as you can see I've been transferred to a more geometrically appropriate platter and we will spoon that over and seriously how good does that look and then we finish these off with a few wedges of lemon and right as I did the light from the Setting Sun started being filtered through our neighbors windblown tree which caused the light to flicker which when it comes to photography is a huge problem but when it comes to everything else the opposite of that so I just went with it and instead of being annoyed I decided to enjoy it so I went in for the official taste and these really were magnificent just such a perfect combination with that sweet caramelized smoky Schramm that fresh aromatic brightness of the herb and of course a big punch of garlic and obviously if you want to use some different herbs go ahead so things like dill or tarragon would also be beautiful in this but of course that's up to you you are the peaches of your herbs so use whatever you like but anyway that's it grilled garlic and herb shrimp so delicious so simple so easy especially if you have all those herbs growing for free in your backyard all right so I really do hope you give this a try head over to food wishes comm for all the ingredient amounts and more infos usual and as always enjoy

Channel: Food Wishes

Views: 587,201

Rating: 4.9475894 out of 5

Keywords: Grilling (Culinary Technique), Shrimp (Food), Garlic (Ingredient), Skewer (Culinary Tool), Herbaceous Plant (Ingredient), Cooking, Kitchen, Recipe, chef, john, foodwishes, summer, cookout, seafood, shellfish, prawn, main course, dinner, lunch, easy, Recipes, Bbq, Barbecue (Cuisine)

Id: mB6SCdnXFrE

Length: 7min 27sec (447 seconds)

Published: Wed Jun 03 2015

Reddit Comments

[u/waffles420]

im going to go make this right now