Shrimp Cocktail from Deep South Dish blog. Jumbo shrimp, poached, boiled or oven-roasted and served with a zesty homemade cocktail sauce.
Shrimp Cocktail
Don't you just feel fancy when you're at a restaurant where they still have a shrimp cocktail on the menu? I tend to order one when they are, but even when I don't, I kinda light up when I see somebody else get one delivered to their table. It's a little luxurious to me! Hey, what can I say. Those little small things make me happy! I had a bag of jumbo shrimp in the freezer that I needed to use so thought that it would be a good time to get a shrimp cocktail recipe up.
Sure, there's always basic cocktail sauce, simple lazy man sauce, or even super-flavorful Comeback Sauce, that we whip up in a hurry for our boils, and any one of those works just fine for dipping boiled shrimp. Yes, you can even buy it all bottled up for you at the grocery store, but when we have these nice, beautiful jumbo shrimp that we want to use for an appetizer - like for a holiday menu - well, they deserve a little step up, if you ask me!
I love lemon anything, and you'll always find fresh lemons in my fridge. A squirt of lemon in a sauce for pasta, and especially seafood versions, can really freshen it up, add some to a salad dressing, and certainly I love them in my sweet tea, but a good shrimp cocktail sauce calls for the extra zing of both the juice and the zest. If you aren't a big fan of lemon adjust to your own taste of course. This sauce also has a nice spicy bite with red pepper flakes, Cajun seasoning, hot sauce and horseradish, perfect for a cocktail appetizer, but adjust that also to your own taste, if you prefer things a bit milder.
These are jumbo shrimp fresh from the Gulf that my husband brought in shrimping, and I put up, which means they come with heads, shells and tails, perfect for when you want those shells to make stock. I left the tails on for presentation. Now that The Cajun isn't shrimping with his dad any longer, we mostly buy our shrimp right off the docks when the shrimp boats come in. It's just a matter of getting to the docks at the right time.
Weight on my shrimp recipes here on the blog are for raw, unpeeled, but headed shrimp, which is how I put them up, and likely how you'll buy them from a fish market. I do buy from local seafood markets too and yes, I even buy them frozen - though please for all that is holy, buy only American wild, preferably Gulf shrimp. Flip the package over and look for country of origin. The imports may be cheaper, but you get what you pay for both in quality, food safety and taste - as somebody who has grown up on fresh from the Gulf seafood and tasted those others, trust me on that!
This makes roughly 1-1/2 to 2 cups sauce for 4 shrimp cocktail. Increase as needed.
The sauce is very simple, but a perfect blend of flavors. As always, scroll further down the page for full recipe text with measurements, instructions and a printable document. Here's how to make it.
Combine some finely minced onion, celery and garlic with ketchup and chili sauce, a healthy hit of horseradish, lemon zest and juice, salt, pepper, Cajun, hot sauce and some fresh parsley.
Divide evenly into four shrimp cocktail cups, or in my case, dessert dishes!
There are several methods for cooking the shrimp when you are going to use them for a cocktail appetizer. Mostly shrimp are either boiled or blanched in the shell, then peeled as those are in the header photo.
For an amazing shrimp cocktail appetizer, I highly recommend roasting these jumbo shrimp instead. The flavor is out of this world and perfect for a shrimp cocktail. I've included instructions for roasting in the recipe, and for the more classic way of poaching them, down in the Cook's Notes at the bottom of the recipe text.
Shrimp cocktail pictured here is with poached shrimp served with this superb homemade cocktail sauce!
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