- Today, we are whipping up a Southern dish, pickled shrimp and butter bean salad.

I'm Lauren Furey, and welcome to my Charleston kitchen.

You're watching "Now We're Cookin'".

(waves murmuring) (lively jazz music) I'm using the term pickled shrimp in my recipe, but, please, don't let the word pickled scare you away.

We will be marinating the shrimp even more than we are pickling it, as the shrimp will already be fully cooked.

Let me introduce you to the ingredients in the pickled shrimp component of the salad.

(waves murmuring) (groovy jazz music) (air whooshing) So the first thing we wanna do is make our poaching liquid.

(waves murmuring) And poaching liquid is the hot water that's used to cook our shrimp gently.

And an important step to take when making the poaching liquid is to add flavor to it.

And how we're gonna do that is we're gonna add two dried bay leaves, we're gonna add a handful of parsley sprigs, they're fresh, they're full of flavor, and we're gonna add the juice of two lemons.

It's important that you freshly squeeze all your lemon juice because you can get a really good arm workout and you can also add some super tasty flavor.

It's not necessary to add salt to our poaching liquid, because we're gonna add plenty of salt later in the recipe.

Now the good thing is, in Charleston, we have lots of local shrimp.

And depending on what time of year it is, you can get small, medium, large, or even extra large.

Poaching is a super gentle cooking technique, and we wanna take good care of our shrimp.

By using poaching as the cooking technique, we're allowing the shrimp to cook to the perfect consistency.

If you cook the shrimp too long, they become tough, if you don't cook them long enough, they'll be undercooked.

You gotta cook the shrimp until they're just right.

So, just when they start to turn pink, it's time to take 'em out and remove 'em to our little sheet tray right here.

No need for an ice bath or anything like that, they'll cool on their own.

You can see all the parsley sprigs, the bay leaves, and I can sure smell that fresh lemon juice.

Let's let our shrimp cool, and in the meantime, we can start making our pickling liquid.

First thing we're gonna do is add a half a cup of extra virgin olive oil, which has a lot of flavor, and we're gonna balance it out with a quarter cup of vegetable oil, and it helps stretch the olive oil.

We're gonna add a quarter cup of capers.

And capers are briny and they're salty, so we wanna be careful when we're adding just a pinch of kosher salt.

Just like that.

Four fresh garlic cloves, two teaspoons of celery seeds, a tablespoon of mustard seeds, and a pinch of red pepper flakes.

Now, you can add more or less as you like, but I'm gonna start with that today.

We can always add more later.

Bay leaves, and then a quarter cup of apple cider vinegar, the juice of two fresh lemons.

You can use limes as well, but I recommend lemon.

That's what I always use.

You'll see that the mixture is separated right now because we have the citrus and we have the oils.

So, in order to make sure it's all evenly combined, some people say emulsify, we just wanna use our whisk.

And it might get a little messy, that's okay.

The mixture is getting thicker.

And similar to making a salad vinaigrette, it's all combined, and that's exactly what we're looking for.

That way, each shrimp will have the flavors of the oils and the vinegars and the lemon juice.

So, now, I'm gonna add the poached shrimp to our pickling liquid.

And I will not add the parsley stems that are from cooking the shrimp, but we have plenty of fresh herbs in the salad later on.

And we want to be sure that the pickling liquid is absorbed by each and every shrimp.

You wanna let this shrimp marinate for at least four hours, but it's also a great entertaining dish, because you can make it the day before and let it marinate overnight.

(waves murmuring) (lively jazz music) (air whooshing) Our shrimp has been marinating for four hours, and it's full of flavor.

Now it's time to build our butter bean salad.

So the first thing we're gonna do is add our thinly sliced red onion to a bowl.

And red onion is super strong, so we wanna help tame the flavor with a little bit of sweet honey.

We have lots of honey local here in South Carolina, and it adds just the right amount of sweetness.

So, I'm gonna add some honey, some water to help soften these onions, as well as some red wine vinegar.

And red wine vinegar pairs nicely with red onions, because it brings out the beautiful red, almost purple color, of the red onions.

So, I'm gonna use this big spoon, give it a nice stir.

And that's going to sit in that liquid while we make the rest of our salad.

So I'll set this aside here, and I'm going to add in a fresh cucumber.

So...

There we go.

Get all the cucumbers in there.

And I thinly sliced the cucumbers in about a eighth-inch to a quarter-inch slices on the diagonal after taking the seeds out and taking some of the skin off as well.

So, some fresh parsley.

And this whole grain mustard helps bind the salad.

So I'm gonna give it a little shake there.

A little olive oil makes our salad juicy and it creates a luscious vinegarette.

Now, I'm going to add in some thinly cut celery.

And this is a skill that I wanna be sure I show y'all, because celery is full of flavor, and if you cut it thin enough, you'll get a bite of it in each part of the salad.

So, by cutting it on the diagonal, it looks very pretty, and just two ribs of celery in the salad will be enough for this.

I love this salad because it doesn't make a big mess, and it allows you to entertain with your guests, and, trust me, they'll wanna learn how you make this salad.

Our two ribs of celery.

I'm gonna stir it up.

Wow, I can really smell the fresh parsley, the onions, the sharp vinegar.

And, of course, it's not a butter bean salad without some freshly torn mint from my garden.

Mint's one of my favorite herbs to grow because it grows like crazy, and I use it a lot in different recipes, both sweet and savory.

You might even catch some of my mint in my Sicilian pistachio pesto.

It's time for our friends, the butter beans.

We have four cups of butter beans, which I cooked.

And that's something you can do ahead of time.

You wanna just toss it with a little olive oil before you let it sit in your refrigerator.

This salad is something I keep in my fridge at all times, whether I need it for a beach picnic, or if my neighbor's coming over for a last minute dinner or lunch, I like to have this ready at all times.

Now this pickled shrimp has been sitting in a refrigerator, marinating in the flavors, or dancing with each other, It's kind of playing nicely, and it helps balance out all the vegetables in our butter bean salad.

So I'm actually gonna set aside our wooden spoon and use our slotted spoon to remove the shrimp from the pickling liquid.

And you wanna be sure not to let the dried bay leaves go in the salad, but, hey, if they go in there, you can pick 'em out at the very end.

So, I'm gonna add a little bit of freshly cracked black pepper for a little kick.

And there's something really special about freshly cracked black pepper, a little bit goes a long way.

And I gave it a taste, I do think it needs a pinch of salt, so... No, maybe two, we have a big bowl here.

And for the final stir.

Oh, yeah.

We're gonna let this salad sit in the refrigerator for about 30-minutes and let it marinate one more time.

Until then, let's work up an appetite.

(waves murmuring) (tranquil upbeat music) We're gonna take our bowl right here, take a big scoop of the salad.

And take your time with it, because you don't wanna break your shrimp or your butter beans in the process.

And... Oh, yeah, some of everything.

We have the red onions, the crispy cucumbers, the thinly sliced celery.

And taking that extra time to cut your vegetables nice really makes the difference in your final dish.

So, I don't think a salad's a salad without some freshly cut bacon, so...

If you have a vegetarian in your group, you can leave this out, but, otherwise, you can go for it.

A little bacon, and then rice that I cooked in advance helps make this salad more of a substantial meal.

(waves murmuring) Pickled shrimp and butter beans, a match made in heaven.

The juicy pickled shrimp with the buttery butter beans paired together for the perfect bite.

From the fresh herbs to the crisp vegetables, each bite is packed with flavor.

Thank you for watching.

I'm Lauren Furey, catch you next time on "Now We're Cookin'".

(waves murmuring) (upbeat groovy jazz music)