**The Art of Making Perfect Cocktail Sauce**

For me, making cocktail sauce is an art form that requires precision and attention to detail. It's not just about tossing some ingredients together, but rather about creating a harmonious balance of flavors that will elevate your shrimp cocktail experience. To start, I carefully grate the horseradish using a microplane to ensure it's fine enough to eat in the sauce. A little bit of black pepper is added to give it a warm and aromatic flavor. If you like your cocktail sauce spicy, now's the time to add hot sauce or Cayenne pepper.

**The Secret Ingredient: Ketchup**

One crucial ingredient that makes all the difference is ketchup. This magical condiment adds sweetness and depth to our sauce, making it perfect for balancing out the savory flavors of the shrimp. I like to use a high-quality ketchup with a rich, velvety texture that will add body to our sauce.

**Adding Freshness with Lemon**

Next, I squeeze in some fresh lemon juice, which not only adds acidity but also enhances the citrusy notes in the horseradish and ketchup. This is where the magic happens – by adjusting the amount of lemon to your taste, you can fine-tune the balance of flavors in your cocktail sauce.

**Getting to Know Your Tastes**

When it comes to making cocktail sauce, there's no one-size-fits-all approach. What works for me might not work for you, and that's perfectly okay. The key is to experiment and find what you enjoy. I like to add a bit more black pepper or horseradish if needed, but ultimately, the choice is yours.

**The Recipe Revealed**

Here's my secret recipe for cocktail sauce:

* 1/2 cup prepared horseradish

* 1 tablespoon freshly squeezed lemon juice

* 1 teaspoon ketchup (make sure it's high-quality!)

* A pinch of black pepper

* Optional: hot sauce, Cayenne pepper, or Old Bay seasoning

**A Note on Serving**

To serve our cocktail sauce, I like to put the prepared mixture in a bowl and fill it up generously. This way, my guests can dip as many times as they want without worrying about running out of sauce. And remember, no double dipping – we want to preserve that delicious flavor!

**Cleaning Up is Easier with a Little Trick**

After our shrimp cocktail party, I like to use a paper towel under the cutting board to clean up any spills or messes. It makes cleanup so much easier and prevents those pesky stains.

**The Verdict: A Delicious Twist on a Classic Dish**

In the end, making your own cocktail sauce from scratch is worth the effort. The flavors are more complex, the texture is smoother, and it's just plain delicious. I like to serve mine with ice-cold shrimp that have been poached in their own juice – it adds an extra layer of flavor and tenderness. Give this recipe a try and see for yourself why homemade cocktail sauce is the way to go!

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enI'm Amanda Freitag I'm a judge on Food Network's chopped and today you and I are going to cook shrimp cocktail this is one of my recipes from my book The Chef next door the best way to make the most delicious shrimp cocktail is to do it yourself yes you can you can do it and you have to start out with beautiful fresh shrimp that is in the Shell this is the only way to get the freshest most delicious shrimp cocktail by starting here and we're going to cook the shrimp in the Shell now I know this seems a little scary and you maybe haven't done it before but the reason why is that you'll have beautiful shrimp multiple things the outside meat will be nice and smooth not mealy the shape of the shrimp will be perfect not curled up not all different shapes so there's a reason for this and we're getting really good flavor into the shrimp by using a poaching liquid now poaching is again another thing that you may not be comfortable with but honestly all it is is cooking in water that's been seasoned the thing to remember in the kitchen is you're in control the food is not so what I have here is about eight cups of water in a pan I've already got it going you can see it's starting to simmer a little bit but we need to season the water and that will impart flavor into the shrimp but not too much we want things like lemon black pepper bay leaf salt so I'm going to put about a teaspoon of kosher salt I really like to cook with kosher salt you must always put your salt out in a container it's so much easier to gauge you can't just pour from a box you could pour too much you can't really tell I said get your hands dirty get your hands in the salt you need to measure use a measuring spoon but honestly having your salt out there to feel touch and the container is the best way to season so teaspoon of kosher salt we have a quarter cup of white wine I love putting wine and poaching liquid for seafood if you don't want to use wine you can use vinegar or you can just add extra lemon but I love that wine flavor it goes really well with the shrimp a couple of tablespoons of black peppercorns I'm using black peppercorns as opposed to ground pepper because it's just going to come out of there it's not going to be a part of the dish I don't want the pepper ground because I really don't want the shrimp to be spicy nor do I want it to have Speckles of black pepper on it I'm going to put in some bay leaf if you can find fresh bay leaf it's fantastic and definitely use it but dried bay leaf is such a great Staple in your pantry it adds really good flavor to the poach and then we're just going to do some lemon slices and for something like this which is a poach it doesn't matter how this is cut it's a good time to practice your knife skills but these lemons are going to come out of here and they're just going to be thrown away after we get all the flavor so I'm just cutting them seeds skin and all everything in here and this gives it the flavor of the lemon juice the flavor of the lemon peel the lemon oil I mean I just I can't live without lemon I love it in every dish so it's going in it's simmering and as soon as it comes to a simmer I'm going to put the shrimp in now again everything on this is think of the shell as the protector right we want to protect the meat of the shrimp it's so tender and delicious we don't want it to get beaten up in the water we don't want it to get exposed and get too mealy we want it to be beautiful that's the trick and also what you may have heard the shells have a lot of flavor and honestly that little ring of shrimp cocktail that you could get pre-packaged is not going to have the same freshness it's not going to have the same flavor and you can really spice it up with your poaching liquid if you want to add some garlic to this give that shrimp a little garlic flavor go ahead some onions some shallots you can really get creative with this because that's going to impart flavor into your shrimp and your guests are going to love it if they're surprised by a bite of this simple looking shrimp that has all this flavor so I'm going to turn down the heat a little bit to a simmer I'm going to put the shrimp in and I'm going to make sure that once it goes in that it's moving around they're not on top of each other because that's going to help them cook more evenly and you can already see this is another great reason to cook your shrimp with the shell on it's an indicator of when it's cooking you can see they turned pink the shell will tell you almost when it's done it's almost like a turkey with with those little timers inside of it you'll see the flesh it's going to be more opaque than translucent you'll see the shell become really pink almost red and then you'll know if you wanted to put on a timer I'd say it's anywhere between three to five minutes I'll show you an example of what to look for and then you'll know and if you've cooked shrimp in the past let's say just in a pan without the shell you know that it cooks very quickly and you just want to look for when it's pink and white all the way through so I'm going to check these out now another key is we're not shocking these shrimp we're not going to put them in an ice water which you may have heard of the terms blanching and shocking shocking is a method used for vegetables where you stop the cooking with ice water if I was to put these in ice water if you were to put these in ice water you may lose some flavor and they may get soggy and you don't want that you don't want soggy mealy shrimp we're working so hard to make them so beautiful we want to keep them that way so take a look and you can see the shell is Pink the interior is white all the way through and that's when you know you're ready does your shrimp look ready are you ready okay I'm ready and now my water is starting to come up to a bit of a boil so I'm just turning it off and that's another way to tell when the water gets hotter the shrimp is fully cooked and you want to stop so what we have instead of using an ice bath we just have a sheet tray with paper you can use wax paper you can use plastic we just want to spread them out to cool and the key is to make them super cold before we peel them and serve them because nobody wants lukewarm shrimp cocktail honestly this is just one of those things I know it's old school I know it's classic but your family your friends your guests always love seeing this when they walk into a party I know my brother loves shrimp cocktail it's one of his favorites my mom always used to get it for him on his birthday and I get it I mean it's delicious and then most of it is about the cocktail sauce but what I really want you to get used to is really focusing on the shrimp because if the shrimp is good just eating a piece of shrimp will be as satisfying as dipping it into delicious cocktail sauce so I'm just gonna spread it out so they cool evenly same thing like when I was cooking them spread them out so they cook evenly spread them out so they cool evenly and then make sure you have a clear shelf in your fridge put them in and cool them down so I have some that I did earlier because I want to show you what they look like when they're cool and I want to show you now how to manage them and clean them this is an incredibly important part of this dish again so simple but if not done correctly it's not as good as it could be these are completely chilled they look gorgeous and also when they're cooked they're much easier to peel so we're gonna peel and devein now you hear a lot about this you may or may not see us judging on Chopped and saying they gave us the shrimp and they didn't devein it oh my God they're going to be chopped you don't want to be chopped on this one you want to make sure you give your guests clean shrimp think about what we would say as judges so what I'm going to do is peel them all first and then go back into vein I'm just going to show you a couple and you do it along with me and then you'll see it's the same thing it's just repeating the process so I start in here and I open it from here this is the best way to to peel it because you're not trying to get in on this hard outer shell there's already an opening so many things in cooking just sort of lead you to the easy way to do it so just go with it okay and then I loosen that I'm Gonna Keep the tail on so that's that's the way to hold it that's the way to dip it and basically it's almost like it unfolds itself right so you open it up from the center take off the shell and it's ready to go we're going to set it up on our cutting board to devein we're going to do it again any lemon or pepper that may be left on the shrimp just discard it and we're going to look at the inside here we're gonna open it up take it down to where we want it and then just peel it off now these peels you might ask can I use these for a stock or use these again they've already been cooked some of their flavor is left inside of this poaching liquid so they're not really going to give you any flavor to make a super sauce with but you can save that poaching liquid and use it again you can poach salmon in it you can poach Lobster you can poach shrimp again so I'm gonna do one more so you're feeling good you're feeling good with this easy right once they're cooked they're so easy to peel and even if you can't get the hang of doing it from the middle start from the top just open it up so that you can peel down to that tail okay ready to go make sure you get all of it off and now the most important part you can see it's more obvious on some shrimp where the vein is and on some it doesn't look like there's one at all but you have to open them all up to find out which is fine you're not losing that much shrimp you're really just cleaning them so let's go with a more obvious one first take a nice sharp knife small to medium knife and just run it along the back of the shrimp there down to the tail and you're basically just opening it because you don't want to cut too far into the shrimp you just want to expose what needs to come out and that needs to come out if you're uncomfortable with this if this grosses you out you can rinse it under water but I think it's just again better to not take any flavor away you created a lot of Flavor now if you put this in water it's going to take some flavor out so you can use your knife and I have also a little wet paper towel use your knife wipe off the vein from the knife you can use your fingers whatever it takes to get that out it's a little bit sticky but it's so worth it because these shrimp are delicious and once this is gone they're beautiful how's that feel weird gross not so gross it's really not so bad it comes out easily use your knife use your fingers and then you have beautiful shrimp and we're going to do it again now let's do one that doesn't look like it has it at all what could we discover in there is it in there is it not and this is exactly how we would do it in a Pro Kitchen we would take all of the shrimp we would peel them all first then we would line them up and we would devein them it's an efficient way of working you get rid of all the shells then you have all your shrimp ready for the next step and every recipe that I write I like to put a prep section because any chef in a restaurant would always do prep before they start cooking and I want you to do the same because it takes a lot of the burden off and it speeds up your cooking so let's see what's in here oh it's in there we found it it didn't look like it was but it is so you really do have to do the work of opening them all up so just be careful not to get too much of the shrimp meat if you get some of it it's okay but there you go it's nice and clean and you just keep going and what I'm doing is the way I've cut it to expose the vein I'm just kind of putting that back making sure that's smooth and beautiful and that's really about the presentation honestly like we eat with our eyes we want to present it we did all this work we want to show how beautiful our shrimp is and you can see the way they're shaped the outside is smooth if you had done this without the shell it would be mealy and they would all be curled up so this is a great technique okay so we're gonna move on to everybody's favorite part the cocktail sauce I'm working with the cutting board that has a little bit of shrimp and a little bit of the shrimp veins on it so I don't want to make the cocktail sauce on this same board so you can either rinse it or just flip it and as you see I have a wet paper towel underneath which helps stabilize The Cutting Board okay shrimp cocktail cocktail what does cocktail mean it's not a drink it's a sauce this has been around for ages and we still love it and there's a million different ways to make it but for me I like the most straightforward the simplest recipe but for you you can do whatever you want Spice it up spice it down put a little mayo in it you can do anything honestly this is what I call a refrigerator sauce you have all this stuff in your fridge you probably have a bottle of prepared horseradish on the door of your refrigerator right now so this is a really good product it lasts forever I remember my grandmother looking inside her fridge and she would have one of these and then she would have one of these that was also with beet and it would always be there it was always in her fridge so this is horseradish that has vinegar in it so vinegar actually brings out that Vapor that spiciness of the horseradish you can use fresh horseradish now a lot of people have never ever ever even seen fresh horseradish sometimes hard to find but you may find it in your Gourmet Grocery Store it's a root and it's big and you can grind it yourself and Grate it yourself and I'm just going to show you a little end because I think this is really eye-opening to a lot of people and what this looks like horseradish right it's a radish radishes sometimes have that really spicy peppery note to them that's why this is so good and spicy but honestly the fresh is not as spicy as the prepared so you can do a blend you can do all fresh or you can just do prepared and you basically just peel off the skin like a potato like ginger it's that kind of a root vegetable and you can do it with a knife because the outer peel is very firm or you can use a peeler it's just a really sharp one you may have to peel it a few times you can see how sturdy this root is whatever you're more comfortable with and depending on your horseradish it may be bigger it may be smaller just make sure you get all this skin off this is not delicious and not tender but right now as I'm peeling it I can smell it it's like really strong Vapor almost like Wasabi you know when you first get that sniff of Wasabi it's clearing my sinuses right now Okay so we peel it down and this is the fresh so what I can do is grate this into my sauce and I can do it on a box grater that's what we call it um or I could do it on a microplane to be a little bit finer I would do it on this blade to make sure that it's fine enough to eat in the sauce it's beautiful it's brighter a little bit brighter than the prepared just because it's just grated and I'm going to add that in I like my cocktail sauce spicy spicy with horseradish spicy with a little bit of black pepper you can add hot sauce you can add Cayenne you can add chili you can add whatever you like to spice it up you can add Old Bay seasoning to give it that really Seafood flavor so I'm gonna grind a whole bunch of black pepper inside of here as well I love that black pepper flavor obviously inside this bowl there's ketchup that magical ingredient that makes everything taste delicious I'm gonna put in some prepared horseradish now yes I'm giving you a recipe for this and you are going to use the recipe and what I advise when you're making a recipe for the first time is stick with it and then the next time put your own twist on it I'm going to use a teaspoon to get in there and I'm going to squeeze this lemon you're gonna use one lemon to start and then you're gonna taste it and you're gonna see if you want more acidity I love the lemon in here you can also serve your shrimp cocktail with a little bit of lemon in case somebody wants that just fresh lemon over their shrimp so let's see I've always this is for tasting I've actually always wanted I'm gonna use a spatula to be in the kitchen with the people who are cooking my recipes and I finally get to do this because sometimes I feel like The Cook The Amateur cook might give up and I don't want you to give up because it's the only way you're going to learn and what's the worst thing that can happen really what is like the worst thing that can happen you burn it you throw it away you have to call for takeout you just got to get in there and try it so I'm gonna taste this that's gonna kick which I wanted and I like I'm getting sweetness from the ketchup I'm getting a little heat from the black pepper but mostly I'm getting that heat and vapor from the horseradish so fresh and the prepare that has the vinegar in it I'm gonna go with a little bit more lemon because I want a little bit of sweetness and I want a little more sour ketchup really has a lot of sugar in it and I don't want this to taste like ketchup I want this to taste like lemon and horseradish and black pepper with a with a tomatoey base so it's really important to bring out those other flavors so I added this lemon in because I wanted that I like the acidity of the lemon I like the sweetness of the citrus but if you tasted it before and you liked it as it was just leave it you know we're doing this together but I want you to put your own twist on it I want you to be your own chef and know what you like and that creates your style so if you want more black pepper add it now if you want to grab the hot sauce put it in you know if you want more horseradish go for it this is the time but I like this right now I think it tastes delicious I think it's really well balanced I'm gonna clean up and we're gonna serve our shrimp okay oh also that paper towel under your cutting board makes for a really good cleanup so we have our cocktail sauce we have our beautiful shrimp they're ice cold they're ready to be served I'm going to put the cocktail sauce in a bowl I'm gonna really fill it up because I know that my guests and my family love to dip in the sauce so I'm giving them extra so that they can dip as many times as they want just no double dipping and really this is it a couple of lemon slices on the on the side taste it tell me what you think tell me if you can feel the difference between cooking your own shrimp or store-bought already prepared I know you can do this I know you're gonna love it sorry about your next party or just have it for dinner let me know what you think I'm going in I like a lot of sauce oh my God there's nothing like that flavor it's nostalgic it reminds me of of old school dinner parties I love horseradish with the ketchup the black pepper the lemon it's such a good foil to the shrimp the shrimp is tender it's sweet it has a nice bite to it and there's so much flavor honestly this is the best way to do the shrimp cocktail do it yourself take the time use the poaching liquid do it with the skin on I promise you're gonna love it going back in that was a double dipI'm Amanda Freitag I'm a judge on Food Network's chopped and today you and I are going to cook shrimp cocktail this is one of my recipes from my book The Chef next door the best way to make the most delicious shrimp cocktail is to do it yourself yes you can you can do it and you have to start out with beautiful fresh shrimp that is in the Shell this is the only way to get the freshest most delicious shrimp cocktail by starting here and we're going to cook the shrimp in the Shell now I know this seems a little scary and you maybe haven't done it before but the reason why is that you'll have beautiful shrimp multiple things the outside meat will be nice and smooth not mealy the shape of the shrimp will be perfect not curled up not all different shapes so there's a reason for this and we're getting really good flavor into the shrimp by using a poaching liquid now poaching is again another thing that you may not be comfortable with but honestly all it is is cooking in water that's been seasoned the thing to remember in the kitchen is you're in control the food is not so what I have here is about eight cups of water in a pan I've already got it going you can see it's starting to simmer a little bit but we need to season the water and that will impart flavor into the shrimp but not too much we want things like lemon black pepper bay leaf salt so I'm going to put about a teaspoon of kosher salt I really like to cook with kosher salt you must always put your salt out in a container it's so much easier to gauge you can't just pour from a box you could pour too much you can't really tell I said get your hands dirty get your hands in the salt you need to measure use a measuring spoon but honestly having your salt out there to feel touch and the container is the best way to season so teaspoon of kosher salt we have a quarter cup of white wine I love putting wine and poaching liquid for seafood if you don't want to use wine you can use vinegar or you can just add extra lemon but I love that wine flavor it goes really well with the shrimp a couple of tablespoons of black peppercorns I'm using black peppercorns as opposed to ground pepper because it's just going to come out of there it's not going to be a part of the dish I don't want the pepper ground because I really don't want the shrimp to be spicy nor do I want it to have Speckles of black pepper on it I'm going to put in some bay leaf if you can find fresh bay leaf it's fantastic and definitely use it but dried bay leaf is such a great Staple in your pantry it adds really good flavor to the poach and then we're just going to do some lemon slices and for something like this which is a poach it doesn't matter how this is cut it's a good time to practice your knife skills but these lemons are going to come out of here and they're just going to be thrown away after we get all the flavor so I'm just cutting them seeds skin and all everything in here and this gives it the flavor of the lemon juice the flavor of the lemon peel the lemon oil I mean I just I can't live without lemon I love it in every dish so it's going in it's simmering and as soon as it comes to a simmer I'm going to put the shrimp in now again everything on this is think of the shell as the protector right we want to protect the meat of the shrimp it's so tender and delicious we don't want it to get beaten up in the water we don't want it to get exposed and get too mealy we want it to be beautiful that's the trick and also what you may have heard the shells have a lot of flavor and honestly that little ring of shrimp cocktail that you could get pre-packaged is not going to have the same freshness it's not going to have the same flavor and you can really spice it up with your poaching liquid if you want to add some garlic to this give that shrimp a little garlic flavor go ahead some onions some shallots you can really get creative with this because that's going to impart flavor into your shrimp and your guests are going to love it if they're surprised by a bite of this simple looking shrimp that has all this flavor so I'm going to turn down the heat a little bit to a simmer I'm going to put the shrimp in and I'm going to make sure that once it goes in that it's moving around they're not on top of each other because that's going to help them cook more evenly and you can already see this is another great reason to cook your shrimp with the shell on it's an indicator of when it's cooking you can see they turned pink the shell will tell you almost when it's done it's almost like a turkey with with those little timers inside of it you'll see the flesh it's going to be more opaque than translucent you'll see the shell become really pink almost red and then you'll know if you wanted to put on a timer I'd say it's anywhere between three to five minutes I'll show you an example of what to look for and then you'll know and if you've cooked shrimp in the past let's say just in a pan without the shell you know that it cooks very quickly and you just want to look for when it's pink and white all the way through so I'm going to check these out now another key is we're not shocking these shrimp we're not going to put them in an ice water which you may have heard of the terms blanching and shocking shocking is a method used for vegetables where you stop the cooking with ice water if I was to put these in ice water if you were to put these in ice water you may lose some flavor and they may get soggy and you don't want that you don't want soggy mealy shrimp we're working so hard to make them so beautiful we want to keep them that way so take a look and you can see the shell is Pink the interior is white all the way through and that's when you know you're ready does your shrimp look ready are you ready okay I'm ready and now my water is starting to come up to a bit of a boil so I'm just turning it off and that's another way to tell when the water gets hotter the shrimp is fully cooked and you want to stop so what we have instead of using an ice bath we just have a sheet tray with paper you can use wax paper you can use plastic we just want to spread them out to cool and the key is to make them super cold before we peel them and serve them because nobody wants lukewarm shrimp cocktail honestly this is just one of those things I know it's old school I know it's classic but your family your friends your guests always love seeing this when they walk into a party I know my brother loves shrimp cocktail it's one of his favorites my mom always used to get it for him on his birthday and I get it I mean it's delicious and then most of it is about the cocktail sauce but what I really want you to get used to is really focusing on the shrimp because if the shrimp is good just eating a piece of shrimp will be as satisfying as dipping it into delicious cocktail sauce so I'm just gonna spread it out so they cool evenly same thing like when I was cooking them spread them out so they cook evenly spread them out so they cool evenly and then make sure you have a clear shelf in your fridge put them in and cool them down so I have some that I did earlier because I want to show you what they look like when they're cool and I want to show you now how to manage them and clean them this is an incredibly important part of this dish again so simple but if not done correctly it's not as good as it could be these are completely chilled they look gorgeous and also when they're cooked they're much easier to peel so we're gonna peel and devein now you hear a lot about this you may or may not see us judging on Chopped and saying they gave us the shrimp and they didn't devein it oh my God they're going to be chopped you don't want to be chopped on this one you want to make sure you give your guests clean shrimp think about what we would say as judges so what I'm going to do is peel them all first and then go back into vein I'm just going to show you a couple and you do it along with me and then you'll see it's the same thing it's just repeating the process so I start in here and I open it from here this is the best way to to peel it because you're not trying to get in on this hard outer shell there's already an opening so many things in cooking just sort of lead you to the easy way to do it so just go with it okay and then I loosen that I'm Gonna Keep the tail on so that's that's the way to hold it that's the way to dip it and basically it's almost like it unfolds itself right so you open it up from the center take off the shell and it's ready to go we're going to set it up on our cutting board to devein we're going to do it again any lemon or pepper that may be left on the shrimp just discard it and we're going to look at the inside here we're gonna open it up take it down to where we want it and then just peel it off now these peels you might ask can I use these for a stock or use these again they've already been cooked some of their flavor is left inside of this poaching liquid so they're not really going to give you any flavor to make a super sauce with but you can save that poaching liquid and use it again you can poach salmon in it you can poach Lobster you can poach shrimp again so I'm gonna do one more so you're feeling good you're feeling good with this easy right once they're cooked they're so easy to peel and even if you can't get the hang of doing it from the middle start from the top just open it up so that you can peel down to that tail okay ready to go make sure you get all of it off and now the most important part you can see it's more obvious on some shrimp where the vein is and on some it doesn't look like there's one at all but you have to open them all up to find out which is fine you're not losing that much shrimp you're really just cleaning them so let's go with a more obvious one first take a nice sharp knife small to medium knife and just run it along the back of the shrimp there down to the tail and you're basically just opening it because you don't want to cut too far into the shrimp you just want to expose what needs to come out and that needs to come out if you're uncomfortable with this if this grosses you out you can rinse it under water but I think it's just again better to not take any flavor away you created a lot of Flavor now if you put this in water it's going to take some flavor out so you can use your knife and I have also a little wet paper towel use your knife wipe off the vein from the knife you can use your fingers whatever it takes to get that out it's a little bit sticky but it's so worth it because these shrimp are delicious and once this is gone they're beautiful how's that feel weird gross not so gross it's really not so bad it comes out easily use your knife use your fingers and then you have beautiful shrimp and we're going to do it again now let's do one that doesn't look like it has it at all what could we discover in there is it in there is it not and this is exactly how we would do it in a Pro Kitchen we would take all of the shrimp we would peel them all first then we would line them up and we would devein them it's an efficient way of working you get rid of all the shells then you have all your shrimp ready for the next step and every recipe that I write I like to put a prep section because any chef in a restaurant would always do prep before they start cooking and I want you to do the same because it takes a lot of the burden off and it speeds up your cooking so let's see what's in here oh it's in there we found it it didn't look like it was but it is so you really do have to do the work of opening them all up so just be careful not to get too much of the shrimp meat if you get some of it it's okay but there you go it's nice and clean and you just keep going and what I'm doing is the way I've cut it to expose the vein I'm just kind of putting that back making sure that's smooth and beautiful and that's really about the presentation honestly like we eat with our eyes we want to present it we did all this work we want to show how beautiful our shrimp is and you can see the way they're shaped the outside is smooth if you had done this without the shell it would be mealy and they would all be curled up so this is a great technique okay so we're gonna move on to everybody's favorite part the cocktail sauce I'm working with the cutting board that has a little bit of shrimp and a little bit of the shrimp veins on it so I don't want to make the cocktail sauce on this same board so you can either rinse it or just flip it and as you see I have a wet paper towel underneath which helps stabilize The Cutting Board okay shrimp cocktail cocktail what does cocktail mean it's not a drink it's a sauce this has been around for ages and we still love it and there's a million different ways to make it but for me I like the most straightforward the simplest recipe but for you you can do whatever you want Spice it up spice it down put a little mayo in it you can do anything honestly this is what I call a refrigerator sauce you have all this stuff in your fridge you probably have a bottle of prepared horseradish on the door of your refrigerator right now so this is a really good product it lasts forever I remember my grandmother looking inside her fridge and she would have one of these and then she would have one of these that was also with beet and it would always be there it was always in her fridge so this is horseradish that has vinegar in it so vinegar actually brings out that Vapor that spiciness of the horseradish you can use fresh horseradish now a lot of people have never ever ever even seen fresh horseradish sometimes hard to find but you may find it in your Gourmet Grocery Store it's a root and it's big and you can grind it yourself and Grate it yourself and I'm just going to show you a little end because I think this is really eye-opening to a lot of people and what this looks like horseradish right it's a radish radishes sometimes have that really spicy peppery note to them that's why this is so good and spicy but honestly the fresh is not as spicy as the prepared so you can do a blend you can do all fresh or you can just do prepared and you basically just peel off the skin like a potato like ginger it's that kind of a root vegetable and you can do it with a knife because the outer peel is very firm or you can use a peeler it's just a really sharp one you may have to peel it a few times you can see how sturdy this root is whatever you're more comfortable with and depending on your horseradish it may be bigger it may be smaller just make sure you get all this skin off this is not delicious and not tender but right now as I'm peeling it I can smell it it's like really strong Vapor almost like Wasabi you know when you first get that sniff of Wasabi it's clearing my sinuses right now Okay so we peel it down and this is the fresh so what I can do is grate this into my sauce and I can do it on a box grater that's what we call it um or I could do it on a microplane to be a little bit finer I would do it on this blade to make sure that it's fine enough to eat in the sauce it's beautiful it's brighter a little bit brighter than the prepared just because it's just grated and I'm going to add that in I like my cocktail sauce spicy spicy with horseradish spicy with a little bit of black pepper you can add hot sauce you can add Cayenne you can add chili you can add whatever you like to spice it up you can add Old Bay seasoning to give it that really Seafood flavor so I'm gonna grind a whole bunch of black pepper inside of here as well I love that black pepper flavor obviously inside this bowl there's ketchup that magical ingredient that makes everything taste delicious I'm gonna put in some prepared horseradish now yes I'm giving you a recipe for this and you are going to use the recipe and what I advise when you're making a recipe for the first time is stick with it and then the next time put your own twist on it I'm going to use a teaspoon to get in there and I'm going to squeeze this lemon you're gonna use one lemon to start and then you're gonna taste it and you're gonna see if you want more acidity I love the lemon in here you can also serve your shrimp cocktail with a little bit of lemon in case somebody wants that just fresh lemon over their shrimp so let's see I've always this is for tasting I've actually always wanted I'm gonna use a spatula to be in the kitchen with the people who are cooking my recipes and I finally get to do this because sometimes I feel like The Cook The Amateur cook might give up and I don't want you to give up because it's the only way you're going to learn and what's the worst thing that can happen really what is like the worst thing that can happen you burn it you throw it away you have to call for takeout you just got to get in there and try it so I'm gonna taste this that's gonna kick which I wanted and I like I'm getting sweetness from the ketchup I'm getting a little heat from the black pepper but mostly I'm getting that heat and vapor from the horseradish so fresh and the prepare that has the vinegar in it I'm gonna go with a little bit more lemon because I want a little bit of sweetness and I want a little more sour ketchup really has a lot of sugar in it and I don't want this to taste like ketchup I want this to taste like lemon and horseradish and black pepper with a with a tomatoey base so it's really important to bring out those other flavors so I added this lemon in because I wanted that I like the acidity of the lemon I like the sweetness of the citrus but if you tasted it before and you liked it as it was just leave it you know we're doing this together but I want you to put your own twist on it I want you to be your own chef and know what you like and that creates your style so if you want more black pepper add it now if you want to grab the hot sauce put it in you know if you want more horseradish go for it this is the time but I like this right now I think it tastes delicious I think it's really well balanced I'm gonna clean up and we're gonna serve our shrimp okay oh also that paper towel under your cutting board makes for a really good cleanup so we have our cocktail sauce we have our beautiful shrimp they're ice cold they're ready to be served I'm going to put the cocktail sauce in a bowl I'm gonna really fill it up because I know that my guests and my family love to dip in the sauce so I'm giving them extra so that they can dip as many times as they want just no double dipping and really this is it a couple of lemon slices on the on the side taste it tell me what you think tell me if you can feel the difference between cooking your own shrimp or store-bought already prepared I know you can do this I know you're gonna love it sorry about your next party or just have it for dinner let me know what you think I'm going in I like a lot of sauce oh my God there's nothing like that flavor it's nostalgic it reminds me of of old school dinner parties I love horseradish with the ketchup the black pepper the lemon it's such a good foil to the shrimp the shrimp is tender it's sweet it has a nice bite to it and there's so much flavor honestly this is the best way to do the shrimp cocktail do it yourself take the time use the poaching liquid do it with the skin on I promise you're gonna love it going back in that was a double dip\n"