Peel & Eat

Crawfish boil? Yea… been to one of those. Crab boil? Yep… tried that. Shrimp boil? HHMMmm never even been invited to one those.

We live on the coast of North Carolina where you can get your hands on fresh shrimp any day, anytime…  SO I thought- hmm wouldnt it would be fun to throw a shrimp boil at the casa for OLD ASS-Hubby’s Birthday??! [I love giving him a hard time ha] I’ve been planning it out for a couple of weeks… & on Saturday we made it happen!

Throwing a shrimp boil is really SO EASY, I definitely didn’t need weeks to plan. A day in advance would have done just fine.

We found several recipes online -since they all sounded amazing, we decided to merge a few of them together…

Here's how it went down.

We bought 10 lbs of shrimp from a local shrimp shack, cut all of their heads off and let them marinade in 1/2 a thing of Old Bay seasoning and H2O… We were pushed for time so they only ended up marinating for about 4 hours.

That was about the hardest part, well next to peeling the garlic. Piece of CAKE!

We filled a turkey fryer w/ strainer basket 2/3 of the way full with water. Added two Zatarain’s Crawfish, Shrimp, Crab Boil Bags, 1/2 a bottle of Zatarain’s Shrimp & Crab Oil, 1/2 a thing or Old Bay Seasoning, about 3/4 cup of salt, and 3 bulbs of peeled garlic…

Let all that goodness come to a boil… then added a bag of red potatoes- boiled those about 8 minutes, added a package of halved frozen corn on the cobs- boiled another 6 minutes, added 2 packages of kielbasa (cut in 2in pieces)- boiled for another 8 minutes or so, then threw in 4 large onions (cut in wedges) and squeezed 3 lemons (halved) tossed those into the pot- boiled for another 2 minutes, then added as much shrimp as we could fit, and let those boil until pink- about 4-5 minutes or so.

We then pulled out the basket and shook it out across a crowded brown paper covered table. [next time I’ll use freezer paper]

Since we couldn’t fit all the shrimp in on the 1st go around, we did the rest of the batch afterwards. It ended up working out perfect though- as the 1st batch went missing, out came the second… this time shrimp only.

10lbs. fed 17, no problem.

I think its safe to say everyone had a great time… As for the Birthday Boy… well, he might have had a little bit too much of a great time. lol – Here he is in 3D glasses he just happened to find from outer space randomly. Ridiculous! haha

Hope you all had a fun weekend!

Today was my last day full time… I’m so excited to do NOTHING! AHHH… heaven!!