Grilled Bacon Wrapped Shrimps

A very common item on the Grillin Fool's menu is bacon wrapped shrimp but for some reason I have very few pics of this incredible and easy side or appetizer. One of the reasons I make these so often as that they are so versatile. I can all kinds of things with these from a sweet glaze make them flaming hot on the spiciness scale. I can make a crazy sauce to glaze them in or simply baste them in some melted butter....

I asked for 6 U14-18 shrimp. I usually go with the U10-12, but the ones in the U14-18 looked ever bit as big as the more expensive U10-12. Oh, for those that don't know, the U numbers stand for approximately how many units of shrimp make up a pound. And while I asked for 6, I was given 8. No big deal.

Some of you are thinking that those big shrimp are really expensive. The 8 were right about $7. So it was $3.50/person. Couple that with two 8 ounce lobster tails for $10/person and a box of rice and the meal was less than $15/person for a lobster tail, 4 large shrimps and a side of rice. That's pretty good considering the meal. I can drop more than $15 on a single steak.

So consider doing a couple of fat shrimps as an app or side. As an app, they may cost you $1/shrimp but if you go with say two per person and are feeding 4 that's only $8.

Here we have the shrimp with my celly for perspective:

First thing with prepping shrimp is to shell and devein them. Dad and I thought we took some great footage of the process. Shot it more than a few times but we had a slight problem. Originally I was going to film it and turned the camera to record and then we decided he would film it so I gave the camera to him which was recording. So he gets all centered in on the shrimp and hits the record button which stops the recording. Then at the end of the demonstration he hit the record button again starting the recording. I grab another shrimp, he gets it centered, hits the record button stopping the recording, I run through the process of deveining a shrimp and then he hits the record button turning the camera back on, and on and on for about 5 shrimp. The next time I do these I will get some footage and insert it in here. I have a couple of pics to help demonstrate the process but the vids would've been much better.

First, take the shrimp in your hand and put the legs toward your palm, or the exact opposite of what my dad is doing here:

Then hold the shrimp so the back is sticking up. Take a paring knife with the sharp edge of the blade away from your palm and insert it stright down from where the head of the shrimp would be:

Run the blade along the back to split the shell. When you get to the last section of the shell stop, pulld the shell off and then remove the tail. Pinch just above the hard section of the tail while gently pulling on the body of the shrimp. Now look into the cavity just created for the vein or any other dark matter. Remove that and you have a deshelled, deveined, butterflied shrimp ready for the grill. Or in this case, ready for the bacon!!!

If you go with smaller shrimp you may need to precook the bacon just a bit. Also, go with a third to a quarter piece of bacon. This bacon wrapped around the shrimp twice.

Here are all the ingredients used to make the shrimps:

I did them two different ways but to start all eight got a half strip of bacon wrapped around them and then skewered with a toothpick. From there half of them were destined to simply be braised in the drawn garlic butter I did with the lobster tails. The instructions on doing the drawn butter as well as the write up on how to grill lobster tails can be found here.

For the other half of them I did them in a honey/honey mustard/garlic sauce. And no, that was not a typo. Honey mustard plus more honey:

3 tbsp of honey mustard
1 tbsp of honey
1 1/4 tsp of chili powder
1 tsp of minced garlic
Couple of turns of the pepper grinder.

Combine all ingredients and wisk together. If you have more shrimp to do than four just try to keep the honey mustard to honey ration at 3:1. Once the sauce is made apply liberally to the shrimps with a BBQ or basting brush:

After my lobster tails had been on for about 3-4 minutes I threw on the shrimp over medium high heat. With the size of these shrimp, when the bacon is done the shrimp are done. Here are the shrimps next to my lobster tails. I left both on the grill for about 6 minutes from this point:

Here are the shrimps plated with the main course and a closeup of the shrimps:

I put the closeup in here so you can see that the honey mustard will blacken a bit due to the high sugar content. This is not a big deal. It will not taste burnt.

Other methods that I use to do bacon wrapped shrimp. I take a sprig of rosemary (not a woody sprig) and place it in the crevice created by butterflying the shrimps and then wrap in bacon. Or take a whole basil leaf, wrap it around the body of the shrimp and then wrap in bacon. I have braised them in sweet BBQ sauce. I have dredged them in chipotle Tobasco sauce for an incredible flavor that is not too hot.

Get creative. And by all means share your creative ideas in the comments section below!!!


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Seafood Delight!!!

Inspired by a story from someone about being in the Caribbean and having shish kababs right on the beach I decided to follow suit. He said that basically the guy glazed the kababs with butter/garlic sauce and indirected the seafood for a few minutes and then finished them over the heat with a BBQ sauce glaze. I basically followed this method without the BBQ sauce because to me with seafood, butter is all I need.

This is such a simple recipe that anyone can do it. And with Lent here it might be the perfect meal for Friday night the next couple of weeks...


Near my office in St. Louis there is an area that is as close to a China Town that St. Louis will ever have. I took a trip down Olive in University City and stepped into 3 seafood markets and one seafood restaurant. I didn't realize it was a seafood restaurant until I stepped inside.

I wound up getting the seafood for this dish at two different places. At one place I got the Shrimp, scallops and conch (this was an experiment). At another I got mahi mahi and grouper. I had planned on doing monk fish but with none to be found I went with the mahi and grouper as it looked the best.

The first place had incredible deals on shell fish including 2 pound lobsters for $14 each. That's each, not per pound!?!?! We will be doing those very soon so stay tuned. But their fish was not the freshest. It was hard to find any Grouper or Snapper that did not have their eyes clouded over which is a sure sign of the fish not being fresh. So I picked up some black tiger shrimps, U20-30 scallops (pound and a half of each or about 40 each) and 1 conch. Then I went down the street and got some wild caught gulf grouper and mahi mahi (a pound of each) . Oh, this may seem like a lot of food but I was feeding six.

To go along with the seafood I picked up two yellow peppers, a whole pineapple, and a pound of yellow squash. Yes, it's a yellow theme. Now you can use canned pineapple but fresh is so much better and so easy. Lop of the top and bottom. Slice down the sides to remove the tough exterior. Turn on it's side and cut into one inch thick slices. Cut the tough center out and chunk up. It's a little more work than opening a can, but the extra effort is well worth it.

I know people have asked me to be more quantitative with my posts with detailed recipes and cooking times, but there really is not recipe for this. Pick whatever ingredients you want. I originally wanted monk fish but couldn't find any so I went with what was available. You can do these with chicken, beef, pork, sweet onion, whole water chestnuts, zucchini, other seafood/fish, red/green/orange peppers, mushrooms, just whatever you want. Avoid potatoes (take too long to cook) and fish that is flaky like roughy. Mahi is ideal for this. The grouper started falling apart a bit as it cooked through. Swordfish, shark, monkfish are all good candidates. Just as the fish monger what s/he recommends for kababs.

Ingredients for the kababs:

1.5 pounds of shrimps
1.5 pounds of scallops
1 pound of grouper
1 pound of mahi mahi
1 pound of yellow squash
2 yellow peppers
1 whole pineapple

Feeds 6

Ingredients for the garlic butter sauce:

6 sticks of salted butter
2 large tablespoons of garlic

For braising the kababs and for dunking during the meal


Here we have some of the mahi mahi:

The scallops, fish (mahi up high in the dish and grouper down low) and black tiger shrimps. Outside of a royal reds, black tigers are pretty much the best tasting shrimp out there, but any shrimp can be used. Also remember to pull the tough muscle off the side of the scallops as demonstrated here:

And here we have the yellows - yellow squash, yellow pepper and yellow pineapple:

Here is everything together starting from the left and going clockwise - Pineapple, squash, scallops, mahi, grouper, shrimps, and yellow pepper. And don't forget the Now and Zen Wasabi White that dad brought over. Amazing wine and only $10:

Make sure to soak your skewers ahead of time or you risk them burning up on the grill. These soaked for maybe 3 hours, but an hour is about all they need:

At first I went with kababs that were a variety of all the different ingredients as seen below:

Dad pointed something out. The items on the skewer are going to cook at different rates. The veggies will take much longer than the seafood. So I took a new approach. Skewers of the same ingredient. So a few skewers of just pineapple, a few of just shrimps, etc.

An another tip from dad. Instead of going with just one skewer per kabob he recommended doing two per kabab to make it easier to flip them over. If it's just one skewer and you flip it over some pieces may rotate on the skewer so the side that was just over the heat is back over the heat again. Here is a pic of some scallop kabobs on the grill done with two skewers:

While the coals were getting going in my chimney outside I prepped the garlic butter sauce inside. I simply melted 4 sticks of butter in a pot and tossed in a couple heaping table spoons of minced garlic after the butter had boiled. I would up using another two sticks of butter after this pic was taken. I know that sounds like a lot, but a great deal of it was lost when I brushed it on the kababs. And I wanted some at the end for people to dunk their food in during the meal:

My wife made her amazing cheesy biscuits for the event. Here they are awaiting a 450 degree oven (sorry but no after pics):

I did two zone cooking for this in my large offset smoker which was used just as a regular grill here. I started off with the veggies on first indirect with lots of butter glazed on and the conch on the upper rack to the left directly over the heat. This was an experiment to see if it's any good. Didn't want to serve my guests something without knowing if it sucked or not:

The reviews were mixed on the conch. A couple of the pieces were tough. The flavor is reminiscent of lobster but it would seem that one side of the conch is tougher than the other side. The pieces cut from the upper right of this chunk below were tender, but the pieces cut from the lower left were tough. I don't know if I bought a tough one as I have never bought conch before or if they are all that way. Either way, I will revisit this again as the tender pieces were pretty good:

BTW, just to give you a little idea as to the conditions for the grilling - that blizzard that hit Denver was on its way and we were grilling on my front porch in the rain at about 35 degrees. Overnight we got 2 inches of snow on March 28th:

After about 30 minutes of indirecting the veggies and the three skewers that I did the hodgepodge of ingredients I put the kababs over the direct heat to finish them up. The peppers went first and are on the upper rack on the right in the pic below to make room for the squash. I liberally applied the butter/garlic sauce every time I opened the lid to every kabab. I also had to add charcoal a couple of times to keep the temp up so keep that in mind:

Another little treat for the chefs. Pineapple on the grill is absolutely incredible. The last slice of pineapple I left whole so it could be grilled for dad and I to have a snack (we call this a chefs prerogative. Other good candidates for this are rib tips, chunks of a smoking bologna chub, and any pork product used to braise meat like bacon, salami or pepperoni):

The three kababs with the hodgepodge of ingredients were sent inside as an appetizer and the veggies to a baking dish covered with some tinfoil. Since the biscuits were in the oven, I had to rewarm the veggies right before dinner by placing the baking dish right over the fire for about 3 minutes.

Now on to the main event - the seafood as well as the pineapple. I indirected the seafood for just a few minutes (maybe 5) and then put them right over the heat. While the seafood was indirecting I had the pineapple on the upper rack directly over the heat. Here we have a shot of the seafood right after I put it over the heat:

I doesn't take long for seafood of this size (namely chunked up fish) to cook. For the fish, once the grouper started to flake off a bit the fish was done. When the shrimps turns orange and firms up they are done. Another feature of black tiger shrimp is they turn much brighter orange than any other shrimp. And when the shrimp are done, small U20-30 scallops are done as well. Just look for them to firm up a bit. Scallops really only need about 2 minutes per side over medium high heat to be done depending on the size. And remember that it is perfectly acceptable to serve scallops medium rare and over cooking them makes them rubbery so make sure to lean towards undercooking when dealing with scallops.

Here we have a closeup of the those beautiful shrimps:

And here we have the seafood on a platter ready to be passed to the people at the table:

In the end we had some veggies and pineapple left but no seafood whatsoever. Kababs are a bit of work but so worth it.

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First Guy Night of the New Year + Video of Flame Searing Steaks!!!

Dad and I got together for Guy Night on January 9th. He brought the wine, I provided the steaks and potatoes and he also came through with a nice little bag of Royal Red Shrimps from the Gulf. Every year my folks go down to the Gulf of Mexico and pick up a cooler full of Royal Reds right from the dock, remove the heads and straight into the freezer. They are phenomenal. They have more flavor than your standard shrimps. So surf and turf (and spuds) it was.


Let's get to the ingredients for this meal. First off, a couple of fat New York Strips. Here they are coming up to room temp. Never cook cold steaks. I don't know the science behind it but I always cook my steaks at room temp:

Before I cooked them I wanted to try out the branding iron my 8 month old son got me for Christmas. I think my wonderful wife had something to do with helping him order it but I hear it was all his idea. And I must say it is really cool. At least when using a cut of meat big enough to accommodate the entire brand and these two bad boys did so nicely:

I was able to brand both without having to reheat the brand. Totally cool!!!

But before we get to the cooking of the steaks, including video of the searing both steaks, I should go over the sides. Two of the easiest sides you will ever make - Roasted Potatoes and Grilled Shrimps.

I took about five red potatoes and chopped them into similar sized chunks in order to ensure they cook evenly:

Then simply add some garlic, a good size pinch of salt, a few cranks of black pepper and drizzle in the veggie oil of your choice (in this case Olive Oil). If you want to add some herbs or red pepper flakes or anything else you feel like, go for it. For these I used some dried oregano. No reason other than the jar was the closest to me. If you want to use infused oils like garlic oil or hot pepper oil, that would work too. Here we have the potatoes with all the ingredients waiting for a spoon to mix the ingredients through:


I let the potatoes marinate in the oil/garlic/pepper/oregano for about 15 minutes. Then I preheated the oven to 400 and spread the potatoes out on a cookie sheet:


In the oven for 45 minutes at 400 and then about another five minutes under the broiler and we have nicely golden roasted potatoes:


As soon as I put the potatoes in the oven I lit the paper under my chimney starter while dad got to work on these beauties:


After he shelled and deveined the shrimps we were ready to dump the coals and throw our steaks on:



But first the wine. Again dad came through with an amazing wine. Dead Letter Office Shiraz:



With the coals dumped it was time to do some searing. Same story as all my other steaks. Two zone grilling with coals on one side and nothing on the other. Pour some oil, sear on the flames, rotate for the grill marks if you wish, pour more oil, flip over, repeat. Pull to the side to bake. Before we get to the video, let me show a valuable piece of equipment that I use every time I make steaks. It's a long bottle for oil that allows me to hold the base of the bottle and not burn myself when I pour the oil. Smaller bottles will put your hand right over where the flames are about to erupt from your grill. The wine bottle is there for size perspective:


***ALSO, BE VERY CAREFUL WHEN FLAME SEARING A STEAK, PARTICULARLY IN THE WIND. AVOID DOING SO AROUND WOOD OR SIDING. YOU MAY WANT TO KEEP SOMETHING NEARBY TO PUT OUT A FIRE SHOULD IT GET OUT OF CONTROL.

Now that that is out of the way back to the grillin. My dad likes his steak a little more done than I like mine so his went on first. Here is the video of the process. Forgive me for the low lighting, I am by no means any good with a camera for still or for video:



Flipped dad's over and repeated the process:



Here is a shot of this steak pulled off the heat and off to the side to be baked for a few minutes. How bout the cross hatching? This is not normally a priority for me, but I wanted to show how it is done:


Here is the other side with the Brand. Oh, how I love this new toy!!!


I baked Dad's steak for maybe 4-5 minutes before putting mine on. When mine bakes for a couple of minutes it will give Dad's about 6-7 minutes total baking time and thus a nice medium rare that he likes.

I noticed when doing Dad's steak that the oil poured on the fire that was upwind from the steak did not really have any impact on the steak as the wind blew it away from the steak. So when I did mine, I poured the oil in a tighter spot rather than in a large circle and put the steak on the grill a little upwind from where I poured the oil so the wind would blow the flames into the steak. This will make the oil last longer thus you will use less. You can see the oil lasted much longer in this vid:



I only showed the searing of one side of my steak. After three videos of the process I think you get the idea.

After baking mine a couple of minutes following the searing I pulled both off to rest:


Dad is a big fan of foiling the steaks while resting. I've never done it but we went with it this time. You don't need to seal it tight, it just helps retain some of the heat while resting as well as the moisture:


While the steaks were resting the shrimp went on. Since I was having so much fun with the flame searing I went ahead and flamed them as well. You can see that I am using a grill pan which will save me a lot of time instead of having to manage 15 or so shrimps at one time:


Time to bring this meal together. Here we have Dad's plated:

And here we have mine:


I suppose you want the money shot now. Well in this post you get two for the price of one. Here is Dad's:



And here is mine:



Total time from start to finish to make this meal, 60 minutes. Now on to the movie:


I almost forgot. Dad and I did it up right this time with a little dessert wine with the movie. Old Benson's Tawny Port. Here is a pic of this nectar of the gods!!!


I looked at this pic and it looks like Dad and I cracked a second bottle of wine. For those of you who are not familiar with Port, I feel another picture is necessary to get some perspective on what Port is all about:


That bottle is not a full size bottle and neither is the glass. But a pic with just the two of them looks like they are both normal size. One drinks port in 1.5-2 ounce increments. I like to explain Port with this analogy. Wine is to Port as Coffee is to Espresso. Port and Espresso are both more concentrated versions of wine and coffee, respectively. Port is thicker than wine and sweeter than wine. Incredible stuff.

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