Just cooked shrimp for the first time in my life!

[Mr. Bones]

Them look great, amigo!
Nicely done...

Smokey Joe'd are perfeck fer small cooks, I use mine a LOT! Check craiglist, I see em all th time fer $10-$20.

[Steve R.]

Shrimp gives you a lot of good eating for the small amount of time and effort it requires. There is a seafood shop about 5 minutes from my house that brings up a box truck twice per week with fresh gulf shrimp and other seafood. Love that place!

Now I'm off to grab a couple of pounds and make some shrimp and grits...

[Old Glory]

Looks great! Best advice for shrimp is to avoid imported shrimp and don't over cook. Looks like you nailed it!

[Michael_in_TX]

I love shrimp, but I've never cooked it myself, ever. Well, it is nearly been a year since I've been in a restaurant, so it has essentially been a year without shrimp for me. (And, seafood takeout is always less than optimal.)

So I decided it was time to get over my "fear" of cooking or grilling shrimp.

After some research, I picked out a few simple marinades. I then added some frozen, peeled, and deveined, 16/21 Wild Gulf Shrimp from a local purveyor to my HEB Instacart shopping list. (Philly Seafood out of Sugarland for those around here.) I'm starting simple here; I am sure I will move up to shrimp I can shell and devein myself in the future. And of course fresh shrimp. (Instacart won't do the seafood counter.)

I defrosted ten of them overnight and then marinated them for 30 minutes in some avocado oil, garlic, salt, lime juice, cumin, and chili powder.

I intended on grilling them on the Weber Kettle, but it is raining right now so I elected for the cast iron skillet. Probably for the best to keep things simple this first time. I heated it to 375 over medium heat and placed the shrimp in it.

I intended to just do a minute this first side, but the pan temperature dropped to 200 once the 35 degree shrimp hit it, so I went for 90 seconds then flipped. I did another 90 seconds. Yes, they do turn white and they do curl, which surprised me to actually see it.

I pulled them off and placed them over a bed of brown rice.

I did good my first time! None of them tasted overcooked. A few of the larger ones were perhaps just a little undercooked, like 1/8" diameter in the middle seemed just a hair transparent. (There is a possibility they had not defrosted fully.) The flavor was delightfully shrimpy and the marinade was a nice spicy and flavorful, although I may pull back on the cumin next time.

I've still got 1.5 lbs of these 16/21 shrimp in the freezer and I plan to do another practice run tomorrow out on the grill. This time it will be a garlic/parsley/cilantro/olive oil flavor. So we will see how that goes!

Other than never having cooked shrimp before the main thing that kept me away from doing this was the "waste" of material and time to set up a full charcoal grill for something that cooks in two-to-four minutes. I may grab a $40 Weber Smokey Joe for this.

Here's what I did today: