Chomp!

By Ron Aiken

 

Let’s Grill Shrimp! Poorly!

 

Oh, the simplicity implied with grilling shrimp.

Oh, the inanity of believing it!

You may recall my grilling misadventures of the Fourth of July. With wounded pride and bowed spatula, I returned to the grill eager to avenge my defeats and wise enough – or so I thought – to give myself a no-brainer of a meal with which to shine forth like the very sun itself!

Shrimp! On the grill! Simplicity itself!

 

Wrong!

 

How many mistakes can Chomp! make in a week? (I’d honestly like to know the answer to this because my grilling futility of late is starting to seriously gut me – is an end in sight????) Fortunately for you, Chomp! exists to make your mistakes for you so that you may benefit from them, and with kindness in your eyes and forgiveness in your heart, I beg you to go easy on me as I recount what you should do via what I failed to.

 

Here we go!

 

BUY BIG SHRIMP. That’s your rule number one, your numero uno, your guiding principle and your signpost to success. Get the biggest ding-dang shrimp you can lay your paws on. DO NOT BUY SMALL SHRIMP. LIKE THESE:

Sure, they look great on the skewer, don’t they?  Just preparing to be swabbed with melted butter and seasoned? But don’t be fooled! They lie! They are just preparing to disappoint you!

 

The sad part it, at this stage of the game, Chomp! was feeling prit-ty good about himself. Maybe even a tad, I don’t know, cocky? Fool! For while they looked great now, and especially after seasoning with some kosher salt, pepper, garlic salt, cilantro and paprika, things were about to get…small. And dry.

Fast than you can say “shrimps!,” they withered on the grill like an ice cube in a hot pan. Suddenly they were a third of their original size and sticking to the grill. Half of the third that was left, I’m also sad to report, got left behind on the grill when I went to flip them and they stuck.

 

Here’s the end result, as flattering as I could make it look (bearing in mind that at this point in the process, I thought I was going to be writing a column about how well I did):

They don’t look terrible even here, right? Right?

 

But oh, how tasteless they were. How dry. How agonizingly difficult to get off the skewer. It was a losing battle all the way to get the desiccated creatures off the wooden skewers they’d stuck fast to. I now know what’s in superglue – pureed grilled shrimp on wooden skewers. It’ll bind anything, including your intestines, which is a part of the experience Chomp! won’t mention in a family column.

 

So, let’s hit the DOs and DONT’s, shall we?

 

DO: Buy HUGE shrimp. The more colossal, the better.

DO: Grill for only about 5-8 minutes per side on medium to medium-high heat.

DO: Soak the skewers in water before placing the shrimp on them. I didn’t do this, which is what contributed to them sticking so badly to the skewers.

 

DON’T: Do the opposite of the “DOs,” OK? OK!

 

Til next time, when Chomp! hopes something on the grill goes right. Cheers!

 

 

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