Photography by John O’Hagan | Recipe Development by J.R. Jacobson| Food Styling by Kathleen Kanen | Styling by Sidney Bragiel
You can find packets of dried shrimp near the checkout counter in many south Louisiana grocery stores, but did you know that they’ve been part of the Louisiana seafood industry for hundreds of years? The tradition of drying shrimp was brought to the Bayou State by way of Chinese and Filipino immigrants, who settled in the wetlands of Barataria Bay. There, they constructed villages and shrimp-drying platforms with huge wooden decks raised up on stilts. Two of these villages were the Filipino settlements of Saint Malo in St. Bernard Parish and Manila Bay in Jefferson Parish.
After catching and quickly boiling shrimp, shrimpers would spread them on the platforms to dry in the sun. Once the shrimp were dry, workers would put burlap sacks on their feet and “dance” on the shrimp to remove the shells, and the shrimp were sent to local distributors for packing and shipping before being exported around the world.
Both Saint Malo and Manila Bay were destroyed by hurricanes—Saint Malo by the New Orleans Hurricane of 1915 and Manila Bay by Hurricane Betsy in 1965. After after Hurricane Betsy, residents began to leave the shrimp industry for better-paying jobs in the city.
Nowadays, dried shrimp are still produced in Louisiana, but it is done on a smaller scale and with new technology like mechanical shell separators and driers. A few of the dried shrimp brands that are still around today include Gulf Food Products, Pop’s Golden Gems, and Louisiana Dried Shrimp Co.
Dried shrimp give that coveted umami flavor to all sorts of dishes and are an ingredient in cuisines across the globe. In south Louisiana, they are often eaten straight from the package as a snack, and they add a lovely salty flavor to classic Cajun dishes like gumbos and stews. They’re also fantastic ground up and mixed into salads. Here, we ground Louisiana dried shrimp for our take on a traditional Thai salad, and we steeped them in chicken broth to add another level of flavor to shrimp and mushroom stew.
