Writer's Grove

Shrimp Tacos with Cheat Codes

Always good to have a taste of summer in the dead white space of winter, isn’t it? You’re finished with your Solstice sacrifices and your sheep have frost on their wool and it’s just no damn fun churning your own butter anymore. You need chili lime cilantro shrimp tacos and you need ’em now!

So let’s do this! But do it easy because you’re cold and tired and you don’t want to miss that show you like.

You can of course make these the slow way starting with raw everything and making stuff from scratch, firing up the grill and putting shrimp on skewers, etc. Sometimes you can do that and you wanna do that. And sometimes you wanna let someone else do most of the work so you can have tasty stuff fast.

SO: Begin with a package of cooked, ready-to-eat shrimp from your meat case. (That’s your first cheat code—you don’t have to worry about peeling and deveining and all that.) Smaller ones work well for tacos. I found a 3/4 lb. package at my store. It was 100% guaranteed though I’m not sure what they were guaranteeing.

Dump those guaranteed shrimp in a bowl. Then, in a second wee mixing bowl, make a flash marinade:

2 tablespoons of olive oil
1 teaspoon chili powder (or more to taste)
1 teaspoon garlic powder
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon pepper (I just grind a bunch from my mill)
A buttload of lime juice

That last ingredient might be a little vague, huh? Let’s get to the rest of the cheat codes. You’ll notice one of them is a little 4-oz. thingie of concentrated lime juice because fresh limes can be dodgy in the winter.  I started out with six teaspoons for the marinade and then added more once I started to heat up the shrimp.

Other stuff you see: A bag o’ shredded cabbage and a low-cal cilantro avocado dressing. YAY FOR EASY TOPPINGS.

Stir up the marinade, pour on top of your shrimp and toss ’em around. Oughtta look like this:

Let ’em sit for a few minutes then dump into a skillet you have set on the low side of medium. Remember that unless you’re starting with raw shrimp, these suckers are already cooked and all you need to do is heat these. The trick is not to overcook—shrimp get chewy and nasty if you overcook ’em. You want ’em tender. So watch carefully, sneak a shrimp here and there to test heat, and start making tacos when they’re hot! As mentioned earlier, I squirted a whole bunch of extra lime juice on the shrimp while they were heating up, and I ground some more fresh pepper on top.

Nuke some corn tortillas. Spread some shrimp on ’em. And now, like any other taco, it’s up to you. I put on some cabbage on there. Then some fresh avocado and chopped cilantro.

Finish up with some salsa for heat and the cilantro avocado dressing for coolness. Or julienne/dice some cucumbers? Mandarin oranges? You can get freaky and maybe even deaky if you want.  Regardless, it’s fast and fresh and  beats the hell out of Taco Bell. Serve with beer or your favorite margarita. Cheers!