12
MY
ROUSES
EVERYDAY
JULY | AUGUST 2014
W
ild-caught shrimp from the
Louisiana coast get their good
looks and sweet, natural taste
from the nutrient-rich brackish water where
they live and eat. Louisiana shrimpers who
trawl the coastline, and deeper Gulf waters,
netted nearly 60 million pounds of these
prized shrimp last year. Our customers can’t
get enough of them — we sell two-and-a-
half million pounds of head-on and peeled
Louisiana shrimp a year, and over 200,000
pounds of boiled Louisiana shrimp.
To me, shrimp say summer. Now’s the
perfect time for boils, fries and, of course,
festivals. Delcambre, a small seaport near
New Iberia, hosts a shrimp festival in
August, a few weeks before Morgan City’s
Louisiana Shrimp and Petroleum Festival
on Labor Day weekend.
I’ve seen other groceries label shrimp by
size, but at Rouses, we sell our Louisiana
shrimp by count, not by small, medium and
large.The number of shrimp per pound (the
count) is the only way to measure, because
what’s considered large by one person might
seem
shrimpy
to someone else. Locals know
it’s the count that counts.
I use our lower count shrimp when I make
barbecued shrimp, a 16/20 count for shrimp
boils, and a higher count for recipes like
seafood stuffing. We’re able to bring you
Louisiana shrimp in so many different sizes
because we work directly with local fishermen
and local suppliers like Tommy’s Seafood.
ShRIMp SToRAGe
FReSh
Keep shrimp in a bowl of ice water for
no longer than a day. For best flavor and
quality, use fresh shrimp within 1-2 days.
CooKed
Cooked shrimp can be refrigerated for 3 to
4 days.
FRoZeN
Shrimp can be frozen cooked or raw, in
shell or out. For best results freezing raw
shrimp, remove their heads, and place
headless, shell-on shrimp in a Ziploc
freezer bag with ice water. Expel the air
from the bags, zip shut, and spread out in
your freezer for quick freezing. The shrimp
should keep for up to one year. You can also
freeze fresh, headless shrimp in water-filled
milk cartons.
ThAwING
Thaw frozen shrimp in the refrigerator
overnight.
dRIed ShRIMp
Those little bags of dried shrimp that
you often find by our registers are dried
and packaged across South Louisiana,
including many that are family owned. Our
local manufacturers learned shrimp drying
techniques from the Chinese shrimpers who
came to Louisiana in the mid 1800s, and
lived and worked in fishing communities
like Grand Isle. These mid and turn-of-
the-century manufacturers would boil the
shrimp in salt water and lay them in the sun
to dry. The trick was to constantly rake so
the shrimp would dry evenly. While these
companies initially sold sun-dried shrimp,
most have now gone modern with central
heaters. People eat dried shrimp
as snacks, and also add them
to recipes to enhance the
shrimp flavor.
Louisiana
SHRIMP
the
Gulf Coast
issue
by
Donny Rouse +
photo by
Sara Essex Bradley
