Summertime — time for shrimp on the barbie

Editor’s note: Kayleigh is off this week. Here’s a great recipe to enjoy for the holiday weekend from last summer’s In the Kitchen. 

Creatures of the sea, how delicious you are to me. I can’t speak for any of you but when it comes to seafood, I can never get enough. I especially love the exoskeleton-bearing aquatic invertebrates used as food kind. You know, shrimp, clams, lobsters, crawfish, crabs, scallops, just to name a few.

Knowing you can eat seafood in many forms including raw, can make saying yes easy and opportunities endless. I’m pretty sure if I had my way I would be eating some kind of seafood every day, too bad if others didn’t always agree.

Cooking seafood can be just as fun and easy as eating it. Considering seafood has a short cooking time and most can be found in an easy prep condition , seafood can always be the ‘go to’ quick meal of the week. Tossing pan seared scallops in some pasta or throwing a few grilled shrimp on top of your green veggie filled salad can make meal time that much more exciting.

Oh shrimp, how I love thee. Shrimp is so versatile and can be found cooked up with a range of flavors. Zesty citrus to spicy chipotle. I prefer mine marinated in an herb and garlic marinade and grilled or sautéed until golden. Either way I find in any scenario you can’t go wrong when it comes to shrimp.

My shrimp marinade recipe is a modified version I created from a recipe given to me by a fellow chef. I have to say that this marinade is pretty amazing. The secret is the panko bread crumbs; they soak up all the flavors in the marinade and then cling to the shrimp, only to give you the fullest of flavor.

After cooking these shrimps up they can be enjoyed by themselves, over rice or pasta, on a salad or even in a wrap with some crispy veggies. Opportunities are really endless. Trust me you will be making this shrimp more than once, so you will be able to eat them in more ways than one.

Shrimp Marinade
Yield: For 4lbs of shrimp
Ingredients:
1 cup vegetable oil
1 cup Olive oil
1 cup red wine vinegar
½ cup panko bread crumbs
¼ cup chopped basil
¼ cup chopped mint
¼ cup chopped parsley
¼ cup chopped oregano
Zest of 1 lemon
2 shallots, minced
1 tsp. salt
1 tsp. ground black pepper

• Combine all ingredients in a bowl and whisk or in an air tight jar and shake to combine.
• Marinate shrimp for about 20 minutes before ready to cook. Do not marinate overnight, the acids in the marinade will begin to cook the shrimp.
• Cook shrimp as desired. Grill, sauté, broil or bake until shrimp is no longer opaque and turn pink. Serve as desired and enjoy!

Kayleigh Van Vliet Baig was born and raised in Riverhead, where she lives with her husband Tahir.

Kayleigh has been in the culinary industry for the last 12 years, working in kitchens on the East End. She also is a personal chef.

Got questions? Recipes? Ideas?

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Look for In the Kitchen with Kayleigh every Saturday on RiverheadLOCAL.com.