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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Grilled Lobster Tails!!!

Some of you may be intimidated by Lobster. Some of you love the stuff but rarely eat it due to the cost. The cost leads to that intimidation. Do these questions pop up when considering Lobster:

What if I overcook it?
What if I under cook it?
How do I know when it's done?
What if I screw it all up and that money spent on that expensive seafood will be wasted?

I've asked myself those same questions. I've had those same fears. How does one eliminate those fears? Practice. But this is such and expensive food item to practice on, right? Wrong. This is the best time to get that practice. Due to the economy being in the crapper nobody is buying such luxuries like lobster. The lobster vendors have slashed prices. What better time to practice on lobster than right now? Those two tails above were $20. Not apiece. Total. They were $20/pound and each of those is 8 ounces. Show me a good steak that you can get for $10? I saw a place in St. Louis that has 2 pound live lobsters for $14/lobster. That's not per pound.

The time is now to conquer your fear of this delicious crustacean. The time is now to get your practice in. The time is now to realize that a lobster tail is just a really big shrimp. If you can grill a shrimp you can grill a lobster tail....

Dad ponied up the lobster tails. These were $20/pound as I mentioned above, but the next day Dad went back for a couple more and they were marked down to $13/pound. $6.50 for an 8 ounce tail? Are you kidding me?!?!?! Oh, how I wish I had the freezer space!?!

And while lobster tails are just large shrimp in terms of cooking they do require a bit different preparation. The main problem being splitting the tail open. Some suggest to split the bottom, much softer section of the tail. Some split the top. I went with the latter. A pair of kitchen shears made quick work of those shells but this can be done with a sharp knife too. Simply start with the sheers (or knife) and split the shell all the way to the tail:

Then slice the meat in half along the split shell. Try not to cut through the bottom shell:

Now for the cool part. I put my thumbs into the newly created slit that runs the length of the tail and pulled it apart. The bottom shell holds the two pieces together and now the meat is butterflied for maximum surface area:

The lobster tails will be braised with drawn/clarified garlic butter which is so simple to make:

2 stick salted butter
1 heaping tablespoon of garlic
1 spoon

Bring the two sticks of butter to a boil and then reduce to a simmer. After the foam dissipates on top you will notice some white clumps floating to the top. Spoon them off the top while trying to leave as much of the remaining butter. A sieve could also be used for this. Right before the butter is to be brushed onto the lobster tail (and a few shrimp in this case) put the garlic in. The longer garlic cooks the less flavor it has so do not boil the garlic the whole time.

Two sticks of butter seems like a lot but what will not be slathered onto the seafood while cooking will used as a dipping sauce during the meal.

Now that the lobster tails and garlic butter are ready for the grill, Dad and I cracked open a great wine that was on sale at the local grocer. Normally about $23 this bottle was on sale for $13:


Cooking Method:

I set up two zone cooking here almost out of habit but it is not really necessary. Just get the grill to a medium high heat. Not quite steak flame searing temps, but still a hot fire. There is no need to indirect these. Just keep them over the heat the whole time. The 2nd zone could be useful to keep the tails warm if there was something else that was not quite done and needs a little more time.

Brush the lobster meat with a healthy dose of the butter and place meat side down over the heat. Be careful of flame ups from the butter dripping into the fire. I had to readjust the location a few times due to flame ups as you can see below with the flames licking the tail on the right:

Here are the tails moved a bit to avoid the flare ups. I put the butter pot right on the grill to keep it warm (lower right):

The tails need to be over the heat for only about 3-4 minutes. Here are the tails with the shrimp added to the grill. I flipped the tails immediately after placing the shrimps on the fire (I will talk about the shrimp in another post):

Once the tails are flipped the shell will disperse the heat quite a bit but they still only need 5-6 minutes on the heat shell side down or a total of about 10 minutes cook time. This will vary depending on temp and size of the tail. What to look for is the consistency of a cooked shrimp - white, firm flesh, but not rubbery. Once the tails are flipped give them another slathering of garlic butter.

Here is Dad's tail plated. Notice the flesh is a little browned from being over the heat but not charred. That is nearly perfect:

And here are a couple of shots of my tail. Mine charred just a bit on the right side but it was still fantastic:


Now is the time to get over the fear and anxiety of grilling lobster. When prices go back up you will be a seasoned vet with these and not worry at all about grilling them...


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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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2008 New Year's Eve Feast - Lobsters, Prawns, and Escargot, OH MY!!

I realize I am the GrillinFool and this is a grilling website, but for NYE we did not grill anything. I did not pay for the lobsters and the man that did wanted them boiled. As I was eating my lobster for free, I obliged the man with the credit card. As someone who is cursed with an insatiable passion for seafood and stuck smack dab in the middle of the country I can't stress enough how much I enjoyed this meal. And yes, I was very worried I would screw up the cooking of the lobsters in my first attempt at this. It is so easy to do. I worried for nothing. Click the link below and see what I am talking about...


My menu planned on being lobsters, crab stuffed prawns, sauteed swiss chard, roasted red potatoes, cheesy potato biscuits, and clarified butter. As you can see in the pic above there is no greenery on the plate. The swiss chard at my grocery store was downright rotten. They had very little left and what was left was pretty much not edible. The good news is though that they did have escargot ready for the oven with a butter/garlic/herb mixture already added to the shells. The crab stuff prawns were also premade at the grocery store. Remember I was going for low maintenance for this meal.

This was the first time I have ever made lobsters myself. And I ran into a little problem. My largest pot is a 12 quart pot. That is not big enough for these beauties:


I want to expound a bit about the lobsters we had. Being in St. Louis, lobster is not on the menu very often except for very special occasions as it is normally extremely expensive. Well, we found TheLobsterGuy.com and these lobsters turned out to be pretty reasonable and more than that they were phenomenal. The lobsters were billed as being 1.5 pounds and they were every bit of that if not more. We ordered them on December 28th for December 31st delivery. They came with instructions on how to care for the lobsters up until cook time as well as a hand written note thanking us for our order. I don't pimp a lot of products here but this outfit deserves the props. Highly recommended. Now back to the meal itself.

Knowing that I didn't have the hardware to handle these bad boys I went to a local wholesale restaurant supply store and picked up this 60 quart monster (my 20 pound beagle in the background for perspective):

This problem was a little bigger than the lack of greenery for the meal. While this pot would easily accommodate the four lobsters my stove could not accommodate the 15 gallon pot:


Missed it by about an inch and a half. While I was not happy about the situation, my eight month old was ecstatic:

He played in that pot for a couple of hours. He really enjoyed himself in it. I almost don't want to take the pot back, but I just can't justify keeping it considering the price. Since he likes the pot better than the horse we got him for Christmas (in the background of the first pic) I suggested to Mrs. GrillinFool that we take back the horse and keep the pot. She didn't like that idea!?!

So, what to do about boiling these lobsters? We talked about firing up my grill outside and putting the big pot on that but I think it would've been hard to keep the temp up considering it was about 35 degrees and windy outside. So we pulled out my 12 quart pot and got a couple smaller pots which did the job:

The big pot took on two lobsters and the other two took a lobster each.

For the sides I cut up enough red potatoes to cover a baking sheet. I put them in a bowl, slathered them with garlic, olive oil, black pepper and a few pinches of coarse salt and put them in the oven for 45 minutes on 400:

The right third of the potatoes I added some fresh rosemary:


Here is a shot of the other two sides ready for that 400 degree oven. The prawns went in for 15 and the escargot for 10:

With 12 minutes remaining on the biscuits, the prawns in the oven, the escargot about ready to go I dropped these into the pot. ***Warning: picture of Dead Lobsters Walking:


Despite the lobster being very similar to the cock roach in terms of their species, I had a hard time with the notion of boiling something alive. So I split their heads in two to put them out of their misery about 10 seconds before dropping them in the pots.

For the two smaller pots all I added was a large pinch of salt to each. For the larger pot I added two large pinches and a bag of crab boil for my FiL and I. I did not sample one of the lobsters cooked in the pot without the crab boil so I have no idea if it made a big difference. I will say this that everyone said theirs was delicious so it would seem that I couldn't go wrong either way.

The smaller pots came back to a boil pretty quickly so I pulled those lobsters first. The larger pot having two lobsters dragging the temp down required a little more time. Here we have all four lobsters on the cutting board waiting to be plated. The ones on the right were just removed from the water:


Here are the prawns out of the oven:


And the escargot. One fell over and leaked all the butter and herbs out:


Of course we did it up right for NYE so the wife broke out the Lennox and the Waterford. Or as my FiL calls them, "the fancy eatin' plates." The wife likes to break out the fancy stuff for events like this. As long as I'm not doing the dishes, as none of this stuff can go in the dishwasher, I'm OK with that:

And yes, those are actually nut crackers that we use for lobster (and crab legs). We just don't eat it lobster or crab enough, considering we live smack in the middle of the country to, to justify the proper gear here. The nut crackers and a good fork work just fine:


And the wine pairing is one of my faves - Pierano Estates Chardonnay - which is a rich buttery chard that played off the vast sums of butter that we consumed that night beautifully:


And of course the final plating before we luxuriated in some luscious lobster meat:



The obligatory, what would I do differently the next time:

1. I would measure the space between my stove top and the hood over my stove and get a pot that would fit in that space.
   
2. I would probably add the potatoes a little earlier so that I could broil them for about 5 minutes and get a nice crunch to them. I didn't want the lobster to cool and become rubbery so I had no time for that.

Other than that I doubt I would do anything differently...Oh, and we are definitely doing lobsters again next year and the TheLobsterGuy.com will get our business again...

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