Cajun Shrimp and Grits with Creamy Smoked Gouda

Okay, folks, look, we finna get right into it. I want you guys to look down here. Look at all these ingredients. I bet you didn't know we was finna make a smoky Cajun, you know, shrimp and grits. Now, now that we even looked at this, don't let all of these ingredients fool you. This is like super easy, well over the top. I already told you it's smoky, and this right here is what's gonna do it. Check it out, we got that smoked gouda. Now, don't forget the full ingredient list is on my website. That's Smokin' and Grillin' with AB.com, and that's W-I-T-A-B.com. All right, so just getting right to it, right? So listen, we got stone ground grits. Talk to me, y'all. I know everybody wanna use them instant grits and all of that, but we going stone ground. Now, first thing we gonna do is, we gonna go ahead, I got this on high. I'm gonna take my three cups of chicken stock, add this in here like this. Let's get it all in there. I'm gonna bring my milk. I'm gonna actually wait until I get a little, you get this to boil, and then after that, we gonna simmer and get it all nice and hot, and then we gonna add our grits. Okay, so you see right here, we got it simmered. Now I'm gonna go ahead and just pour the milk in. All right, so you see it right here. We don't wanna cook that milk, make it curd up or nothing like that, right? So now you wanna go ahead and add your, really what you wanna do is, I'm adding my grits to it now, but the real way to do it is read the instructions on your packaging, right? Because these gonna take about 30 to 35 minutes. I always say 30 minutes will get them right. You know, so now I'm gonna adjust my fire. Let's go ahead and bring this down to a simmer, and then what I'm doing is, I'm just going around the edges right here, getting everything off the sides. We don't have no lumps, because we did it the proper way. Just think about that. Like anytime you guys are using water, I mean, you always wanna level it up, right? That's why we go ahead and use, you know, chicken stock, you know, stuff like that. You know, something seasoned. That's what gives it the flavor. I'm gonna take this off. I'm gonna go ahead and move this over there to my stove, put it back on a simmer, and then we gonna let it work. Now I see this again in about 30 minutes. To be honest with you, in about 15 minutes, what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna come, make sure I hit it again with this whisk, you know what I mean? Make sure we're not getting no lumps, nothing sticking together. And then we're gonna prep the rest of our ingredients. All right, so listen, now that we're gonna transfer that over to the stove, right? You gotta get it right. Anytime you guys are using a stone ground, it take a little bit of time. You know, if you want it to be nice and creamy, I done gave up all the goods, you know, it's the chicken stock, it's the milk, you know, and then we're gonna add some butter, but I got the real secret ingredient. It's over there in that pot. I'll show it to you from far away. I hope y'all can see that little pot right there. That right there is gonna be another level up along with your smoked gouda, right? So this is what we're gonna do. Now we're gonna work on this shrimp. Shrimp, real easy. Look, I got a little bit of paprika. And when I say paprika, folks, if I don't say smoked, I don't use nothing else. I think the correct pronunciation is paprika. You know what I mean? But that's it. So there, now you guys got two choices. If you want it to be on the Creole, you know, side, you know, that Cajun slash, you know, have that Southern feel, this is it right here. If you're looking for a great tasting, I could have brought my A seasoning. So I'm gonna go ahead and add some of this to it, right? Now, normally I put in my oil first. So I'm just gonna add some now. It don't make no difference. We're just gonna work with it with our hands. I'm about to sneeze, folks. This Creole kick gets you going. Then of course I gotta have the fresh black cracked pepper. Right? All right, once you got it seasoned, then you just wanna get in here and just massage the, you know, your shrimp. Now look at the size of my shrimp. You don't have to have them this big. You know what I mean? I do it because I like to be able to see it. I like the way it photographs, things of that nature. If you season it now, we're gonna let it marinate. The longer I let this sit up, the longer it'll go ahead and, you know, soak up the flavors and it'll get deep, you know, into the flesh. Look at that right there. Look at that. Clean, de-shelled, look, oh man. You see that right there, folks? All right, so now look, if you look over here, these are done, they're soaking. Look, they look nice. You can just imagine how the flavor's gonna be deep into each bite of shrimp, right? Now I'm gonna go ahead and prep my, you know, my green bell pepper, right? So you only need a little bit of this, you know what I mean? So let's go ahead and cut it like that. I'm gonna cut this one down like this. You only need about a quarter of each. We're gonna finely dice that, right? These I'm gonna put into a Ziploc bag and I'll use these probably for tomorrow's video. I'm gonna go ahead and just cut this down, right, into like thin slivers, not super thin. You know, I'm not making no fajita or nothing like that. Then we just get them like this and now we're gonna go ahead and dice them down. You see why I said you only need, you know, about like a quarter of it because if you make them any bigger than this, I mean, if you cut any more off of them, you'd have so many, so much veggie, you know what I mean? So this right here is nice. Look at the size, nice, small. Don't forget, we do small for, you know, taste and the large for, you know, for the texture, right? So we'll just put that over there like that and that's nicely done right there. All right, so now we're getting ready to go ahead and prep, you know, our smoked gouda, right? Let's talk about this right here. Read the package and figure out which one you guys have. Sometime they'll have like a little wax, you know, a film that'll go around here. This is not it. This right here is edible, but I did peel this because this is going in my, you know, my grits. So what I want to do is I want to make sure that I don't have as much as this brown in there, just, you know, for the, I guess just for the, you know, for the presentation, right? So now we just take this and don't forget, it is super soft. You see that right there? Then all we want to do is get ourselves about a cup. All right, so this is what you want to have. Notice I use a small size, not the smallest, but I guess you'd call this like the medium size, you know, as far as when I grate. This right here melts good. Seeing how we're going to put that in the grits. Now, let me go ahead and take care of this onion, right? Let's just dice this down, right? You only need a little bit of onion, you know? So I'm probably going to just put this off to the side. Let me go ahead and get this peeled and then we'll go from there. All right, so now let me just go ahead and, you know, prep these onions. We're going to do the exact same thing. You know what I mean? I'm going to have a lot of onion leftover. Be careful, make sure your knife is sharp. I can see mine need to be ran through. I've been using it for a long time, folks. These knives hold a head so long. Then, you know, I take it this way. I'll just make a couple of little saw slits, you know? You can see it kind of like just works itself, you know, through. This is really the positioning of how I have my knife. We'll just bring this down like this and just look at how I cut that. Nice, small. Look at how they dice. You see that right there? I can slide it off like this. One cut, stone ground, right? You see that right there? Look at how smooth that is. Now, what I'm going to do is I'm going to add my butter. Drop my butter in there like that. We just work this around. Let that melt. I'm going to give it another whisk. But remember I was talking about the, you know, real ingredient, the secret ingredient? It is the fact that we're using the gouda because that gives it that deep, smoky flavor. But you see this right here? Just that Branson Violet, folks. It's that bacon sea salt. Now, this right here, we haven't put nothing in here. And because it is salt, I like to do like this. I want to make sure that I got it up like that. I don't want to run, you know, if I did like this, just a little bit comes off. Now we're there, right? So now we go with one teaspoon, right? Now listen, this is a vegan product. No bacon was used to make this, but just give it that little, you're talking about deep, smoky, but a hint of bacon. Come on, folks. Now you guys got to check it out. It is on my website. I see you guys have been moving it. You know what I mean? This is something, that's what I'm talking about. And if you don't believe me, look, come here for a second. I got all of them, bacon sea salt. You know what I mean? Got black garlic sea salt, got some truffle. What is this, more bacon? I got all of this up in here. I'm gonna do a video real soon, you guys, and let you guys know exactly what I cook with. If you guys want to get it, level up your game. We just showed off for Thanksgiving. Now we got to take it to the next level for Santa. All right, so look, you can see, I just cleaned off the top of the green, the green onions, right? Now we want to slice these. I was told they want them thin, so it don't become overpowering. Boy, I tell you, they got so many people in the background, you know, hollering at me, but you know what? They've been taught right. So look, we're gonna do it like that. You see that right there? We don't need no whole lot. Now that right there is green onion, right? You can see the little circles. And then over here, what's that? That's that parsley. Get rid of the rest. And now that we don't let everything cool off with our grits, you remember that gouda? Baby, come on. All right, so look, the fire off, you can see a little steam, little heat coming off of this. Now we're gonna go ahead and add, you know, our gouda. This is where we tie it all in, folks, all right? I just let the residual heat that's in here, you know, do its thing. You guys will see it'll just start to disappear on its own and dissipate, right? Look at that right there. Now you guys know how to make it the right way. Everybody thinks they can just make instant grits. Just, if you're trying to level up, I'm giving you the recipe. For those of you guys that watch me and you've got a restaurant, this is your new way of making it right here. But you're gonna need this right here, because this right here, I don't care who you are. I can stand next to Gordon Ramsey, Bobby Flay, or whatever, if I bring this dish and they bring theirs, because they're not using everything that I cook with, it will be good. I'm not saying it won't be, but this is what makes it, it separates myself from the rest. My grits, they right, I got them on like a slow, slow, low as I can go, you know, heat on the bottom, right? So here, I'm low too. I can feel this, we ain't got nothing. You know what I mean? We gotta put some, we gotta get a little bit more heat in there. Because what we're gonna do now is, we just want a low flame, right? We getting ready to saute, you know, our shrimp, right? So these been soaking for a minute. Now this is extra virgin, garlic infused, which mostly what I cook with, olive oil. All right, so I can put my hand right here and feel it. You know what I mean? That look like it's about ready. Now I'm getting ready to just drop these in here, just like this, right? Let me rinse. You know, I like to rinse and wash as I go. So I don't want my water to get dirty, right? So now I'm gonna come over here and make sure I get all of these down flat, right? So even though I'm talking, I got a mental clock going off in my head, right? We just want to do these for one minute on each side. You do these too long, and then you guys will be fighting with, you know, on your chewing, right? So let's get this over here like that. They've been sitting out, so they've been at room temperature, right? So it shouldn't take them that long. Like I say, one minute, then we just do a flip. All right, so like I said, you want to start to flip them over. Remember, I'm on a low flame. I'm cooking slow, right? So let me see if we can get these over here. Of course, these are gonna look a little bit better because they right underneath the flame, you know? So just do them like this. You'll know they cooking because they start to curl up, tighten up, start to become opaque, opaque. You know what I mean? That pink, look at that. Man, I almost maybe want to just throw a couple of gallops of butter in here. Yeah, these is right. All right, so you see this right here? Look, you can see that to infuse olive oil. Look at that down there. You see that color? That's all of the seasoning that we put on there. I'm gonna tell you guys now, folks, I think a lot of people are used to eating overcooked shrimp. Shrimp should only take a couple minutes to make. You know what I mean? Even when it's low. But you see that down there? We want to leave all this in there because now we finna put our veggies in here. Now you guys can see just how we build flavor. You know, these are just layers on top of layers on top of layers. We're gonna leave it just like what you guys see. I haven't turned nothing down. I'm on super low. Now we finna come with our veggies. I'm gonna let that go just a little longer. This right here is known as fod. Now I'm using hex clad pots and pans so you ain't gotta really worry about all of that. And I always do like to give my onions a little bit of a head start. I guess when they're just small, it really doesn't make no difference, you know? But we'll just let them go just for a second. We'll let that, look at that. See how they're not white no more? It just picks up everything, right? Now we just add the rest of this in here, right? Only thing missing to make it Holy Trinity is what? Some of y'all guessed it. Now some of y'all read comments and see a bunch of people typing in, you know, celery and then you just type in a celery. You know what I mean? But just want you guys to just, you know, think. You know what I mean? And just start figuring things out for yourself, figuring out some of the dishes that you've been making. Would they be leveled up if it was the Trinity? You know, stuff like that. All right, so here I like to go ahead and just add myself a little butter, right? After all, it's a butter sauce. To be honest with you, I call it that, but it doesn't have to have the butter in it. It's still gonna be nice, silky. You guys will see. You gotta have that little bit of gravy, right? So when you say gravy, you think of butter. You know what I mean? Everything is better with butter anyway. So once this melts, then I'm gonna go ahead and we're gonna work with this garlic. You guys know I like to have a base to put my garlic on so that it doesn't burn. And remember, I'm super low on the bottom end on here. You know what I mean? This is where we gonna get our success from. You know what I mean? Low and slow. Same thing we do outside. Now, if you guys was paying attention to my garlic, I had four big ones like this. Now this is a, you know, this holds a decent size. You know, a garlic clove. Look at this right here. This is kind of crazy. I can get this one in here. But you know, if you get something that a little bit longer, it makes a difference, right? So now I'm gonna take this and just go ahead and mince this over the top. Take my spatula, use the harder heads, right? And we just drop it down like that. Now, let me go ahead and get this other one. This other one right here. And listen, when you're using the garlic press, all of the peel, side piece, all that, you can just stuff that in there too. Now this one is a little bit on the big side, right? So I'll just go ahead and give it a cut. Drop this in here like this, along with what was left from the other. We bring this over here. Mm, y'all can smile with me. I don't know why that's so gratifying to me, you know? So now we mix. Look at that. It doesn't take long, about 30 seconds to a minute. If you're gonna stay with it, it can go a minute. But this is what you wanna do to keep your garlic from burning. But look at that right there. Can y'all smell that? Some of y'all can smell it. Still low, right? And I only got four things left. Look, I got chicken broth, lemon juice, parsley, and green onion, right? So I'm finna go in right now. You know I'm a chicken stop. Now this is where we gonna form that gravy, folks. Let's get all of this mixed up. Now we'll come with a little bit of this lemon juice. Now lemon juice, I'm gonna let you guys figure out how much of that you wanna put in there. You need some of that acidity to keep it more on the liquid side. But look, you see how it just cleans up everything on the bottom too? I'll come back to that. And then now, over here we got parsley and green onion. Remember, we on super low. Let me just verify. I guess because I put the liquids in there, we lost a little bit of our heat. But that's why it's not simmering. But it'll come back. Drop this in the inside right here. Take this and we put this in our soapy water. Now we mix. Now we gonna let it, it'll catch up. For you guys that don't, you don't wanna take your time with it. And if you knew, go ahead. I'm gonna raise my fire up a little bit. I'm staying here with it. I raised it up. I'm a little bit under a medium flame. So let's just call this a medium low. Okay, so just with a little time, you gotta stay with it. You know what I mean? You see how it starts to thicken up? You just cook some of that liquid out of there, right? And then now we gonna reintroduce, right? You wanna get it all out of here. Anything that dripped off of that shrimp, you wanna get it, right? Now we take this across like this. For those of my folks that's from down South and you watching this video, holler at you boy and let me know. Did this look like something that you didn't seen before? You know what I mean? Everybody got a version of it, but I think this right here stay true to the game. Now, if you wanna go ahead and add just a little bit extra virgin olive oil to it, you know what I mean? You can if you wanna have a little bit more gravy, but I like the way this is all coated. All right, so now we'll just start plating these. Now, there's no rhyme or reason to do these. You know, just put them in there how you want to. Mostly, some of you guys probably just gonna take them and just drop them in here, you know? So it's up to you how you put them down, right? I got some sauce in here that I'm gonna add to it. Most of you guys, we always use that word like it's a gravy. I'm not gonna put no whole lot in here. Make it look how you want it to look. You know what I mean? Add what you wanna add, which is buttery sauce right here, or slash gravy is king. If you don't believe me, you see how it's running all down there, you guys let me know down in the comment section below. Would you eat this? All right, folks, look. Now you see what it looks like. You gotta just let me know on your end. Now, I could have made my gravy slash buttery sauce a little bit thicker, but just tell me this. When I mix all that together, I'm really like at a loss of words. I'm just finna go in here and get me some, folks. I know it's fire. You know, we make this kind of stuff all the time. Tell me, y'all like these little black spoons I got? These kind of fire right here too, huh? Anyway, let me go in and get me some of this right here. Let me get some of this buttery sauce. Woo! You see that right there? I'm finna get me some of y'all. Cheers. Hold up. All right. You guys might not know. I love shrimp and grits. I make it all kind of ways. I be trying to like level up my presentation and stuff like that. I think this is a good, hey, it's better than good. Make this, let me know down in the comment section below. You know what you guys think. Tell me. You guys can see this little buttery sauce that I made. Super easy. You feel like you ain't got enough? Just add yourself another quarter teaspoon. I mean, excuse me, another tablespoon of butter to it and get it the way you want it. Right? And don't forget, I use olive oil that's infused with garlic. I got all over the top. And then this right here. Hello. You guys got to get some of this. Go to my website. Just check it out. I got it on there. Find it on your own, however you got to do it, but you want to use it. It's a bacon sea salt. There's so many flavors with that right there. I'm finna get you guys wet. You know, 2026, we finna go wide open. Now, if you're new to my channel, let me take this time to say thank you for watching this video. Don't forget to like, smash that subscribe button and just tell everybody out there. There's a channel out here that's simplifying these recipes and taking the mystery out of cooking. You know what, folks? I'm not finna fake it. I'm finna go and eat, y'all. I'm gone. Peace. Oh, wait. I'll leave that. Y'all look at that.