Jalapeño Lime Shrimp
Having drafted and tested over 700 recipes at this point, I more-or-less can imagine what a dish will taste like when writing up a recipe, and while cooking I'm merely making minor adjustments to ingredients and amounts to get the flavor just right. So it was a little confounding for me when I kept working on a jalapeño wings recipe and was never quite hitting it right, but then I felt like I finally nailed it about five years ago and it then became a recipe I was uniquely proud of. It had been awhile since I'd made those wings and I felt the desire to return to them recently, but instead of doing a repeat, I tried out how a similar incarnation would fair on shrimp, and these jalapeño-lime shrimp are proof that the answer is extraordinarily well.
This isn't a wholesale facsimile of that wings recipe, but instead I used it as a base and began making adjustments for what I thought would fair best with shrimp. For the sauce, the honey, jalapeño hot sauce, lime, and butter that formed an effective partnership were all there, but I boosted the lime for more prominence and opted to mix in cilantro at this point instead of using the herb as a finishing garnish.
For the seasoning, I scaled back the flavor profile a bit to let the sauce do more of the heavy lifting, Still, I felt the earthy notes from cumin and a little sharpness from garlic powder and black pepper were key, plus some sugar for color and a contrast to the semi-spicy sauce. Like adding baking powder to wings to help enhance their texture, baking soda was added this time around, which helps keep the shrimp plump and juicy during cooking.
Ever since moving out of New York, I've faired much better with frozen shrimp because I've found the quality of fresh seafood around these part of North Carolina is unpredictable. Most of the time I'm probably buying shrimp that have just been defrosted anyway, so I figure why not just start with frozen, which have likely been in that state close to when they were caught. Plus frozen shrimp take only a few minutes to defrost under running cold water, so it's not like thawing is a huge time investment like it can be with other things.
After defrosting, I patted the shrimp dry with paper towels and tossed them in the seasoning. I then threaded them onto these new double pronged skewers I bought recently which are perfect for things that need a little extra security from spinning around, like shrimp can do. I then rested the skewers over a container and placed the whole thing in the fridge. Also like wings, the shrimp benefit from air drying so the exterior browns quickly, giving you an ideal sear before the interior overcooks. Unlike wings though, which take about eight hours to effectively lose surface moisture, just an hour rest is usually sufficient for shrimp.
Shrimp like high heat, but high heat can also quickly overcook them, so being fast and attentive pays off when it comes to grilling. I actually had my wife help me out here—she flipped and moved the shrimp around so they were cooking evenly while I brushed them with the glaze and took photos. The extra hand was helpful because the shrimp were finished in just about three minutes and we got all the needed tasks done without overcooking them at all.
Longtime readers already know I'm not a big seafood eater—the main reason the entire category is underrepresented on this site—and shrimp really at among my least favorite. I purposefully make recipes with flavors I really love because I won't put something on this site without at least trying it, and this instance, the shrimp were a huge personal success because after eating one, I kinda wanted a bunch more. However, my friends loved them even more as I watched these disappear at record speed with compliments about how the sweet and citrusy start got even better when mixed with the medium fruity heat and tang of the jalapeño hot sauce. Those flavors went well with the natural sweetness of the shrimp, whose mellowness allowed notes from the cumin and garlic to come out as well, even when used in lesser quantities than in the original chicken recipe. Those wings will always be more my speed just due to personal preference, but these shrimp certainly held their own in my mind.
