Frogmore stew (Lowcountry boil)

As tradition built it

Serves 5 to 6.

Ingredients

• as needed water, to half fill a 6 to 8 litre pot
• 115g butter
• 4 tsp salt
• 4 tbsp Old Bay seasoning, or 1 bag crab boil
• 900g mild smoked sausage, in pieces
• 1 large onion
• 5 ears corn
• 900g new red potatoes, medium
• 1.35kg medium shrimp

To serve

• to serve hot butter or seafood sauce

Method

1. Fill the pot half full of water.
2. Add the butter, salt, Old Bay, sausage and onion and bring it to the boil.
3. Add the corn and potatoes, stir, and boil 4 minutes.
4. Add the shrimp and stir. Cook 4 to 6 minutes, until they float.
5. Turn off the heat and leave it 4 minutes.
6. Drain it and turn it into a large bowl. Serve with hot butter or seafood sauce.

Notes

The recipe is the Gay Fish Company's, the St Helena Island family that named the dish, as printed by Charleston Magazine. Chef Mike Lata of FIG, for Garden and Gun, gives the potatoes, kielbasa and onion 15 to 18 minutes first, the corn 3, then shrimp and stone crab claws 5 to 6. Neither serves it on newspaper.

What a modern chef changes

Each component cooked to its own precise point, then combined, rather than sequentially boiled in one pot

Rung 6

Method

1. Cook the potatoes, corn and sausage each in their own separately seasoned liquid, to each one's own correct doneness, then finish the shrimp last in a reduced, concentrated version of the same seasoned liquid, so no single ingredient is over or under done by the time the others catch up, a genuine solution to the traditional method's real weakness.