Salt & Pepper Shrimp, or A Recipe for Disaster

I tried to make Salt & Pepper Shrimp. I’ve always loved this dish but never thought to try and make it at home. It’s deceptively easy to make, and that’s a problem! There are a few simple ingredients and only a few steps, which means there’s no room for error.

To begin with, you make the salt and pepper mix. This requires toasting whole peppercorns for about 15 minutes to give them a smokey, rich flavor. The problem is, if the pan isn’t hot enough, the flavor never develops. Too hot and it burns, giving you a bitter, acrid flavor.

Next, the shrimp are dredged in corn starch and lightly fried in a cast-iron skillet. The recipe said 30 seconds on each side, but that wasn’t long enough. Here again, cooking too long gives you dry, flavorless shrimp, so figuring out the timing is everything.

And now—with the salt and pepper mix made, the shrimp fried, the garlic toasted, the hot peppers finally added—I moved the shrimp from the cast-iron pan to a plate. The trouble started when I made the mistake of lifting the cast-iron pan and tilting it slightly to get the last of the garlic and peppers out. Suddenly, the pan slipped out of my hand and crashed down on the shrimp, breaking the plate and sending shrimp and glass everywhere. That was it. Game over.

If you’re looking for a silver lining here, and believe me, I was—the good news is that I hadn’t dropped the cast-iron pan on the glass stovetop. The great news was that I hadn’t dropped it on my foot.

I took a deep breath, looked around, and found a piece of shrimp that had escaped the carnage and tasted it. It wasn’t bad—not the best I’ve ever had, but certainly not the worst. Oddly enough, I felt proud. Nobody likes to admit it, but this is what progress really looks like. You try, you fail, and the real success comes from learning and having the courage to start again. Sometimes things just don’t pan out (pun intended), but it’s all part of the adventure!

We ended up going out to dinner instead, to our favorite Mexican restaurant. And wouldn’t you know it—we both ordered the shrimp.