Shrimp Brochettes Recipe

[Saviolo]

So, this week's recipe is a bit of a throwback to the 90's. This was something that would show up in restaurants during that wave of ethnic-inspired, but not actually ethnic food that clearly didn't belong to any particular real world region, but catered to the American palette (bacon and cheese!) and did have a lot of flavour! You might see something like this at restaurants that called themselves TexMex, but really, it's a bit of a mishmash of different techniques and recipes from a bunch of different places. These bacon-wrapped, cheese and pepper-stuffed shrimp are delicious and worth the slightly fiddly preparation.

The type of pepper you use is really up to you. If you want them really hot, feel free to put slivers of habanero, ghost pepper, or scorpion pepper in there. For an easier heat, put in a sliver of jalapeno, Thai bird chile, or serrano. The cheese can be anything, really. We used a little bit of nice medium cheddar here, but you can substitute mozzarella, gouda, colby... just about anything will work. And it really helps to use the thin-sliced grocery store bacon for this, because it stretches slightly as you're wrapping, making your job easier, and it also sticks to itself better while it's cooking.

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[Kali]

1. while they are tasty, I never really understood doing this to shrimp

they have a delicate flavor that is so good but also easily overwhelmed by doing things like this (not that I would ever turn these down! )

[Saviolo]

2. It's kinda stunt food.

If they're cooked right (ie: not overcooked) the shrimp flavour still comes through nicely, and then you get that slight creaminess and heat from the cheese and pepper. And if you're using the thin grocery store bacon, it tends not to overwhelm the shrimp totally, and it comes out actually quite tasty and surprisingly complex. But yeah, the other shrimp recipe we did (with the hot peppers) to be served cold as an app is a really great more natural presentation of shrimp for shrimps' sake

[Kali]

3. stunt food!

LOL - that is the perfect term. bacon and cheese - you could wrap anything and it would be good! (thinking of Sonoran hotdogs, for example)

[Saviolo]

4. For sure! It's very mid-to-late 90's quasi-ethnic

At a time when restaurants were just throwing everything together to see what would work together, you'd get recipes like this that seemed sorta Mexican, but was really American. Same with a few different restaurant trends of the time. Fusion was just a buzzword for throwing everything together at the wall to see what stuck. Sometimes it didn't work, but as you said: Wrap it in bacon and cheese and chances are you've got a winner for the American palette!

[Galileo126]

5. You had me at bacon-wrapped shrimp!

One of my favorite treats.

There is a Mexican restaurant not to far from me that serves something similar to your recipe, sans the cheese, and served with sour cream as a dip. I say it's a "treat" because I'm watching my cholesterol, and this is a double whammy.

But Oooooo-sooooo good!

[trof]

6. Yummy, but maybe a teensy bit over-baconed?

I bet half a strip would work better.
Thanks, may try it.

[Saviolo]

7. It doesn't really come through in the video,

but that bacon is paper thin. It's the super cheap grocery store bacon that they cut super duper thin, so it may look like a lot, but it's just about right, honestly. If it were any thicker, you're right, it would be too much.

The benefit of the super thin stuff is that it stretches a little while you're wrapping, making coverage easier, and it also sticks to itself better as it's cooking.