How to Make Fried Shrimp Po Boys

[Music] there are lots of different types of po-boy sandwiches from roast beef to shredded barbecue but today brian's going to show us how to make the classic shrimp po boy that's right and shrimp boys are probably my favorite sandwich in the world so i hope you know what you're doing then you know i've messed around with it a fair amount so i've got it down pat you get this crispy slightly spicy shrimp and remoulade which is basically mayonnaise on steroids fortified with horseradish and hot sauce and it's a messy sandwich i know you can rate a po boy by how many napkins you use when you eat it yeah it should be dripping down your arm under your shirt we're going to start by making our own creole seasoning bite you could buy a seasoning blend from the grocery store but oftentimes they're very salty and when we make it at home we're able to control the amount of salt that we put into it and this one's going to make about three quarters of a cup and we're only going to need two tablespoons for our recipe but this is great to throw in all kinds of dishes and on grilled meats especially i have five tablespoons of hungarian paprika two tablespoons of garlic powder i can really smell that garlic powder that's good a tablespoon of dried thyme a tablespoon of cayenne pepper a tablespoon of celery salt a tablespoon of table salt and a tablespoon of ground black pepper so we're only going to use two tablespoons of this for our flour mixture so we can pull that out right now we'll transfer that to two cups of all-purpose flour and to that we're going to add a quarter cup of yellow cornmeal now the cornmeal is important because it gives the shrimp a little bit of texture once it's fried okay now we found that a lot of times if we were just to take the shrimp dip in an egg and then dip it in the flour the coating would fall off the shrimp so what we're going to do is we're going to create a little bit of a batter so we have four whole eggs here and to that we're going to add one half cup of our flour mixture now we can turn our attention to the shrimp now these are 31 40 shrimp meaning they're 31 to 40 per pound and we have one pound of them here so we're going to begin by peeling and deveining them so the way i like to peel into vegan shrimp is i like to invert my knife so the blade is facing up then i hold the shrimp in my hands like that and i just about an eighth of an inch from the top of the shrimp kind of come in with the tip of the knife and start sliding it and wedging my knife upwards a little bit at a time you almost want to move the shrimp around the tip of the blade not force the blade into the shrimp and oftentimes if there is a vein to remove it will stick to the knife and you can just peel it and wipe it on the side so then i've got the shell in my hand i can just kind of peel off and then to remove the tail you want to squeeze right at the base of the tail to kind of force that meat out you wiggle it a little bit yes yeah okay so all the shrimp is peeled and again this is one pound of shrimp and that'll make four sandwiches so you'll get anywhere between nine and ten shrimp percent not skimpy no these are big big sandwiches okay so we're going to start by working with half of the shrimp at a time we're going to hit it into the dry mixture we're going to take it from the dry mixture and put it into the batter and then back into the dryer so oh it's a little two-step two-step bow boy and we're only working with half the shrimp at a time because we don't want to over-saturate this flour mixture to introduce too much water to it just kind of shake off the excess flour okay so all the shrimp's in there so i'll take my wet hand here and i'll just kind of toss the shrimp in the batter and then we go right back into the flour mixture and we'll just lightly toss those in the flour and we'll transfer them to our rim baking sheet this shrimp is a little bit more wet than it was when it came right out of that bowl so we don't want to add too much of this battered shrimp to the flour mixture because then we just create two batters yeah exactly all right julia we're going to finish breading this shrimp here then we're going to wrap the tray in plastic wrap and throw it in the refrigerator for about 30 minutes and that time is going to really allow the batter to stick to the shrimp sounds good and i might also wash my hands yeah i was thinking you might want to do that all right now we're ready for my favorite part of the sandwich of cajun life this is remoulade and remoulade is just souped up mayonnaise this is a very simple version of it but they can get very complicated and very long ingredient lists we're going to start off with 2 3 cup of mayonnaise to that we're going to add two tablespoons of horseradish one tablespoon of worcestershire sauce one tablespoon of hot sauce and one quarter teaspoon of ground black pepper the sandwich is all about hitting you upside the head with some flavor okay and that sauce is done so now we're going to do our vegetable garnish for the sandwich traditionally a po boy comes with lettuce tomatoes and some pickles all right so we're just going to shred two cups of lettuce and i saw this neat trick once on how to core uh a head of iceberg lettuce apparently you just slam it down on the cord well hey actually kind of worked that kind of worked all right and then he kind of went in there and like took out its heart i don't want the shreds to be too long so i'm going to cut this portion in half and we'll just finely shred this and that's about two cups right there and now we're going to slice two tomatoes these are vine ripened tomatoes we're gonna first twist off the stem there and we're going to remove the core from the tomato now i like to do this by holding the tip of the knife with my thumb and my forefinger about a half inch away from the tip so i go in right next to the core and i've got a 45 degree angle i stick my thumb right in that core and then i just rotate the tomato not really doing anything with the knife but just holding it still and i move the tomato around the core very cool we'll just slice the tomato into thin sandwich slices now before we are going to turn our attention to the shrimp we're going to toast up our rolls here for our po boys now traditionally in new orleans and louisiana they have a very specific kind of bread now it's crispy on the outside and pillowy almost cottony on the inside outside louisiana it's hard to find that exact roll so you look around and see what you can find it should just have a little bit of texture on the outside but the inside should be nice and soft you should be able to push it in with your thumb and leave a nice little thumb print okay so i'm going to lay them out here splayed open and i'm going to broil them on the upper middle rack which is about six to eight inches away from the broiler element for just one to two minutes you don't want to walk away from it because they tend to burn very quickly under the boiler okay so the shrimp has been chilling out in the refrigerator for 30 minutes you can see that the coating looks a little bit more hydrated on it and we have two quarts of vegetable oil here that have heated to 375 degrees and now we're ready to fry the shrimp so i'm going to do half a batch at a time just so we don't overcrowd the oil oh i was going to say i'm happy to see you using tongs he always likes to tempt fate a little bit i like to do both tongs and fingers wow you get your fingers dangerously close to that oil it's impressive it's actually safer to get your hands close to the oil rather than let the food drop from way up here because that way you don't create the splatter it's safer to use tongs so that's about half the shrimp we're gonna let that fry until it's nice and golden brown that takes about four minutes per batch all right you can see our shrimp are nice and golden brown and they're starting to float to the top cook through oh we're just going to transfer them to a paper towel lined plate look at those beauties so we're going to return the oil to 375 degrees and fry up the second batch of shrimp and now we're ready to build some po boys you need to put an ample amount of remulot on these so this makes about approximately a quarter cup per sandwich oh you're not fooling around no this is a heavy duty sandwich quarter cup per sandwich all right then we'll go a little bit of lettuce and about three slices of tomato now a few pickles oh lots of pickles on mine extra pickles yes please i also like a good number of pickles of mine now the star of the show we have our shrimp how many we can fit on here and how many we have available two different stories so you fit as many as you can on now you're up to eight that's pretty good so i like to give it a smash here with your right hand and with your left hand forcefully press down the top bun i like to take on a wide legged stance here to protect your shirt it is perfection the little bit of seasoning you're right with all that cayenne and black pepper i thought that spice mixture was going to be too spicy but it's pretty mild all things considered yeah you get each one of them on the tongue but you hit that hot oil it really tempers down the uh the spiciness in the mayonnaise with the wish to share and the horseradish and you can get a little bit of the crunchiness from the uh the cornmeal brian this shrimp po-boy is something else it was my pleasure if you want to make an authentic shrimp po-boy sandwich start by making a batch of creole seasoning with paprika cayenne and celery salt combine some of that seasoning with flour and cornmeal then combine some of that flour mixture with eggs dredging flour one pound of shrimp then the eggs then the flour again and let the coating sit before deep frying to serve layer the remoulade sauce lettuce tomatoes pickles and fried shrimp in a toasted sub roll and don't forget the napkins from cook's country a bonafide recipe for shrimp po boys i put her down shouldn't have done that you're in trouble now thanks for watching cook's country from america's test kitchen so what'd you think leave a comment and let us know which recipes you're excited to make or just say hi now you can find links to today's recipes and reviews in the video description and don't forget to subscribe to our channel see you later alligator

Channel: America's Test Kitchen

Views: 59,968

Rating: 4.9348602 out of 5

Keywords: shrimp po boys, fried shrimp, how to fry shrimp, cooks country, americas test kitchen, cooks illustrated

Id: fXpj2nyKHao

Length: 9min 47sec (587 seconds)

Published: Sat Sep 19 2020