Seafood boil

     For my first food post I figured I should post one of my favorite meals, a Seafood Boil! I'm a big fan of seafood and although pricey at restaurants, it's fairly cheap and extremely easy to cook it at home. Cooking it yourself provides enough seafood for two people for around $20. I keep an eye out for sales on snow crab and stock up when it's about $6.99 a lb or less. When I buy it, I ask if they have any still frozen because I have no idea how long it has been thawing out in the display case, and I don't want crab that's been frozen, thawed, frozen again for storage, and then thawed again for use. I also found some head-on shrimp for $3.99/lb. Cleaned and deveined shrimp usually costs double that and it doesn't take that much work to clean the head-on shrimp at home. You're throwing away some of the weight because of the discarded heads, it comes out to be about $5.95/lb, which is still pretty cheap for fresh shrimp. I threw in some potatoes and corn as well. Here's the list:

• 1 lb Snow Crab Clusters - $6.99
• 2 lbs Head on Shrimp - $7.98
• Three Ears of Corn - $1.00
• Red Potatoes - $1.50
• Small bottle of white wine - $1.99
• Lemon - $0.50
• Onion/Garlic - $0.25
• Fresh Parsley - $0.25

    I started by popping the heads off the shrimp and cleaning off any goop. Next I cleaned the corn and cut them in half then washed the potatoes and cut them in quarters. I chopped about half an onion, diced a clove a garlic, and cut the lemon in half. I sprinkled everything with some old bay, salt, and pepper.

      I put about 1 TB of olive oil in the bottom of a pan and threw in the garlic, onion, lemon, and some parsley. I dumped in the mini bottle of white wine (I believe it was chardonnay but most dry white wines work well), added about 1 cup of water, and  1 TB of Old Bay seasoning.  I placed the stainless steel steamer in the pot, layered the potatoes first, since they take the longest to cook, and topped them with more Old Bay and some roughly chopped parsley. Next, I layered on the shrimp since they are raw and will take the second longest to cook, and again topped them with more parsley and Old Bay. The crab is cooked prior to being frozen and the corn only needs a brief steaming, so they go on top. 

    I turned the heat to high and let it come to a boil. After about 10 minutes at a full boil, everything should be cooked and ready. I placed a large colander in a large bowl and unloaded all the seafood into that. I covered that with the lid from the pot to keep it warm as we ate. I served it simply with some melted butter with lemon squeezed in it.