Cilantro Shrimp

This cilantro shrimp recipe comes from one of my favorite restaurants in Park City.

I read about it in a local cookbook called A Taste Of Park City Past & Present. Our local supermarket sells great frozen Caribbean shrimp in 2 pound bags that are handy to keep in the freezer and great to have when you want to whip up a quick and simple meal. I just made this sauce recently and made a few changes from the original. I hope you enjoy it.

July 23, 1999 Note: I've remade this dish a couple of times since I first posted it and found it works better when I use 6 tablespoons of butter rather than the original 4 tablespoons and no white wine. 

Cilantro Shrimp from 350 Main
Serves 4-6

• 6 tablespoons unsalted butter
• 3 tablespoons of all purpose flour
• 1/4 cup finely diced onions
• 1/4 cup finely diced celery
• 2 tablespoons minced garlic
• 1 cup fish stock or clam juice
• 3 tablespoons minced cilantro
• salt and pepper to taste
• 1 1/2 pounds of shrimp, peeled and deveined
• 1 teaspoon fresh lime juice

Easy prep for this one. Dice the onions and celery, mince the garlic and cilantro, peel and devein the shrimp and you are ready to go. Check out my article on peeling and deveing shrimp here.

Melt butter in saucepan over medium heat. When melted, stir in flour and cook, stirring constantly about 3 minutes depending on how hot your stove runs until the flour is golden brown. At this point, the flour gets real thick so you may need to add a little more butter or even some olive oil.

Whatever you do, don't add water like I did one time, it turns the flour into lumps. By the way, what you just made is called a roux.

Add onions, celery and garlic. Continue to stir 3 to 5 minutes more. Whisk in stock or clam juice. When well blended, add cilantro and seasonings. Cook for 3 minutes. If the sauce is too thick, you can add a little more butter or even some some more fish stock. I have even used chicken stock when I ran out of clam juice. Stir in shrimp.

Cover and cook for 5 minutes or until sauce is thick and flavors are blended. Add lime juice just before serving.

Serve over rice or pasta.

RG's tip:

1. The first time I made this, I didn't have fish stock or clam juice so I used the shrimp shells in a cup of water and cooked it down to 3/4 cup. It worked just fine but not as well as fish stock or clam juice.

Enjoy

To learn more about making a roux, click here. To learn more about cilantro, check this out. If you want a good sources for fish stock, here you are.

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