How To Make The BEST Shrimp Stew EVER

Now that you didn't click that button and you here, check it out. Today we doing a, guess what? We doing a shrimp stew. Let's get it. You see, look, we got flour, fire roasted tomatoes. Look, now I gotta show you this part right here. This is water and you know, the paste together, right? This and this gotta be connected. I mean, you know, combined together to make his own sauce. So I just put it like that, right? We got the fresh garlic cloves. Of course we've got the chicken stock. And since we saying, you know, like a stew, we want to keep it a little bit on authentic side. I'm gonna be using this Creole kick. Most of y'all watching this video right now, you already know about this product right here. I'll put this in a number one comment. And then if you don't know, now you know. Now look, we got everything else is really like obvious. Shrimp, bell pepper, look, celery, green onion, bay leaf, diced onion, butter. We got a Dutch oven and guess what? As always, the full ingredient list will be down in the description box below. Let's work. The first thing we're gonna do is we're gonna melt our butter, right? I already put a little heat under my Dutch oven. You see that right there? That's where I like to start. Don't want to like burn my butter right off the bat. So I'm gonna go ahead and just add this. You know what I mean? And we're gonna get that to start to melt. Now, if you guys take a look over here, I gotta say this, cause listen, a lot of us don't do it. Look, we got to keep hot, soapy water at the ready, right? Reason being, listen, we wash our dishes as we go. Cause when I finish all of this, it's not gonna be nothing for me to do. You know, everything's sitting off to the side, it's drying and yada, yada, yada. I know I'm preaching to the choir. I raised up that flame now, right? I want it to melt first. Don't want to change my color. Now we're getting ready to come with that flour. So, which I have learned from other chefs cause I've been working with them folks and I've been learning. They don't really put it in like how I'm doing right now. Right? They put it in like this. I was always taught just a little bit at a time, right? But I'm gonna just say, I done had a chance to work with some great chefs like Aaron McCarville Jr. You know what I mean? Kenneth Temple. And these gentlemen, listen, when you working next to a chef and they do something this way, you know what I mean? And it turns out great. You know, I don't let my eyes like just deceive me. If they can make it like that, I can too. Okay, so look, I want you guys to pay attention to the color, right? I'm staying at like that medium heat, you know, putting a little heat on it. The key is you got to keep your elbow and your wrist and everything going. You know what I mean? You just don't want to stop. That's the key to not, you know, getting it to burn. And I know that I could turn this fire up even higher and go with like a, I can go almost like a good medium sized flame, like a medium high, as long as I keep doing what I'm doing, right? But for us beginners, you know what I mean? We just want to take our time. It'll probably take you about 25 minutes to do it this way. What you're doing is you're building up your confidence. You smelling it. You looking at it right there. You're probably telling everybody that's around the kitchen, you're like, hey, come here and look at this. You know what I mean? But what we're going to look for is that dark chocolate color, right? So I'm just going to keep on, you know, stirring this up just like this. And then we're going to have some success folks, right here on camera. This is after about 23 minutes. You know what I mean? Look at that color we get right there. Nothing's burnt. Smells amazing. You know what I mean? Oh yeah, this right here is a nice base. This is where you get your color from. Look at that right there. You want to see it. It want to look like chocolate. Tell me what you think. That's it. Now, I always start with my onions first. So I'm going to go ahead and just pour those in. I see it. You guys will see that in the very beginning. That's okay. It'll start to lump up. Now we're getting ready to start adding our bell peppers and our celery, right? Let me just keep giving this a stir. Listen, don't let it get you nervous. It does get thick. That's it right there. Don't forget, turn your fire down. You know what I mean? Let me just get everything else inside of there. So look, that's onion, bell pepper, celery. You guys know what the name of that is. Let me know down in the comment section below. Tell me, show your knowledge and show the world, right? So we got that in there. It kind of like cools it off just a little bit. And what you're reducing your flame back down to a medium heat, which I'm finna verify mine is right now. So while that's sitting there and that's doing its thing, guess what? I'm finna load up my garlic press, right? Cause we want those flavors to be in there too. So everybody do it along with me. Let's smile. Ah, yeah, right? Now I'm finna just work that around and work that in, right? We only let this get a little, we let this go with the garlic in there for about, maybe like a minute. The fresh garlic, it smells amazing. Everything you put in here, I almost said what the name of them veggies was, but I'll wait. I'll wait to read it down in the comment section below. You see it starting to boil right there? That's your veggies starting to sweat down and release they juices. Things are starting to marry together. Look right there. You see that? That's what you want to see. You want to know why Creole and Cajun and that down South, you know, food tastes so good. Listen, that's because of, you start building layers on top of layers, right? Now I'm gonna get ready and add my diced tomatoes. Look, fire roasted folks. Can you smell what I'm cooking? For our tomato, our tomato paste, right? Our water. Get this nice and blended. You don't want to pour it in there. Then it'll get diluted and lost. You want to make it just like this right here. You see that right there? That's the consistency we're looking for. Now we add this to the party. Now we mix. What I like about these square heads, you know, bamboo and wooden utensils. Look, when you're working on a flat bottom piece, look, on the bottom surface, you can just hit it. It scrapes up all of the fine, all of that. This is where your flavor's at, folks. Make sure you have a medium flame now. Now we got green onions. We finna just go ahead and introduce that, you know, to the party. All of the fine comes up nice and easy now that we sweated down the, you know, sweated down our veggies, right? So, and then you want to go ahead and grab yourself your stock, right? And now you just start bringing that, right? And now you just want to continue to stir. You want all of that thickness, you know what I mean, to go away. Remember, we call this a stew. Ah, yeah. This is it. Now we're going to want to bring this up, you know, to a boil. And then we're going to reduce to a simmer. So you see, I done changed my tool. I done went back to my spaster, right? That's so I can get everything off of the side, you know, and rub it nice and smooth, get all that, anything you see on the side, that's flavor, folks, right? You see that color? That's what you want. As we're getting ready to bring this up to a boil, look, I got these bay leaves right here. I'm just going to go ahead and add them and let them do their thing. Okay, I want you guys to see, look, it's coming up on a boil, right? And I'm going to do a little, I guess we'll just look at the thickness of this. You can just see how it is. You know what I mean? If I hold it like that, you can just see it runs off. It's on its way to becoming thick on its own, right? But what we're doing is we bring it up to a boil, like where we at right now. You know, we got them bay leaves in there, right? So now I'm going to reduce it down to a simmer. This is when you want to add your Cajun or Creole seasoning. You know what I mean? Don't forget to look down in the description box below and that's where you guys will put whatever you want to put in there. As far as, I got some suggestions for you. If you guys don't already have, you know, this Creole kick, I suggest you guys go ahead and pick this up. I promise you, you'll come back or just ask the people in the comments because a lot of people have this already. Look, this is like a, when I say a number one seller, this is a, hey, it's been like that for years too. So we just go ahead and add that. And this right here is what makes it authentic. So look, you can see now we at a simmer. I can see the edge of my bay leaf. You can see your veggies in there. I just tasted it. I got it seasoned just right. Now I'm going to put a lid on the top. That's why I like these Dutch ovens, folks. Put this over the top and we're going to go for about 10 to 15 minutes. Next time I see it, it'll be 10 minutes. And then we'll go, we'll decide if we want to go, you know, five more minutes. All right, so let's take a look at it. Woo. Look at that right there. You see that? Oh wee. I want you guys to tell me what you think. Oh yeah, this is right. Let me get this cool. I want to taste it and see if I want to add anything else to it. If I don't, if it's perfect, then what I'm going to do is I'm going to just go ahead and ride this on in for another, I'm going to say another 10 to 12 minutes, right? And then after that, we're going to let it cool. We're going to pour it over this rice and we finna eat. Oh, take that back. After we go another 10 to 12 minutes, don't forget we got to put this in there. Hey, it is a shrimp stew. I don't know how I said that. All right. If anything I'm going to add to it, it's going to be like two generous pinches of salt. And of course I use that kosher salt, right? You know what I mean? Just boom, boom. Right? Let's give it a stir. The top's back on. We finna go for another 10 to 12 minutes. Let's look at it again. Look, we 22, 23 minutes in. All we did was, you know, halfway through it, we went ahead and added what? We added some salt to it just to wake it up, just to make it happen. Like just a little bit of a bite to it. You mean nothing too much. I'm going to go ahead and add it. I want you to notice with the shrimp, I didn't add nothing else to it as far as like putting no seasoning on it and nothing like that. Cause I want this to absorb 100% of what we made, right? So I'm just going to go ahead and put it in here. And then we're going to just stir it up. We're going to leave it uncovered and then we're going to let it go for about seven to 10 minutes. And after that, we're going to turn the fire off, really just until they're done. And we got the desired thickness, right? This is what we want. Now we just want to let this simmer, right? And cook these until they're done. Look, my shrimp was ready really like in about four to five minutes. So I went in and turned it off. You know what I mean? And I don't want to like overcook my shrimp, right? So look, I got some rice. Got my bowl. You guys can look at this right here. You can see the shrimp. Let me just go ahead and grab some. You know what I mean? Look, they curl up nice. You know what I mean? Then like I say, I like to just pour it right on, on top, just like that. You see that right there? And this is more of a stew than a gumbo. It's a few other things I could have done to make it like a gumbo, but this right here, this is what you want to have, folks. Look at that right there. I got it. When you look at this, you might be thinking like, ooh, that's a gumbo. But listen, try this just the way this is and let me know down in the comment section below how you guys would do it. But check it out, folks. I want you guys to come on in here. It's time for me to mix this all up now. Cause you can see, oh, let me get to, hey. You know what? I usually throw these out, but I'm gonna stick it right there. I want it to continue to do its thing. All right, let's get some of that tomato. We got this shrimp. It's probably done cooled down enough. I done went back in there for a couple of more, you know, spoonfuls. This right here is nice. The Creole kick keeps it, you know, it makes it authentic and it keeps it a little bit on the smooth side. You know what I mean? As far as like the heat, I will say this. I believe this right here is like still kid-friendly. You know what I mean? For those of you guys want to add something else, please let me know what you would do down in the comment section below, right? This right here is nice. I don't know else how to say it. What I want to say this though right now, just look at the color. You remember when you start off with that good base, look at that. That room, that's what you want to have. We could have went darker, but you know what I mean? We not doing that. This right here is a nice stew color and that's it right here. I don't want to over-target. You can hear it in my tone. This right here is fire, folks. Now, listen, 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 tell everybody out here, there's a channel out here that's simplifying these recipes and taking the mystery out of cooking. And with that, I'm out. Peace.