Cooking Louisiana  -  Seafood Spicing for Store-Bought Seafood
Spicing up store-bought packaged shrimp, crab or crawfish meat is simple and delicious. I normally have seafood from a boil so most all of it is seasoned. I have however run into the situation where I bought seafood from the grocery that was not seasoned.

Crab and crawfish meat should come pre-cooked. Shrimp may or may not be cooked, this is for pre-cooked shrimp.

You should also taste the cooked meat to see if it's been seasoned any before doing this.

Remove the seafood from its package and put in a plastic zipper bag. For 1 lb. of meat add 1/4 tsp. liquid crab boil and sprinkle a little Creole seasoning. Zip the bag and move around well. Let it sit the ice box for about 20 minutes and taste. If it's not to your liking add more liquid boil and seasoning and let it sit again. Once you get it like you want you can use the seafood for whatever purpose. The longer you let it sit, the more spice it will pick up.

You notice that this is not an "exact" recipe. That's because people don't all like the same amount of spice, and, seafood doesn't always come the same size, especially shrimp. Write down how much liquid boil and seasoning you used and what size and type seafood you used that mix in for future reference.

You can even add garlic powder, onion powder and cayenne pepper to jack-it-up if you wish, be creative.

This works especially well when fixing up hors d'oeuvres that feature the seafood like Seafood Crackers or shrimp for dipping. You can also do this for dishes like stew, jambalaya and gumbo.

Enjoy