If you’re from the Gulf Coast chances are good that, like me, you were introduced to Shrimp Creole at an early age, and you know perfectly well how it’s supposed to taste. In my case, fast forward a few decades: I’m working on a menu and recipes for a new Creole restaurant. Armed with my great aunt’s shrimp Creole recipe, I’m recipe testing, but it isn’t really working for the restaurant. So I look up eleventy zillion recipes in my cookbooks and online. I cook and fiddle with recipes, cook and fiddle, and I do that on and on for quite some time. Nothing is exactly what I want, and I find that many recipes are way over-complicated. Weirdly, a large number of those end up tasting like canned tomato sauce. How can you possibly put 27 ingredients in something and still have it come out tasting like canned tomato sauce?!? I don’t know, either.
So finally, super frustrated around noon one day, I totally chucked all those recipes, and quite literally started from scratch. I pared it down to the essentials I remembered and went from there. By dinnertime I had the sauce below. I tried it out on a few unsuspecting eaters to good effect. A few days later I had the opportunity to serve my Shrimp Creole to a very talented classically trained chef I happen to know. He’d brought his teenage daughters and his lovely leading lady to dinner, and I didn’t tell any of them I was recipe testing. We all ate and ate. When the chef volunteered that he especially liked the Creole sauce, I thought maybe I was done. And later when I found somebody else in the kitchen wiping the serving platter clean with a heel of baguette, I knew I was.
Here are some dandy shrimp my mom painted:
Below is an authentic, old-school, Shrimp Creole. I’ve divided it into two recipes. You’ll notice that the sauce itself is made without shrimp, and that the Shrimp Creole recipe calls for hot Creole sauce to be added to the hot cooked shrimp just before serving. That’s historically common, but a little unusual these days. I do it for two reasons. First, I like to make sure the shrimp is cooked perfectly rather than hanging around getting overcooked in a sauce. Truly, Perfect Creole Sauce + Perfectly Done Shrimp = Perfect Shrimp Creole. You can cook the shrimp however you’d like. I give instructions below for quickly sauteed shrimp, but boiled shrimp are perfectly fine, and I’ve done them that way for Shrimp Creole many times.
Second, I find it’s easiest to make a batch of Creole sauce, use what I need for the dish I’m making today, and freeze the rest for something else. Chicken Creole made in the manner of Shrimp Creole is a treat. (You can also make Crawfish Creole if you want. I think we’re all pretty clear on how I feel about Crawfish Anything; but you do you.) This sauce works well in or over stuffed eggplant, with grilled or roasted eggplant, as a sauce for fried green tomatoes, and it makes very nice Creole-style parmigianas. The prettiest seafood dish I think I ever served in my whole entire life was a grilled whole snapper surrounded by grilled lemons and shiny black olives, with Creole sauce (from my freezer!) ladled over it. It wowed the guests, and tasted awfully good, too. A glug or two of sherry plus a ¼ cup of heavy cream added to two cups of hot Creole sauce will give you a restaurant-quality Cardinale sauce for shrimp, scallops, or those infernal crawfish.
If you’ve never cooked a roux before, or never cooked one longer than what you’d do for a white sauce, this recipe is a good place to start. Unlike the 45-minutes-of-stirring affair you need for a good gumbo, this roux will only take a few minutes. You must stir constantly, though. Once the roux begins to take on color, it will darken fairly quickly. The most important thing is not to burn it. If you’re nervous, or you feel like it’s coloring too quickly, turn the heat down a tad and keep stirring. You’re looking for a caramel color, and you will get it there. Once you add the vegetables, it’s far less likely to burn, and you can get away with stirring only occasionally.
Bon Appetit!
Classic Creole Sauce
Ingredients
- 4 T. bacon fat
- 3 T. flour
- 3/4 cup each, diced, onion, green bell pepper, red bell pepper, celery
- 6 oz. can tomato paste
- 1 qt. chicken stock
- 14.5 oz. can tomato puree
- 2 cloves garlic, minced
- 1 bay leaf
- 1 t. chili powder (I use Mexene)
- 1 t. salt
- 1/2 t. ground black pepper
- 1/4 t. cayenne
Instructions
- Melt the bacon in a deep skillet over medium heat. Add the flour and stir constantly until the roux is caramel-colored. This will take 7 or 8 minutes, or possibly a bit longer. Don’t leave it, and take care not to scorch it. The best way to do this is to keep the roux moving, making sure you’re stirring to the bottom of the whole pan.
- Turn the heat to low and add the vegetables to the hot roux, stirring well to make sure all vegetables are coated. Cook down, stirring occasionally for 10 to 15 minutes until the vegetables are very soft.
- Add the tomato paste and continue to cook, stirring, for another couple of minutes. Add a little of the stock to the pan, scraping to get up anything stuck to the bottom. Add the rest of the stock, the tomato puree, garlic, bay leaf and chili powder. Add salt, pepper, and cayenne. Stir to completely combine everything. Cover and simmer on very low for half an hour or 45 minutes. Check seasoning. You want it highly seasoned. I usually add a little more black and cayenne pepper at least, but you should season to your taste.
- This sauce benefits from sitting off the heat to mature for a half hour or so and reheating before serving. Divide into 2-cup portions. Freeze what you won’t use in the next couple of days.
Shrimp Creole
Ingredients
- 1 lb. 31-35 large shrimp, peeled and deveined
- Salt, black pepper, and cayenne to taste
- 3 T. butter
- 2 cups hot Creole sauce
- 3 cups hot steamed rice
- sliced scallions or chopped parsley for garnish
- crusty French bread and soft butter for serving
- your favorite hot sauce for the table
Instructions
- Season the raw shrimp with the salt, pepper, and cayenne to taste. Melt butter in a skillet and when it foams, add the shrimp. Cook, tossing, only until shrimp are uniformly pink. Add 2 cups of hot Creole sauce and serve immediately over a bed of steamed rice. Garnish with scallions and/or parsley. Serve with French bread and butter, and put a bottle of hot sauce on the table.
This looks fabulous and something I must try! I’m sure it will taste as good as it looks:))
Let me know how you like it!
Sounds divine! Plan to try this one out because I love Shrimp Creole, but the idea of a creole parmigiana is taking up residence in the back of my mind, too. So…you can still find Mexene? No store here carries it anymore.
I can find it here. When I get Amazon back on board, I’ll put it in the store and you can get it there.
You know your recipes are good when your husband gets to see your post first and calls to say ” Have you seen Malia’s lastest post and can we have it for dinner this evening?” So guess what I’m cooking tonight. LOL Bart loves you and your food.
LOL! That’s great! Tell Bart that he’s the best!
Sorry,, forgot to check the stars.