Recipe 77: Shrimp Stock

The challenge: Peel and Devein dozens of shrimp. The original recipe called for 3# of fresh shrimp. I scaled back some and bought two pounds of headless. There is no fresh shrimp in Michigan at the beginning of April. I stood over the stove peeling each shrimp and tossing each peel into the stock pot and each shrimp into the bowl it would rest in until needed. I have peeled shrimp once before, but they were already deveined. I attempted knife precision and pulling out the vein in one stroke of the knife. I think I accomplished this feat twice for about 80 shrimp. I’m not half bad at it now, but I certainly felt sorry for the up and coming kid who got out of dish-washing duty to peel and devein shrimp all day, even if they had hands-on instruction.

After over an hour of peeling and deveining shrimp, I got to chop some carrots and celery and onion to add to the stock. I smashed the garlic, as instructed and tossed it in along with 2 bay leaves, a teaspoon of salt, 2 teaspoons of black peppercorns and 3 or so sprigs of fresh thyme. I aimed to use less water to make a little less stock, but the ingredients are supposed to be covered. The shells and lighter ingredients floated to the top, I didn’t see any foam to skim off the surface as instructed. I heated it for nearly two hours and still got 3 ½ quarts of shrimp stock out of this recipe. If you need shrimp stock, or want to be curious with it, I have extra in the freezer and would be happy to share. The worst that will happen is it will get mixed up with duck stock, but the duck is a fatty bird, and shrimp is pretty lean.

This was not a hard recipe to make. It was, however, time consuming. It’s a good weekend task, and if you have kids around or someone that can help you peel shrimp, I’d put them to work. If they don’t believe they’ll like it, cook one up and feed it to them, then have them peel that tasty curlique. Happy stock-making. More to come for the rest of this conglomeration of recipes.

I will make this recipe again, but only when I run out of shrimp stock and really want the whole meal that goes with it.