A street food favorite in the night markets of Thailand, this Thai green mango salad recipe, known as som tum mamuang, is a refreshing adaptation of a more widely known version made with papaya. Usually served as an appetizer, this spicy-sweet salad makes splendid use of crunchy and tart unripe mangoes.

A fruit shredder can make quick work of slicing the mangoes. A mortar and pestle is also key for extracting flavor and fragrance from the aromatics and fruit (and is a worthwhile investment for all kinds of cooking). When making this dish, cooks in Thailand traditionally use a larger mortar than what is typically found in the U.S.

This recipe originally ran in our June/July 2010 print issue with the story “Everything Is Illuminated,” by James Oseland.

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The light, Korean soup called jogaetang is served up at San Francisco’s Toyose, run by husband-and-wife team Kong Kim and Jong Yu. Short on neither heat nor spice, it’s traditionally served over a butane flame, so the broth remains hot, and a heavy dose of heat is delivered from two types of thinly sliced green chiles. Jogaetang’s popularity derives from its status as a kind of Koreatown pub grub that functions as a reset of sorts, a piping elixir that blankets the belly and washes away the effects of the night past. Find dasima in well-stocked supermarkets, Asian grocery stores, or online; a type of dried kelp frequently used for adding briny richess to stocks and sauces, it is sometimes sold by its Japanese name, konbu or kombu.

Featured in: “Korean Clam Soup for the Drunk Soul.” 

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Meaty topneck clams are the briny backbone of this two-part chowder writer Hugh Merwin developed after searching Long Island, New York for the perfect clam chowder. The two essential parts of this are first, a flavor base made from the clams, gently cooked over a long simmer to form a potent flavor base that only gets better as it ages, then second, a soup enriched with just-melted bacon fat. For best results, age the base of this soup overnight, or store in the freezer for up to one month, for the flavors to fully develop. Freezing the clams overnight makes them easier to shuck before cooking.

This recipe ran alongside the 2015 article, “In Search for the Perfect Clam Chowder.”

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Tom yum goong belongs to the family of Thai soups with the prefix “tom yum,” meaning, “boiled together,” with the suffix “goong” translating as prawns or shrimp. Fragrant with lime juice, makrut lime leaves, and lemongrass, this tom yum soup recipe is based on one from Nancie McDermott, author of Real Thai. Find nam prik pao—roasted Thai chile paste—from your local Asian grocery store or order it online from Umamicart.

The post Tom Yum Goong (Thai Hot and Sour Shrimp Soup) appeared first on Saveur.

The platonic ideal of seafood texture lives in the crispy golden crusts and tender, savory meat of soft-shell crabs. Amanda Cusey, the Executive Chef at Lake Charles’s The Villa Harlequin, always runs them as specials when she can get them. “They look like little spiders,” the Queen of Louisiana Seafood (an official title) says, “But they’re super cool and so good.”

They also require much less work to prep than hard-shell crabs: The soft-shell crabs you find in the States are typically the same blue crabs people often eat, but which have recently molted their old shell, before the new one has hardened. Once you know how to clean a soft shell crab, you can prep them in the time it takes for the fryer oil to heat up.

What you need

– Culinary shears

– Cutting board

– Soft-shell crab

Before You Begin

Buy your soft shell crabs live, as close to when you plan to cook them as possible. “Once they die, they go off really fast,” Cusey explains. If you aren’t prepping and cooking immediately, she recommends packing them on ice until you do.

STEP 1: Cut off the Face Using Culinary Shears.

Place the crab on the board and hold it down with one hand, keeping the face pointing at your other hand. Using your culinary shears, cut off the front-most part of the crab, starting just behind any of the facial features. This kills the crab instantly, and gets rid of the beak. It’s not harmful, Cusey explains, it’s just the only part of the crab that won’t soften when fried, which leaves a weird texture.

STEP 2: Remove the Lungs From Under the Back Shell.

Using your hands, lift up the back of the crab’s top shell. The lungs are the spiky-shaped and off-white pieces with a visibly stringy texture. Once you find them, they should be easy to grab and pull or snip right out. The lungs won’t make you sick or anything, Causey advises, but they just are not pleasant to eat, in flavor or feel. The orange glob nearby, on the other hand, is fat, and she recommends leaving that.

STEP 3: Get Your Crab Ready to Cook.

While some people also remove the “apron”—the triangular flap on the underside of the crab—Causey doesn’t bother. But she does advise lifting the apron up when preparing the crab, allowing the batter to get all around and underneath it. She likes to dip her soft shell crabs in well-spiced flour, then buttermilk, then back in the flour again before frying, but she says eggs or milk work for the wet portion as well—the key is to make sure the dry mixture is well seasoned. While frying is common, soft-shell crab can also be deep-fried or sauteed without battering or breading the crab.

Final Thoughts

Frying soft shell crabs delivers one of the world’s best bites of seafood, but before you batter and splatter them, you need to properly clean your critters. This pared down process of essential steps for how to clean a soft shell crab takes your crustaceans from alive-and-kicking to shatteringly crisp as efficiently as possible.

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The average American consumes roughly 15 pounds of fresh seafood each year—and a whopping third of that is shrimp. We just can’t get enough of the sweet, juicy crustaceans, whether they’re bobbing in a pot of gumbo, swaddled in a corn tortilla, or stir-fried with noodles in pad thai or lo mein. 

A weeknight pinch hitter, shrimp cooks in mere minutes. All that’s standing between you and a satisfying shellfish feast is some straightforward prep work—we’re partial to shelling, deveining, and doing a quick dry-brine—before diving into whatever recipe you’re craving. The following dishes, culled from decades of shrimp infatuation, are our absolute favorites.

Steamed Mixed Shellfish Dumplings

In China, this combination of shrimp, scallops, and crab is a special-occasion dumpling filling. The clean flavor and meaty texture of the shellfish are unobscured by any filler. Get the recipe >

Seafood Soup with Ginger and Yuzu Kosho

Flavored with wine and aromatics, this broth features red yuzu kosho, a Japanese condiment made from citrus, yuzu, and chiles. Get the recipe >

Chicken and Prawn Curry

Heaps of ground spices and rich coconut cream make this surf-and-turf stew worthy of a banquet—even if it’s easy enough to whip up on a weeknight. Get the recipe >

Sprouted Seed and Grain Salad with Spiced Prawns

Juicy spiced shrimp round out this refreshing salad of al dente buckwheat, quinoa, and citrus. Get the recipe >

Pickled Shrimp with Satsuma

Bittersweet satsuma, a citrus fruit native to Louisiana, brightens these pickled shrimp, which get extra oomph from Korean chile flakes. Get the recipe >

Stir-Fried Shrimp and Long Beans with XO Sauce

This funky and complex shrimp stir-fry owes its deep flavor to Cantonese-style XO sauce, an umami bomb made with dried shellfish and chiles. Get the recipe > 

Prawns with Edamame Slaw and Carrot Miso Sauce

Carrot juice is the secret ingredient in this refreshing shrimp salad dressed with warm, gingery white miso vinaigrette. Get the recipe >

Philippine Paella

This is paella like you’ve (probably) never seen it before—with sticky rice, coconut milk, and handfuls of chopped scallions. Get the recipe >

Shrimp Remoulade

Creamy, tangy remoulade is the perfect foil for plump shrimp. Get the recipe >

Andy Ricker’s Pad Thai with Pork and Shrimp

This craveable pad thai recipe comes from Thai-food eminence Andy Ricker. He perfected it, so you don’t have to. Get the recipe >

Spaghetti with Shrimp Rundown Sauce

Rundown is a coconut milk-based Jamaican stew popular throughout the Caribbean. In this reinterpretation, a stock of shrimp shells makes a bisque-like sauce that’s used to dress fresh pasta. Get the recipe >

Shrimp, Avocado, and Crispy Potato Smorrebrod

When you can’t look at another plain avocado toast without yawning, make this Danish open-face sandwich crowned with chilled shrimp. Get the recipe >

Salt and Pepper Shrimp

The crunchy, spicy Chinatown staple is surprisingly easy to reproduce at home. Get the recipe >

Peel-and-Eat Shrimp

“Some of my best memories of living in Baton Rouge or visiting my mother in New Orleans were walking into a friend’s house to find a mess of still-steaming peel-and-eat shrimp,” says My America: Recipes from a Young Black Chef author Kwame Onwuachi. “Smothered in house spice, sweetened with garlic, and silky with melted butter, they burst with flavor with every bite.” Get the recipe >

Satay Udang (Shrimp Satay)

Ground candlenuts mellow out this spicy shrimp satay that hails from coastal Singapore. Get the recipe >

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Cookbook author Stacy Adimando buys fresh, live lobster and good-quality buns for the most delicious lobster rolls. For the best possible results, look for live crustaceans from Maine that come with all their claws and antennae intact, and make sure to butter and toast the fresh buns on a griddle before filling and serving. Find all of our favorite lobster recipes here.

What You Will Need

• Large Pot
• Cast Iron Skillet
• Small Saucepan

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Munchies culinary director Farideh Sadeghin’s miso marinade for grilled shrimp doubles as a dressing for a flavorful salad of watercress, scallions, and soba noodles. She likes to add a handful of Rhode Island chef Benjamin Sukle’s toasted seeds for a little extra sweetness and crunch.

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Sweet, plump, succulent shrimp are a delicacy from Barcelona to Bangkok to the Bayou. And what’s not to like? They’re versatile, protein-packed, quick to prepare, and easy to eat. Well-prepared shrimp bears little resemblance to the pinkish lumps found in supermarket shrimp cocktail and shopping-mall fried rice—as anyone who’s tasted real-deal paella, ceviche de camarón, or pad thai can attest. With a few basic techniques under your belt, you’ll be churning out restaurant-worthy shrimp dishes in no time. 

Here’s our primer on all things shrimp, from buying tips to essential equipment to simple, foolproof recipes.

What you need

• A sharp paring knife
• A cast iron skillet, rimmed baking sheet, large pot, or grill

Before you begin

The question of whether it’s better to buy shrimp fresh or frozen is irrelevant to the vast majority of American consumers, to whom unfrozen shrimp is simply unavailable. Raw shrimp found at most groceries and fish markets are actually just thawed. For that reason, unless you’re shopping for tonight’s dinner, it’s better to buy frozen shrimp and defrost it at your leisure.

Step 1: Buy the right species and size of shrimp.

There are hundreds of shrimp species in the sea, but the most readily available in America are white, pink, and black tiger. We’re partial to white shrimp for their meaty texture and mild sweetness. Those labeled “extra large” or “21/25” are ideal for most preparations as they’re substantial enough to stay juicy while not so large that the exterior dries out before the inside is cooked. (Numbers like 21/25 correspond to the number of shrimp per pound.) 

Step 2: Beware of red flags.

Shrimp should always smell like the sea and never like ammonia, a telltale sign of spoilage. As a rule, wild tastes better than farmed. That said, the wild shrimping industry is plagued with social inequity and questionable environmental practices. Always look at the ingredients list on the box or bag: Shrimp should be the only thing listed. Crustaceans treated with salt or STPP (sodium tripolyphosphate) have an off taste and a spongier texture than their IQF (“individually quick-frozen”) counterparts, which are a better—if pricier—bet. We seek out U.S. shrimp over imported as the American industry is better regulated than those of major exporters like Thailand.

Step 3: Start by removing the shells in one fell swoop. 

Using your fingers, pinch off the head (if the shrimp are head-on) and remove the legs (sometimes these are pre-removed as well). Then, peel back the shell just above the tail and, with your thumb between the shell and flesh, twist toward the head. The shell will pop off in one or two pieces. Don’t discard the shells or heads—boiled for 15 minutes and strained through a fine-mesh sieve, they make a sweet, flavorful stock. You may wish to yank off the tails for easier eating; we leave them on in dishes like shrimp cocktail as they serve as dainty little handles (an aside: this is our favorite cocktail sauce). Shrimp should never be peeled under running water as doing so removes flavor.  

Step 3: Devein the shrimp with a paring knife.

Small and medium shrimp need not be deveined, though some cooks choose to for aesthetic purposes. The “vein” is the shrimp’s intestinal tract, and in large shrimp, it can contain grit and ought to be removed. To do this, run the tip of a paring knife down the back of the shrimp just beneath the surface, then use the tip to lift out the vein. 

Step 4: Salt the shrimp ahead of time.

Salting shrimp in advance has a similar effect to brining a pork chop or steak: It helps them retain moisture while cooking. Simply toss the shelled shrimp in a bowl with kosher salt (1 tablespoon per pound of shrimp) and let stand for 15 minutes before proceeding with the recipe. 

Step 5: Dry the shrimp.

If your shrimp are destined for the skillet, you’ll want to blot them dry with paper towels as removing excess moisture makes for better browning.

Step 6: Boil, sauté, bake, or fry the shrimp.

Now it’s time to choose your own adventure! A terrific springboard into the wide world of shrimp cookery is Kwame Onwuachi’s easy spicy peel-and-eat shrimp, a favorite recipe from his cookbook, My America: Recipes from a Young Black Chef, the current SAVEUR Cookbook Club pick. But we’ve also got you covered with a wide selection of shrimp recipes from our archives that walk you through grilling, boiling, roasting, and more. The through-line here is cooking the shrimp for less time than you might think, until the center is nearly (but not completely) opaque. When making seafood stews, for instance, Onwuachi recommends “cutting the heat before adding the shrimp and then letting them gently cook for a minute or two.”  

Final thoughts

Americans are wild (forgive the pun) about shrimp, and we’re eating more every year. So there’s no better time to expand your repertoire and experiment with new recipes and flavors—especially when pristine Gulf shrimp are only a click away.

The post How to Cook Shrimp, with Tips from Kwame Onwuachi appeared first on Saveur.

The crunchy shells of these twice-fried shrimp from karaoke bar Hoàng Gia in East New Orleans are fully edible. Local shrimpers of Vietnamese descent enjoy this dish as a snack or appetizer, dunked in a salty-sour lime juice. Fry the shrimp in batches and avoid crowding the pot, which will lower the temperature of the hot oil.

Featured in: “How Louisiana’s Vietnamese Shrimpers Are Adapting to Climate Change.”

Equipment

• Large Wok
• Large Platter

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