The Most Addicting Summer Grilled Shrimp Recipe! Knox Ave BBQ

Grilled shrimp is something everyone should have on their menu during this barbecue and grill season. It's a super fast and easy cook but doesn't lack in flavor especially when it's cooked with some chilies, garlic, butter, and served with some crusty bread. It'll quickly become one of your go-to dishes this summer. With that being said, let's get cooking. For this dish, I'll be using 16-20 shrimp with a shell and head on. Some of you guys might be wondering what that number means. It's a way to categorize shrimp by size by saying how many shrimp of this size would be in a pound. So for example, this is 16-20 which means I should have 16 to 20 shrimp per pound. Here I have 9 shrimp that are just over half a pound. To me, the size is perfect. If it was any smaller, I would worry about it cooking a little bit too quickly over a hot grill. But if you can find something that's bigger, I would definitely go for it. You can also make this dish with peeled and headless shrimp but I think the shell helps hold onto the sauce. I'm also one of those people that likes to eat the shrimp with the shell on. Even though I'm going to leave the shell on, there's some clean that still needs to be done. And the only tool that I'll be using are these kitchen shears. And these shears aren't anything fancy but I think it makes the job go a lot quicker than using a knife. On the front of the head, the shrimp has this horn. I definitely want to snip that off so you don't accidentally poke yourself in the mouth while trying to eat it. Some of these shrimp also have these really long whiskers that I also want to cut off just because you can't really eat it. Next step, and it's a step that I don't see a lot of people taking because it is a little bit annoying, but we're going to take off the legs. If you're frying shrimp, those legs actually get kind of crispy. But when you're grilling them, that doesn't really happen and they have a sort of feathery-like texture. Sort of like the lungs or the gills in a blue shell crab. To remove them, rake the scissors across the belly of the shrimp to get all the legs to raise up. Once they're all raised up, they're much easier to snip off. While you can pull them off while eating, I just find that it's a little bit cleaner and a little bit more pleasant of an eating experience when it's done ahead of time. Last step is deveining the shrimp and by that I mean removing the intestines and the trail of poop that might be sitting in our shrimp. At the base of the head, you'll see a little gap. Cut down the middle of the shrimp body until you reach the tail. Separate the shell to reveal the intestines and remove that black line running down the middle. When you're cleaning the shrimp, I would keep a paper towel next to you to wipe your hands. Having drier hands definitely helps to pull this out. If you're still having trouble picking it up, use something like a toothpick to lift it up. It's a lot easier to grab it that way. Peeling and cleaning the shrimp like this isn't necessary. Even removing the poop some people might say, eh, it's fine. It's going to be fully cooked and all the germs will be killed off. But I really see it as caring for the people who will be eating it later. When you cook with love and intention, you do all the little things to make the food just a little bit better. For right now, we're going to put these shrimp in the fridge until they're ready to cook. A few months back, I made my first chili video using dried Mexican chilies. Ever since then, I've been playing around with them and seeing what other ways it can be used. For this recipe, I'm going to make kind of a chili crisp using Mexican chilies. While others may say that's just a salsa matcha, I read that salsa matcha is fried and also requires nuts or seeds, which I don't have in this recipe. So to be safe, I'm not going to call it that because I don't want to offend anybody. We'll be using three different types of chilies today. Chili de arbol for its smoky and spicy flavor. Guajillo for its mild spice, also a little bit of acidic flavor. And lastly, ancho for its smoky and fruitier sweetness. One thing to be conscious of is how dry the chilies are. The chili de arbol is so dry they snap and just crumble. The guajillos will break, but they tear more than crumble. The ancho is very flexible and definitely has way more moisture than the other two chilies. Knowing this will give us a better idea of how much cooking each one will require to get toasty. To prep these peppers, rip off the stems and remove the seeds. For the chili de arbol, if you want a little bit spicier, you can definitely leave more of them in and then tear up the bigger chilies so they can dry faster and have a little bit more surface area. In this batch, I have about 5 grams of chili de arbol, 7 to 8 grams of guajillo, and 10 grams of ancho. I'm leaving them in these piles because I know these chilies will be coming off at different times and I want to remove them quickly before they burn. They're going to go into a 350 degree oven until they become dry and fragrant for about 5 to 10 minutes. After 5 to 10 minutes of getting toasted in the oven, this is what the chilies look like. And this is what they should sound like. If there's any bit that's not dried out, it's going to end up being a little bit chewy. If there are a few pieces that aren't dried out yet, you can either just pick them out or throw them back in the oven. Just because for this recipe I'm working with a very small amount, I'm going to crush the peppers with a glove into a coarse texture, kind of like chili flakes that you would put on pizza. If I were doing a much larger batch, I would definitely use a food processor or blender just to make the job a lot easier. Once you have a fairly even texture of the mixed peppers, pour in about 15 to 25 grams of olive oil. Add just enough for the peppers to be rehydrated, but not so much that they're swimming in oil. Give it a good mix until that color is starting to pop. And with it being hit with oil, it should be super fragrant. It has a smoky, spicy, sweet, and almost cinnamon-like smell to it. This right here is going to bring so much flavor to our shrimp. Now that we have our shrimp cleaned up and our chili crisp made, we're getting close to cooking these shrimp, so let's go outside and start the fire. For this cook, we're going to build a super hot fire by starting off with a bed of fogo charcoal, chud snake nests to start the fire, and Korean newspaper for 263% more flavor. Wrap the snake nests and Korean newspaper for the ultimate flavor bomb. Place in the middle and cover it with more coals on top and build a mound around it. Since I want this fire to be extra hot, it's important to get these coals lit fast with a lot of air. Luckily, my parents are also in the barbecue season spirit and picked up this snazzy pink USB fan. I'm going to place the fan next to the fire on the side table to get the fire really going. In just a few minutes with this pink fan, our fire should be roaring hot. While the fan does all the hard work, let's go back inside and prep everything else that we need for this dish. To prep the shrimp, we're simply going to drizzle some olive oil and give it a good sprinkle of salt. As I mentioned before, this dish is going to cook super fast, so it's extremely important that we have all the ingredients we need ready to go. Here's a few items we'll be taking outside. We're going to have some picked and chopped cilantro, about four tablespoons of butter, four to five large cloves of chopped garlic, the three chili crisps, a lemon that's been cut into quarters, bread for the toast, some Cajun seasoning that we'll be using to add a little more flavor, olive oil, a few ounces of white wine. Now that we have our shrimp prepped and everything else that we need on this tray, we're ready to go. Once the fire is ready, make sure to give the grill grate a nice brush. Straight from the tray, dump the shrimp on the grill. All I'm trying to accomplish at this stage is to get some char and color on each side of the shrimp. We don't want to cook them too long right now because the shrimp will continue to cook in the sauce later. Literally after 35 seconds, the shrimp are ready to flip. You can see we have that nice orange color on the outside with a couple edges being nice and charred, and after another 30-35 seconds later, they're ready to come off the heat. This is exactly the color that we're looking for, but as you can see, they're still very very raw in the center. To make the sauce, to a pan we're going to add enough olive oil to cover the bottom. I know most people say not to cook with olive oil when cooking hot since it has a lower smoke point than most neutral oils, but the flavor of the olive oil I think is great for this dish. And to avoid the burnt and acrid flavor, we're going to make sure we move quickly and make sure we're continuously mixing our ingredients as we develop these flavors. Once the oil starts shimmering, add in the garlic and start moving around so it doesn't burn. Once you can start to smell the garlic, throw in about half of the chili crisp. This is the reason why I didn't fry the chilies earlier like we would do for a salsa matcha. I was a little bit worried that it might taste burnt. We fried it in oil earlier and did it again at this stage in the cook. Once we got all the chilies and the garlic mixed up and you can really start to smell those chilies, add in your white wine to cool down the pan so the garlic and chili don't burn. The white wine is going to give the sauce a little bit of sweetness and it's also going to give it a little bit more body especially as we reduce it. Once reduced, add about three tablespoons of your butter. Give it a good mix again so that we don't burn the butter and once your butter is incorporated, add in your favorite seasoning. I'm going to add a little bit of this Cajun seasoning just because I want to have more savory flavors but adding a good barbecue rub that's not super sweet also works really well. And once everything is incorporated and reduced, this is what your sauce should look like. At this point, we're going to put the shrimp into the sauce and cook it very quickly. Give them a nice toss so that each shrimp is completely covered and seasoned. To finish it off, put your last bit of butter and a small squirt of olive oil and fold in the butter to give the sauce a softer texture. And lastly, to cool down a pan, we're going to squeeze in some lemon juice and sprinkle our shrimp with some cilantro. And to accompany our shrimp, we're going to take our pieces of bread, give it a light drizzle of some olive oil and sprinkle it with some of that Cajun seasoning. Give it a light toast and we're ready to eat. This dish is the perfect quick weekend dinner or epic fancy looking dish to impress your friends and family or significant other. The sauce is garlicky, buttery, smoky, spicy, and also balanced with the white wine and lemon. Even though the sauce is good, it's also important that you can taste the shrimp. Because we finished cooking the shrimp in the sauce at the very end, it still has great texture and bounce and a whole lot of crunch from the shrimp shells. And with the crusty bread served on the side, it's the perfect edible utensil to sop up every last bit of the sauce. I would suggest when you make the chili crisp, make a little extra. I think the chili crisp would work great for a chicken or fish dish. Or if you're using a compound butter over a steak for fajitas, I think that would be absolutely fantastic. I hope you guys enjoyed this video and as a barbecue and grill season is upon us, let me know what other dishes you would like me to make both on the grill or the smoker. Leave your suggestions in the comments down below and I'll take a look at the suggestions with the most likes. And if you guys did enjoy this video, please make sure to like, subscribe, share this video with your friends and I'll see you guys in the next one.