Sand in the Coffee, Vol. 53: the royal red is not a regular shrimp

A royal red is not just a big shrimp, and if you’re standing at a counter about to order a pound of them fried, do me a favor and put the menu down for one second.

I’m not being a snob. I’m trying to save you money and a genuinely great meal, in that order. Royal reds are one of the few things on this coast that are both a local secret and sitting in plain sight at the seafood market, and most first-timers walk right past them because they think a shrimp is a shrimp. It is not. Here’s what you’re actually looking at.

What They Actually Are

Regular Gulf shrimp live in the shallows, close to shore, in warm water. Royal reds don’t. They’re caught way offshore, hundreds of fathoms down, in deep cold water where the pressure’s high and the light doesn’t reach. That depth changes the whole animal. They come up already a deep pinkish-red instead of gray — cooked-looking before they’ve ever seen heat — and they taste almost nothing like the shrimp you know.

Sweeter. Softer. Richer. If you handed one to someone blindfolded, most would guess lobster or crab before they’d guess shrimp. They’re basically the Gulf’s considered opinion on what a shrimp should be once it’s had a few thousand feet of cold water and some time alone to think about it.

How to Cook One (This Is the Whole Column, Really)

Here’s the part that matters, and it’s short because royal reds are not complicated — they’re just unforgiving.

Cook them fast. A royal red is done in roughly two minutes in boiling or steaming water. Not five. Not “until they look pink,” because they already looked pink raw — color is a liar with this shrimp, so go by the clock, not your eyes. The moment they curl and firm up, they’re out.

Do not fry them. I know frying is the coast’s default setting. Not here. The delicate, lobster-sweet thing you paid for cooks away in the oil, and you will have spent lobster money to produce a very expensive fish stick. Fried royal red is the single most common mistake visitors make with them, and the kitchen is usually too polite to talk you out of it.

Butter, and not much else. Boil or steam briefly, peel, dunk in melted butter, maybe a little Old Bay in the water. That’s it. Anything fancier is you getting in the way of a shrimp that already knows what it’s doing.

Buying Them to Cook at the Rental

This is the move. You don’t need a restaurant for royal reds — you need a pot and about ten minutes.

Buy them by the pound at a seafood market or, if you time it right, closer to the boats. They’re often more reasonable than you’d expect for something that eats like lobster, because they’re a local catch and not a national one. A pound looks like too much shrimp for two people right up until it’s gone, at which point it reveals itself to have been a rookie order.

At the counter, you can just say it plain: “Are the royal reds in, and are these fresh or previously frozen?” Either answer is fine — frozen-at-sea royal reds are still excellent — you just want to know what you’re cooking. Then take them back to the rental, get a big pot of salted water going, and give yourself a beach dinner that cost a fraction of the seafood-platter markup and tastes like considerably more.

The Short Version

Royal reds are deep-water shrimp that taste like lobster, cook in about two minutes, and die a pointless death in a fryer. Order them boiled or steamed, or better yet buy a pound and cook them yourself with butter and almost nothing else. If you’ve been coming down here for years and only ever eaten the fried basket, you’ve been standing next to the good stuff the whole time.

Ask the charter and fishing folks where they’re running and you’ll hear the same reverence — the deep-water catch gets talked about differently than the inshore stuff, and now you know why. Do this once and you’ll plan a trip around it. Grab them on the way back from the beach, save the fried basket for a happy hour when someone else is cooking.

Wave when you pass. I’ll be the one buying more than a pound, because I’ve made the small-order mistake enough times to stop making it.

— Chris