Old Bay Shrimp and Potato Salad

Dan here again.  My new recipe slump has been continuing over the past few weeks, unless you count replacing chicken with pork in this recipe.  (News flash: it tasted pretty much the same.  They don’t call it “the other white meat” for nothing.)  However, I  was digging through Beth’s old food pictures and found some of a shrimp and potato salad dish I apparently made in September.  After a subsequent hunt through our various cookbooks, I determined that it was this recipe from Real Simple, and that jogged my memory a bit.  Essentially, the key ingredient to the recipe was Old Bay seasoning.

Since I grew up in Maryland, I am quite familiar with Old Bay.  When I was a kid, my dad put it in hamburgers a couple of times, and my ten-year-old palate thought it was pretty gross.  I can’t remember, but I probably decided to eat some pancakes instead.  However, when I grew up, I encountered my first crab feast, and I discovered that Old Bay could do wondrous things to seafood.  The waiters came out and covered our table with brown paper and then proceeded to bring bowl after bowl of steamed crabs dusted liberally with Old Bay.  I was a bit frustrated in my attempts to dismember the crabs, as it’s a complicated and messy process, but when I finally succeeded in getting the crab meat out, the Old Bay was a delicious addition to the meal.  I may or may not have licked some of the seasoning off my fingers. 

When I made this recipe, I discovered that Old Bay also works well with the shrimp (not that I was particularly surprised), and they were much easier to eat than crab.   I think it’s only a seafood magic, though.  A couple of days later, I tried seasoning a steak with Old Bay, and it just wasn’t the same.