Sand in the Coffee, Vol. 111: the royal red, and how not to send it back
Myth first, because it gets a perfectly good plate sent back to the kitchen every week: a Royal Red that’s soft is not overcooked. It’s a Royal Red.
Somewhere on this coast tonight a visitor will take one bite, frown, and tell the server the shrimp is “mushy.” The server will smile the smile of someone who has heard it four times since Tuesday. Let’s spare you being the fifth.
what they actually are
Royal Reds are a deep-water shrimp, caught in a thousand-plus feet of water, well past where the regular shrimp boats bother. They come up already red-pink, before anyone cooks them, which is how they got the name. The meat is sweeter and more tender than a brown or white shrimp, and the flavor lands closer to lobster or scallop than to the shrimp in your cocktail. They’re also usually frozen right on the boat, because the trip out and back is a long one, so “frozen” on a Royal Red is not the insult it would be on a local white shrimp.
how to order them
- Steamed, with drawn butter. This is the local default and the right first order. Anything heavier hides what you’re paying for.
- Peel-and-eat, head off. Expect to use your hands. The shell is thin and comes away easily; you’ll be done faster than with regular shrimp.
- Skip the fried version the first time. Breading a Royal Red is like putting ketchup on a steak you haven’t tasted yet. Try it plain, then do whatever you want.
- Ask whether they have them. Plenty of seafood menus on both sides of the state line carry them, but they’re not on every menu every night. They run pricier than regular Gulf shrimp, so check the board before you commit a table of six.
cooking them at the rental
If you’d rather eat on the balcony, a real seafood market is the move. In Pensacola, Joe Patti’s is the one everyone’s grandmother sent them to; ask for Royal Reds at the counter and they’ll know. Then:
- Thaw them in the fridge, or in a bowl of cold water for about 20 minutes. Not the microwave. Never the microwave.
- Bring a pot of well-salted water to a hard boil. Old Bay is fine if you must.
- Drop them in and pull them about a minute after the water comes back to a boil. Half the time you’d give regular shrimp. The moment they float and curl, they’re done. Every second after that is you making the “mushy” complaint come true.
- Straight to the plate with melted butter and lemon. Don’t let them sit in the hot water “to finish.” They finished already.
A rental kitchen’s biggest pot will handle about two pounds at a time. Do batches. Nobody on the balcony will notice they came out in waves; they’ll be too busy peeling.
one note on timing
Late September is a great time to do this, because a Royal Red dinner doesn’t care what the Gulf is doing. If the afternoon turns gray, check the flags and the sky on /beach-today/, and if it’s a sit-inside kind of evening, the happy hours on /happy-hours/ are where half the town gets dinner started before six.
Soft is correct. Butter is mandatory. And if someone at your table sends them back, order theirs too.
— Chris
P.S. If you run a place on the Key or in Orange Beach and it’s on this site, it’s yours to claim — free, always: /submit/claim/
