Sous Vide Shrimp Recipe. (How to perfectly cook shrimp)

Sous vide is the easiest way to perfectly cook shrimp. The shrimp are tender, sweet and juicy. Never have rubbery shrimp again.

Once you make your sous vide shrimp you might want to make a recipe of Mexican shrimp cocktail or homemade limoncello, another sous vide recipe. Be sure to check out my complete collection of sous vide recipes.

How to perfectly cook shrimp

Make these practically perfect shrimp into a sous vide shrimp cocktail. Cooking shrimp is super easy and goes from raw to done in the blink of an eye. Once it crosses over to well done, there is no going back. You have chewy, rubbery shrimp. Not good.

Using the sous vide to cook your shrimp at a specific temperature you are ensuring that the shrimp will not get over cooked. Controlled perfection.

Preheat your Sous Vide to 135 °F / 57 °C

If you are using a metal pot, be sure to put a hot pad under the stock pot to protect your surface. Make sure there is enough water for all the shrimp to be submerged by a few inches.

What size shrimp to use?

These are 26-30 shrimp. That means in terms of size there are twenty six to thirty shrimp per pound. The higher the number, the smaller the shrimp.These shrimp are frozen and they should be thawed under cold running water.

These shrimp are deveined but still have their tails and shells on. The tails and shells give great flavor so I wait until after they are cooked to remove them. You are welcome to remove the shells before you sous vide them.

Completely optional but highly encouraged…..

Add about 3 slices of lemon and a bay leaf or two to the shrimp.

Sous Vide Bag

I don’t have the ‘official’ sous vide bags but I DO have the vac and seal bags. They are a thicker bag than a zip top bag. Make sure the bag is long enough to have the shrimp lay in a single layer.

 

Sous Vide Pro Tip:

• To keep your bag from floating, add a few heavy butter knives to the bag before closing it up.
• These are non reactive and won’t effect your sous vide shrimp.
• If you are not comfortable putting butter knives in with your shrimp, you can place a heavy bowl, plate or serving spoon over the shrimp sous vide bag to keep it submerged.

How to prepare the shrimp bag for cooking:

1. Remove as much air as possible and flatten out the shrimp so it is in an even layer.
2. If you have a vacuum sealer, set the vacuum to moist and remove the air and seal.
3. Make sure that the shrimp are completely submerged in the water.

How to cook shrimp sous vide

Cook for 15 minutes. The shrimp are now pretty close to perfect!

Normally with sous vide you have a window of time to remove the food from the water. With shrimp that window is about 15 minutes.

Can you overcook shrimp with sous vide?

Cook your shrimp for 15 minutes and remove them from the water bath within 15 minutes. If you totally forget, don’t panic. You should be good to go for up to an hour after the cooking time. But don’t go over an hour and remove it as soon as possible.

Why is an ice bath used after cooking shrimp?

Remove the perfectly cooked shrimp and plunge them in an ice bath.

This will stop the cooking process and drop the temperature to ensure they are in a safe temperature zone for storage.

Easy Poached Shrimp

Peel the shrimp leaving the tails in place and you are all set to make a sous vide shrimp cocktail!

How to serve Sous Vide Shrimp.

Serve your perfectly cooked shrimp with your favorite cocktail sauce and garnish with a lemon squeeze.

Try This Recipe:

 

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originally published jan 2018