Grilled Shrimp over gazpacho

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chef k-dude

Smoking Fanatic
Original poster
Mar 11, 2015
468
352
Central Virginia
My wife loves to order the Cocktail De Cameron (shrimp cocktail) at Latino restaurants. She’s a big shrimp fan. I have had my life-dose of shrimp and can take it or leave it but because she loves shrimp, I keep an eye out for the sales and picked up some 16-20’s recently for about $7 a pound. I usually coat them in cornstarch and old bay and deep fry them which is the most palatable shrimp for me.

Going through my meals lists I was reminded that I hadn’t made my gazpacho recipe in a while which is a great summertime side with a lot of proteins. The light bulb went on and I thought, “I’ll bet that is very similar to the “cocktail” part of the cocktail de Cameron”. Sure enough I wasn’t too far off, except many recipes actually use ketchup. I am NOT doing that! Also, I haven't seen recipes with grilling the shrimp.

I made my small batch of gazpacho a couple days ago in preparation (It’s always better after sitting in the fridge at least a day) and thawed and had the wife peel a pound of the shrimp (If I have to do that, I’ll totally lose my appetite; like I said, not a huge shrimp fan)

So I did a quick lime, olive oil, cilantro and “southwesterny/Mexi” seasoning marinade on a pound of shrimp and threaded them on my flat blade stainless skewers. Got the grill to “nuclear” and grilled the shrimp just right at 2 minutes each side. Meanwhile, toasted a couple garlic toasts (storebought).

Plated the shrimp on top of the gazpacho with some chunked avocado, a little more cilantro, lime juice and a sprinkle of Tajin and made it a meal! With the net from a half pound of shrimp in each, it was very filling, and the garlic toast was a great foil to the liquidy acidity of the gazpacho (Every Latino place I’ve been to just serves it with packets of saltine crackers).

The wife loved it, I enjoyed it enough to eat the whole bowl and a new meal for my meals list was born.

Serving pic only. I didn’t even think of pics of the gazpacho process and skewers of grilled shrimp are not hard to visualize for the patrons here! I’m sure I’ll lose some folks with the mention of avocado and cilantro but if you like that stuff, this is a cool (literally) twist for a meal.

Always happy to provide recipes upon request. I can’t recall if anyone has ever came back to a thread where I’ve spontaneously posted a recipe and told me they made it.

GrilledShrimp over gazpacho.jpg
 
Looks good to me. I make the Mexican shrimp cocktail but I smoke the shrimp a bit then sear. Always use the biggest prawns I can, but I always present it in a large rimmed glass with the prawns around the rim. I like your bowl presentation too though. Nice work.
 
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Wife and I debated about putting the shrimp around the rim. That was my instinct especially since the shrimp was grilled. Most presentations in the Latino places I've seen leave some shrimp around the rim with the rest in the tomato vegetable cocktail and served in a ridiculously large stemmed unwieldy presentation glass:emoji_laughing: It turns heads in the restaurant though, much like a sizzling skillet of fajitas.

She is a "mixer" of foods so since I made it for her, we went her route. Like with salads, while I will meticulously stack and place salad ingredients then eat across the bowl or plate keeping it all somewhat separated and combine as I eat, she will take my beautifully created salad and just toss it all together in to one big mess!

I think next time I will take half the shrimp and step all over it with even more "southwest" dry seasoning and serve myself those, in a deeper bowl rather than wider, and put my shrimp around the rim. I need to bury that shrimp in flavor.
 
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Had a conversation with SmokinEdge. He was too much of a gentleman (pronoun assumption violation? :emoji_astonished:) to drop a link to his version of Cocktail de Cameron in this thread. Much respect...so I'll do it!

I joined here in 2015 but dropped out for a couple of reasons not too long after, and returned just recently to find a good environment and decided to rejoin the conversation. It helps me stay away from too much news media! His post was back in 2021 and I dont think I was here to see it, and it didn't come up as a "has this already been discussed?" as I started this post.

His approach is more traditional on the "soup" part and juicier. I built on my gazpacho recipe which has a finer dice on the base vegetables and has beef stock/bouillon and a little bit of V8, where the traditional Latino cocktail uses more tomato/V8 and many use Clamato, like his, which would be an excellent flavor profile for eating with shrimp. I need to get some. I used to drink it all the time until I went low carb and not only was all juice off the table, including tomato, but Clamato also has high fructose corn syrup in it...a form of sugar not conducive to low carbing! We're eating a bit more carbs these days, so I'm looking forward to that first sip of ice cold Clamato in years!

Check out his thread from three years ago and look at the size of those prawns!
 
I love this! I make gazpacho often over the summer and found a killed grilled shrimp recipe - never thought of combining these. we will now! thank you!

Looks killer! nice work!
 
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