Shrimp on the Smoker

Back in July, we smoked up a special batch of shrimp.  Now that it's winter, and cold, I'm going to post it to remind us of warmer days.  Plus, I'm hoping to make Ben hungry.

We had gotten some ocean run coonstripe shrimp from the Rowes and I wasn't quite sure how to cook it, never having cooked shrimp before.  Besides that, Rachel doesn't prefer seafood so I was putting it off.  But since we already had the smoker fired up for some chicken and red peppers, I decided we might as well add some shrimp.

I used a spicy garlic brine based loosely on one that claimed to be useful for seafood.  This also helped the shrimp complete its final thaw.  I'm not sure that shrimp would thaw today, even in the house (with a low of -8 degrees F tonight).  They looked pretty tasty even before I put them on the smoker.

 It didn't take long to smoke/cook these on the charcoal smoker.  With a little applewood smoke and the heat of the charcoal, they were done in about ten minutes.  We ended up eating these cold at Philip's first birthday party and I thought they were excellent.  I don't recall if Philip liked them but Peter had a particular affinity for the shrimp.  Rachel even said they were ok.  I did also try them warm and they were good that way - they seemed buttery, even though we never put butter on them.  The smokiness was just right. 

Here's some of the chicken that we did at the same time.  The chicken was smoked with apple and honeysuckle.  It took about 5 hours, but it was also well worth it.