Category Archives: Main Dish – Fish

Easy Shrimp Creole

by Sarah


I hope everyone had a lovely Thanksgiving.   Personally, I’m stuffed from all the turkey, dressing, sweet potatoes and cranberry sauce.  While those are delicious, as Christmas approaches, I find that I get a little tired of the normal fare.  As Cary and I begin our own traditions with our growing family, we decided that on Christmas we would serve themed foods, kinda like Christmas around the world.   This year, we are going to have a Creole Christmas.

We plan on serving shrimp creole as the main dish, with crusty garlic bread as a side and bread pudding for dessert.

A quick search brought us to this recipe.  We tweaked it quite a bit.  First, we hate dicing the onions, celery and garlic (ie trinity).  We perused the produce section at Publix and found they already had a pre-diced trinity mixture.  We used 3 of those for this recipe.   Here are all the ingredients we used:

  • 3 to 4 lbs medium-size fresh shrimp, peeled, deveined
  • 1/4 cup vegetable oil
  • 1/4 cup all-purpose flour
  • 3 containers of trinity mixture from Publix  ( or 1 1/2 cups chopped onion, 1 cup chopped celery, 2 cloves garlic, minced)
  • 1 green pepper, diced
  • 1 can (14.5 ounces) diced tomatoes, undrained
  • 1 can (8 oz) tomato sauce
  • 1 can (6 oz) tomato paste
  • 1 cup water
  • 1 1/2 teaspoons salt
  • 1 teaspoon pepper
  • 1/2 teaspoon red pepper, ground
  • 2 bay leaves
  • 1 tablespoon lemon juice
  • 4 teaspoons Worcestershire sauce
  • dash hot pepper sauce

In a large pot, combine the oil and flour.  Cook over medium heat, stirring (DO NOT WALK AWAY), for about 15 to 20 minutes.  The mixture should be a light brown color. 

Add the trinity and the green pepper.  Cook, stirring frequently,  until the vegetables are tender. Add all the other ingredients and bring to a boil; cover and reduce the heat. Simmer for about 30 minutes, stirring occasionally. Add shrimp and simmer for about 10 minutes more, or until the shrimp turn pink. Remove the bay leaves. Serve over rice.

While the color comes out an interesting orange, it tastes delicious.   As far as our Christmas goes, does anyone else have any suggestions for Creole dishes?