My favorite way to memorialize a trip to the beach has always been taking home a cooler of fresh seafood. For one magic summer, while I was in college, I alternated camping on the beaches of Ocracoke Island with camping in the National Forests of western North Carolina.
Nowadays, fresh shrimp is just down the road from us at one of the local seafood vendors who catch the shrimp right here in our local waters.
In my youth, I would take the long way home from Ocracoke which as any well-versed traveler of Route 12 knows is the Cedar Island Ferry. I would stop in Morehead City for a meal at Captain Bill's (which has been replaced by Southern Salt ) and then fill a cooler full of fresh off of the shrimp boats and head home.
Five to six hours after loading the cooler in the car, I would be cleaning and boiling shrimp for a straight from the sea treat. I'm pretty convinced that most folks think shrimp come from the grocery store. It has gotten more and more popular to buy your shrimp at the grocery store and have them steamed right there.
I'm no purist but I would rather have my shrimp cooked after they've been cleaned, and grocery stores don't do that. You may not know the difference because you've never tasted shrimp that have been done right. It's not that hard, but it does take some time.
You do need one tool, a Shrimp Deveiner. The one I have looks exactly like that picture. (Update 2018- They usually cost a couple of dollars locally but they seem much more expensive on Amazon eight years after I wrote the original article) The next thing you need is fresh shrimp. Ideally, you try to get your shrimp as close to the boat as possible. In most cases that means asking around locally to find out the best way to buy your shrimp. Sometimes you can buy them right off the dock or from people who buy them right off the dock. The shrimp should be firm and not mushy.
Often the shrimp you buy will have the heads still on the body. Do yourself a favor and have the folks where you buy the shrimp take the heads off if at all possible.
It seems almost effortless for them, but for normal mortals, it's a little more of a challenge. Take a cooler and ice your shrimp down if possible. Often the seafood shop will give you enough ice for a small cooler.
The biggest challenge with cleaning shrimp is that it is pretty boring. We usually get three to four lbs of shrimp, weighed with the heads still on the shrimp. That's about my limit. After that, I lose interest even if someone is feeding me freshly boiled shrimp. By the time you take the heads and shells off, four pounds with the heads on are equal to approximately two pounds shelled and raw.
In the Swansboro, NC area we buy our shrimp from one of the local legends, Clyde Phillips Seafood, located between the bridges on Route 24. Don't expect a lot of conversation but Jimmy who owns the place knows more about seafood than anyone I have ever met. You can count on fresh seafood and a magic touch for removing shrimp heads. There is also Captain Sam's in Cedar Point and Captain Willis Seafood in Emerald Isle, but you won't find me there as long as Jimmy has shrimp.
Learning to use the shrimp deveiner just takes a few shrimp and they don't seem to mind. Just focus on the big top vein. You can ignore the bottom one. The twist at the end is the secret touch. Once you have deveining mastered, you can start thinking about cooking them. We cook them in batches so that we can cool them easily.
My suggestion is to clean about one half your shrimp and then bring to boil about two to two and one-half inches of water in an uncovered twelve inch deep (three quart) skillet. If you have cleaned your shrimp the way I suggested, they cook without any smell.
My wife, Glenda, says she adds some salt, an amount or pile about the size of a quarter in her palm. She dumps the shrimp in the boiling water and has a timer running from the minute the shrimp are dumped in the water. The shrimp cook very quickly and are done in three minutes when they've turned a beautiful pink color. As soon as they are done, my wife dumps them in a bowl of water filled with ice.
We then fish the shrimp out and let them drain in a colander. All you have to do then is to put them in a bowl or on a platter if they are going to be eaten immediately. Once you have had real fresh shrimp done right, going back to anything less is tough to do.
I can highly recommend Kelchner's Cocktail sauce. It does vary a little between batches so I try to be a little forgiving since it is the best I've ever had.
If you want to know more, this link on shrimp is very helpful as is this link on cooking shrimp.
You aren't able to read the sticker in the lower left corner of the leftmost window at Clyde Phillips, but it says "Friends don't let friends eat imported shrimp." Just click on the link to the left for a view of the bumper sticker.
