The Great American Slow Cooker Book (87 page)

1
Mix the wine, scallions, jalapeño, oil, and pepper in the slow cooker. Cover and cook on high for 2 hours, or until bubbling and aromatic.

2
Stir in the shrimp and thyme. Cover and continue cooking on high for 20 minutes, or until the shrimp are pink and firm.

TESTERS’ NOTES

•
Fresh jalapeño chiles have a slightly sour, citruslike bite, a fine pairing to sweet shrimp.

•
If desired, dress up the sauce. Strain it into a medium saucepan, removing the solids, then bring it to a boil over high heat. Cook until reduced by about a third from its original volume, then whisk in up to 3 tablespoons unsalted butter. For an even thicker sauce, use room-temperature butter mashed with an equal amount of flour, whisking this mixture into the sauce by tiny little dribs and drabs over very low heat.

Serve It Up!
Since the sauce is fairly spicy, make a cooling side salad of diced cucumber, red bell pepper, and carrots, bound together with plain yogurt, a splash of rice vinegar, a pinch of sugar, and salt.

INGREDIENTS EXPLAINED
Shrimp are always sold by size; however, the adjectives used to describe those sizes don’t mean much.
Medium, large
, and
jumbo
are mere window-dressing. One store’s
large
may be another’s
jumbo
. For accuracy, purchase shrimp the way the fishmonger does: by how many make up a pound. About 30 shrimp per pound are medium size; over 40 per pound, fairly small; under 20 per pound, quite large; and under 5 per pound, lobster tails in shrimp drag.

ALL-AMERICAN KNOW-HOW
Shrimp are easily overcooked. You’re looking for the characteristic change of color to pinkish red, so you have firm but not rubbery meat. There’s only one way to tell for sure: bite into one to try it.

Many of these recipes call for shrimp that have been
deveined
—a euphemism for the act of removing the digestive tract, the dark “vein” running along the outside curve of the tail. You devein shrimp by making a shallow cut along that curve and picking out the dark line with the tip of the paring knife. For a way out of this job, buy already deveined shrimp or ask the fishmonger at your market to do it for you.

1
Mix the butter, Worcestershire sauce, lemon juice, olive oil, hot sauce, and black pepper in the slow cooker. Cover and cook on high for 2 hours.

2
Stir in the shrimp and parsley. Cover and continue cooking on high for 20 minutes, or until the shrimp are pink and firm.

TESTERS’ NOTES

•
Shell-on shrimp are an excellent choice to get the “Buffalo” treatment. There’s lots of opportunity to slurp the sauce off those shells.

•
We used Tabasco sauce. But chipotle hot sauce will give the dish a smoky flavor; a habanero sauce, a lethal spike.

1
Mix the olive oil, wine, ginger, garlic, and lemon wedges in the slow cooker. Cover and cook on high for 2½ hours, until fragrant and bubbling.

2
Stir in the shrimp and parsley. Cover and continue cooking on high for 20 minutes, or until the shrimp are pink and firm. Have a bowl ready to catch the shells as you suck the sauce off them and then peel them off, dipping the meat back into the sauce from the cooker.

TESTERS’ NOTES

•
The lemon wedges actually soften and cook in the sauce. They’re delicious, especially if minced up on your plate and mixed into some white rice.

•
Feel free to substitute small clams or even cockles for the shrimp.

INGREDIENTS EXPLAINED
These first recipes have been prepared with shell-on shrimp because they make excellent finger fare at the coffee table when a game or a movie is on. That said, you can make these dishes with peeled and deveined shrimp if you intend to serve them as a family meal at the table, where little fingers don’t need any more help getting messy.

1
Bring a small saucepan of water to a boil over high heat. Place the dried chile in a small bowl; cover with boiling water. Soak for 20 minutes, then drain in a colander set over a bowl, catching the soaking water below.

2
Put the soaked chile in a large blender along with the scallion, lemongrass, brown sugar, fish sauce, ginger, garlic, and fresh chile. Add a little of the soaking liquid, no more than a tablespoon or so, then blend until smooth, stopping the machine once or twice to scrape down the inside of the canister. (Add a little more of the soaking liquid, if necessary, to make sure things are blending well.)

3
Scrape the chile puree into the slow cooker. Cover and cook on high for 1½ hours, or until the sauce is bubbling.

4
Stir in the shrimp. Cover and continue cooking on high for 20 minutes, or until the shrimp are pink and firm.

TESTERS’ NOTES

•
Here’s a Malaysian-inspired sauce for shrimp. Of course, you can use shelled shrimp, but eating them won’t be as much fun. You can also use larger shrimp, even those coming in at 20 shrimp per pound, but you’ll need to increase the cooking time by 5 or 10 minutes.

•
The amount of chile-soaking liquid you’ll need to create a smooth sauce varies widely. Start out with a little—you can always add more. You want a smooth sauce, not a sticky paste.

•
If you want to get fancy, substitute grated palm sugar for the brown sugar for a more mellow, less tannic taste.

Serve It Up!
Cook up a pot of short-grain sticky white rice, then ladle the shrimp and sauce over bowlfuls.

1
Mix the butter, brown sugar, ginger, garlic, oyster sauce, soy sauce, and black pepper in the slow cooker. Cover and cook on high for 1½ hours, or until the butter has melted and begun to form a bubbling sauce.

2
Stir in the shrimp and basil. Cover and continue cooking on high for 20 minutes, or until the shrimp are pink and firm.

TESTERS’ NOTES

•
This is a slow cooker variation on a common Vietnamese dish, usually made with a burned caramel sauce and plenty of black pepper. The recipe actually calls for
coarsely
ground black pepper, rather than the more standard finely ground sort, so that the pepper doesn’t just melt into the sauce. If you’ve only got finely ground on hand, use about half the stated amount.