October 16, 2011

Cioppino Seafood Stew

This stew is found in the frozen section along with the other seafood products. It is hearty, rich, and packed with delicious seafood bites including shrimp, mussels, Alaskan cod and baby scallops.
To my surprise all of the seafood was raw. I was happy about this because I got to feel like I was really cooking and not just re-heating. The tomato sauce was tangy and acidic with hints of garlic and pepper, which tasted so great with the seafood.
Here's the deal. The directions tell you to heat the sauce until boiling, then add the seafood and let simmer. I followed the directions (that's my job) but I had a feeling that some of the seafood would be over-cooked because they were not all the same size and shrimp cooks VERY quickly. I was right.
My advice is to let the sauce boil, add the cod first, then after a few minutes add the mussels and scallops. Then with about 3 minutes to go, add the shrimp. This will insure that everything will be cooked to perfection and nothing will be rubbery.
Even though some of my sea creatures were a little over-cooked everything was still delicious.
The mussels were my favorite. They were chewy (in a good way) and tender at the same time. And there were a lot of them.
The scallops were tiny bites of ocean flavor and not gritty. (I HATE gritty scallops)
The cod chunks were huge and flaky. No wimpy fish bits here.
The shrimp was a bit chewy (over-cooked) but still pretty tasty.




Treat yourself to this stew on a cold day and serve it with a crusty bread (slathered in butter) to soak up the delicious sauce.








My Rating * * * *

2 comments:

  1. Thanks for the tips on the timing of the seafood!

    ReplyDelete
  2. Thanks. Your suggestions on the instructions are quite helpful

    ReplyDelete