Low Carb Bacon-Wrapped BBQ Shrimp Recipe

July 24, 2014 by Mellissa Sevigny 6 Comments

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This is a sponsored post for Jones Dairy Farm – all thoughts, opinions, recipes and photographs are my own!

So I know that bacon-wrapped shrimp isn’t a new concept. People have been wrapping bacon around seafood and grilling it for ages. Here’s the problem though – a lot of you are doing it wrong.

I know this because I’ve sampled your porcine-swaddled shrimp, scallops, tuna, etc. for years at dinner parties, barbecues, and my own house when you’ve brought them. And I die a little inside every time.

I’m sorry I didn’t tell you sooner and to your face that it wasn’t good – but nobody wants to hear that they’ve just rendered $50+ worth of high quality seafood inedible from their friends/guests. Can you say awkward?

I know the rest of you were thinking it too though, and none of you said anything either!

Well I’m finally going to set the record straight and tell you how to get your act together. You ready?

STOP WRAPPING RAW BACON AROUND YOUR SEAFOOD PEOPLE!

You see, it’s simple really. A one to two inch chunk of seafood takes almost no time to cook through properly, while a piece of raw bacon can take at least 5 minutes or more to get the right texture. To get your seafood perfect, your bacon will be flabby and unappealing. To get the bacon perfect, you end up with a horrific, fishy lump, much resembling a pencil eraser in texture. There is no winner in this scenario.

So what do you do?

First of all, and most importantly:

PRECOOK YOUR BACON. It’s that easy and bears repeating. PRE.COOK.YOUR.BACON.

All you need is a few minutes head start on your bacon, and you’ll get perfect results every time. You want your bacon still very pliable and not totally crisp before you wrap your seafood. A couple of minutes in the oven, a microwave, or a saute pan will do the trick.

Secondly, don’t use thick cut bacon – it’s too much. You want a nice thin slice of bacon that will cook quickly and melt in your mouth when you bite into it – otherwise you end up with too much chewy bacon texture that overwhelms the delicate seafood.

Third, use a good quality bacon like Jones Dairy Farm. You might pay a little more per pound, but since you just ponied up big bucks for some decent seafood, why would you wrap it in overly fatty, flavorless, inferior bacon? Great bacon will make all the difference in your recipe. Trust me on this one!

If you do just those three things, you’ll vastly improve your street cred with all the people you’ve been subjecting to your previous inedible offerings. Now instead of cringing inwardly when you enthusiastically offer to bring your “famous” bacon-wrapped (insert any seafood here) to the next party, your friends will be lining up to make sure they get some before it’s gone! Promise.

Now for this bacon-wrapped shrimp recipe I took it a step further. I sauteed my Jones Dairy Farm Dry Aged Cherry Hardwood Smoked Bacon for a couple of minutes, then I added it to my BBQ sauce and simmered it for another 5 minutes so it soaked up all of that flavor and rendered even more of that fat out – RIGHT INTO MY SAUCE.

I probably don’t have to tell you that it was super delicious. I cooled the sauce down for a few minutes, removed the bacon, and added the shrimp to fully coat them in the sauce as well. Then I wrapped the shrimp in the bacon and skewered them.

By the time those babies hit the grill they were already full of flavor and no extra basting was required. The bacon crisped up quickly and the shrimp cooked perfectly in about 90 seconds per side. It was a smoky symphony of awesomeness.