Shrimp Boil — Juicy and succulent large shrimp along with corn and potatoes, all drenched in the most heavenly horseradish butter!! There’s the option to make your own homemade and ultra flavorful stock for the boil, or use store-bought stock as a shortcut! Either way, this is a finger lickin’ amazing meal!!
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Flavorful Shrimp Boil Recipe
If you’ve never made a shrimp boil, before fresh sweet corn goes out of season, this is the time to do it!
For this shrimp boil, I used potatoes, corn, and shrimp. You can always add sausage as well if you enjoy it.
I made a homemade stock, which I then used to boil the potatoes, corn, and shrimp. If you don’t want to make your own stock, you can use a store bought stock.
However, I urge you to make the horseradish-spiked butter. It adds such an incredible depth of flavor to everything. Melted butter is always lovely, but butter spiked with stock, garlic, Old Bay Seasoning, lemon juice, horseradish, and a pinch of red pepper flakes if just out of this world!
Shrimp Boil Ingredients
I am breaking this down into three sections — the stock, the actual shrimp boil ingredients, and then the horseradish butter. What you’re making here is essentially an ultra flavorful butter garlic shrimp, potatoes and corn recipe
For the stock:
- Water
- Beer
- Carrots
- Head of garlic
- Celery stalks
- Prepared yellow or Dijon mustard
- Kosher salt
- OR use store bought vegetable or chicken stock
For the shrimp boil:
- Baby red potatoes
- Corn
- Shrimp
For the horseradish butter sauce:
- Unsalted butter
- Stock
- Garlic
- Prepared horseradish
- Old Bay Seasoning
- Black pepper or red pepper flakes
- Salt
- Parsley, optional for garnishing
- Lemon wedges, for serving
What’s the Best Shrimp Boil Seasoning?
If you’re unsure what the best shrimp boil seasoning is, I recommend sticking with the classic: Old Bay Seasoning!
In addition to Old Bay, I flavor my shrimp boil with freshly ground black pepper, red pepper flakes, and prepared horseradish.
Fresh parsley and lemon wedges are added at the very end as garnish.
How to Make a Shrimp Boil
Making a shrimp boil with corn and potatoes requires more time than you’d likely spend in the kitchen, but waiting for everything to boil and cook through is the only “hard” part about this recipe!
Step 1: Make the stock
- Combine all the stock ingredients in a large stockpot.
- Bring to a boil for 30 to 60 minutes — the longer, the better.
- Strain the vegetables, and the liquid that remains is the stock for cooking the potatoes, corn, and shrimp.
If you don’t want to make your own stock and are pressed for time or energy, as I already mentioned, just use store-bought chicken or vegetable stock.
Step 2: Add the potatoes & corn
- Precook the potatoes for about 15 minutes before adding the corn. Potatoes will take the longest to cook through so you want to give them a head start.
- Add the corn. It only needs about 3 minutes before adding the shrimp.
What Are the Best Potatoes for a Shrimp Boil?
I used baby red potatoes (and a couple baby purple potatoes that I hand on hand), but you can use baby white potatoes instead. Just don’t use Russet potatoes, as they’ll crumble in the stock!
Step 3: Add the shrimp
- Add the shrimp and cook just until done.
- Drain everything and get ready to serve with the scrumptious butter sauce!
Step 4: Make the horseradish butter sauce
- To make the horseradish butter, simply combine all the ingredients from above in a small stock pot and stir until the butter has melted.
Recipe FAQs
Shrimp cooks very quickly and I recommend 3 or 4 minutes, with 5 minutes being that max. Make sure not to overcook the shrimp or they will be rubbery.
I recommend using fresh, large shrimp (U15 or U20) that have been previously cleaned and deveined, with the tails still on. My preference are U15-18 shrimp.
If you absolutely don’t want to splurge on fresh shrimp, you could possibly get away with previously frozen, cooked shrimp.
If you are going this route, I would drop them in your pot of boiling stock for about 60 to 90 seconds, just enough to warm them through. You don’t want to actually cook them since they’ve already been cooked, and you don’t want them tough, so just think of it as warming them.
Since fresh corn is in season, I used cleaned fresh corn on the cob. Other times of the year I recommend using frozen corn on the cob that you thaw first.
There are so many different kinds of horseradish. First, there is the actual root vegetable, and that’s not what you want. Secondly, there are shelf-stable types of horseradish.
Finally, there is refrigerated, fresh horseradish. I opt for this when I can find it.
Unfortunately not all grocery stores stock this regularly, but shelf stable is easy to find, usually in the condiments aisle.
If possible, I steer away from the very creamy-looking prepared versions that look like they have a lot of mayonnaise in them for this particular recipe use.
Yes! If you want do amp this shrimp boil up, drop in some andouille sausage when you are adding the corn to the boiling stock. If you have sausage fans on your hands, they’ll enjoy it.
Tips for Cooking Shrimp Boil
When you’re purchasing the fresh shrimp, ask your butcher or fish monger to clean and devein the shrimp for you to save time later on. It doesn’t cost any more, and later on it’s easier for you.
Go to the fish and seafood counter first, ask them to do this, carry on with the rest of your shopping, and when you’re about done, they’ll be done with the cleaning and deveining.
If you’re going the way of using store-bought stock, an easy way to impart more flavor with basically no extra work is to slice an onion in quarters and add it to the boiling stock before you drop the potatoes in. You can use whatever onion you like – red, yellow, or white.
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Shrimp Boil
Ingredients
Homemade Stock
- 3 quarts water
- 24 ounces beer, use your favorite lighter/paler beer
- 2 large carrots, cut into large chunks
- 1 head garlic, cut in half so all the cloves are exposed
- 4 celery stalks, cut into large chunks
- 2 tablespoons prepared yellow or Dijon mustard
- 1 tablespoon kosher salt, or to taste
- OR use 3 to 4 quarts store bought chicken or vegetable stock, I recommend reduced sodium
Shrimp Boil
- 2 pounds large fresh shrimp, cleaned and deveined; I use U15-18 shrimp and prefer to leave the tails on* (See Notes below about frozen shrimp)
- 1 to 1 ½ pounds baby red potatoes, kept whole
- 2 to 3 ears of fresh sweet corn, cleaned; each ear cut into thirds (frozen and thawed corn on the cob may be substituted)
Horseradish Butter
- 12 tablespoons unsalted butter, 1 1/2 sticks
- ½ cup stock, homemade, chicken, or vegetable
- 2 cloves garlic, finely minced or pressed
- 2 to 3 teaspoons prepared horseradish, or to taste (use fresh refrigerated horseradish if you can find it; shelf-stable prepared horseradish may be used although try to not use one that's overly creamy/mayonnaisey-looking)
- 2 teaspoons Old Bay Seasoning
- 1 teaspoon kosher salt, or to taste
- 1 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper or red chili flakes, to taste
- fresh parsley, optional for garnishing
- fresh lemon wedges, for serving
Instructions
Homemade Stock:
- To a very large stock pot, add the water, beer, carrots, garlic, celery, kosher salt, mustard, and stir to combine. Bring to a rapid boil over high heat. Let the mixture boil uncovered for at least 30 minutes, up to 1 hour; stir occasionally.
- After 30 to 60 minutes, strain the stock into another large pot, discard the vegetables. Tip - Be very careful, the stock is extremely hot!
- Place the pot with the stock back on the stove over high heat, and bring it to a boil.
- If you are using 3 to 4 quarts store bought stock, bring it to a boil in a large stock pot over high heat.
Shrimp Boil:
- Add the baby potatoes and boil for 15 minutes or until fork tender, stirring occasionally.
- After the potatoes have cooked for about 15 minutes and are fork-tender, to that stockpot, add the corn, stir to submerge, and boil for an additional 3 minutes.
- Add the shrimp, stir to combine, and cook just until the shrimp are cooked. You know they are cooked when they are opaque white, they will curve in on themselves, and they will be firm to the touch; do not overcook. I recommend 3 to 4 minutes unless you are using very large U10-12 shrimp, and they may need 5 minutes but for most shrimp 3 or 4 minutes is plenty since there will also be some carryover cooking after you strain everything.
- Strain the potatoes, corn, and shrimp from the stock, and place them into a large serving dish, or individual dishes.
Horseradish Butter:
- While the potatoes are cooking in the stock, to a medium saucepan add the butter, stock, garlic, horseradish, Old Bay, salt, pepper or red pepper flakes, heat over medium-high heat until the butter has melted; stirring nearly continuously to encourage it; set aside until Step 10.
- Pour the butter sauce over everything and toss to combine, optionally garnish with parsley, and serve with lemon wedges.
Notes
Nutrition
Nutrition information is automatically calculated, so should only be used as an approximation.
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I have used ghee in making horseradish butter sauce instead of butter, as ghee is a tasty and healthy butter substitute. The sauce was good to eat. I have used grass-fed quality of ghee.
I have used ghee in making horseradish butter sauce instead of butter, as ghee is a tasty and healthy butter substitute. The sauce was good to eat. I have used grass-fed quality of ghee.
Thanks for sharing what you’ve done in the past that has worked well for you,
great
what a fun dish if I can find the right kind of shrimp, thank you, but really like the horseradish butter sauce, wow what a flavor pairing, much appreciated!
Thanks much! The horseradish butter is so good and most any kind of fresh shrimp will be fine. I prefer bigger than smaller but use what you can find.
Question – The horseradish says “2 to 3 prepared horseradish”. Is that teaspoons or tablespoons?
Fixed! Thanks for catching, there was a lot going on in this recipe.
It’s teaspoons but of course, add tablespoons if you want a kick! :)
opened my appetite :) thank you.
opened my appetite :) thank you.