Make a Large Batch of This Shrimp Base and Use It in Every Meal
In this age of instant food gadgets and meal kits, recipes that take over an hour are often optimized and optimized or completely ignored. But it can take time to extract the flavor, and this intense shrimp sauce base is worth every minute.
The recipe for this base, thicker than broth, with a much more concentrated flavor, takes whole shrimp – shell and everything else – simmering them with wine, garlic and vegetables, and then consigning them to oblivion. The resulting liquid with an enhanced flavor can be divided into cubes, frozen and added to any savory dish you want to taste better . Rather than making its target shrimp flavor, it simply lends it more appeal with its umami-rich, concentrated plant essence and a touch of jam sweetness.
If you’re planning meals — and everyone should be — add that to your Sunday prep work. It’s not really meal planning – I think of it as “taste planning” – but it’s a step you can take to make sure you never eat a simple meal throughout the week. To make it you will need:
- 1 lb. shell-and-shell shrimp, boiled
- 2 tablespoons butter
- 2 tablespoons olive oil
- 2 celery stalks, thinly sliced
- 1 carrot, finely chopped
- 1 leek (green portion and all) thinly sliced
- 1 small onion, finely chopped
- 1 shallots, finely chopped
- 2 cloves of garlic, minced
- 2 teaspoons tomato paste
- 2 fresh tomatoes, diced
- 1 1/2 cups white wine
- Salt and pepper
Add butter and olive oil to a large stock pot or Dutch oven over medium to high heat. Once the butter has completely melted and the pan is nice and hot, add the shrimp, season with salt and cook, crushing it cheerfully with a wooden spoon, until it is firm and pink. Add celery, carrots, leeks, onions, shallots and garlic, season with salt and continue cooking and chopping until the onions are tender.
Make a small well in the center, add the goodies and add your tomato paste. Let it brown a little, then stir to coat the vegetables and shrimp. Add fresh tomato, stir again and cook for another five minutes. Stir in the wine and let it simmer until you stop smelling alcohol. Fill everything with water and let it boil for several hours, skimming off the foam from the surface as soon as it appears.
Let it shrink until the vegetables and shrimp chunks are poking through the top of the liquid (you want it to look more like a puree of very wet foods rather than soup), then strain it, scoop by scoop, through a sieve. rubbing everything. spoon while it drips. Place it in the refrigerator to thicken the fat, remove it and pour it into several ice cube trays. Then, the next time you have soup, risotto, pasta sauce, skillet sauce, gravy, or stir-fry that needs a burst of flavor, simply melt the umami cubes along with the dish, stir and make a profit. (Your profit will be in the goodies, not the money, but that’s still good.)