I am not from the south, so the idea of barbecued shrimp that isn’t actually barbecued sounded a little, well, silly to me. Martha has a recipe called Mr. Jim’s Louisiana Barbecued Shrimp in August Martha Stewart Living. I was ready to do some grilling until I actually read the recipe. No grilling needed. In fact, this recipe is very easy and quick.

You make a sauce with melted butter, garlic, Worchestershire, rosemary, lemon juice and lemon peel (I used zest instead of hunks of peel), hot sauce, and salt and pepper. Bring that to a simmer then add your shrimp (I did NOT leave the heads and tails on as the recipe directs! “Fish faces” as my dad always calls them. Ewwwww).  Shrimp cooks very quickly.

I was scratching my head a bit at this recipe because it makes so much sauce and it’s very thin – you can’t just put it on a plate. Then I realized the recipe says to serve it with a baguette for a reason – you need to serve your shrimp and sauce in a bowl and dip the bread. Holy cow, this was good. The shrimp was very flavorful and really addictive, but the bread….. It tasted like the best garlic bread you’ve ever had when you dipped it in the sauce. The white baguette soaking up that dark, delicious sauce. Oh, this was heaven. Three of us ate the entire pound of shrimp and whole baguette. In fact, it was so good that it physically pained me to dump the remaining sauce down the drain.