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Aguachile de Camarón | Raw Shrimp in Lime and Chile

Lesson time 14:48 min

Aguachile is an acidic, spicy appetizer of seafood cured in lime juice. This aguachile is made of shrimp, lime, quick-pickled red onions, and a chile-based sauce.

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Topics include: Prepping the Shrimp · Preparing the Aguachile · Plating the Aguachile

Gabriela Cámara

Teaches Mexican Cooking

Celebrated chef Gabriela Cámara shares her approach to making Mexican food that brings people together: simple ingredients, exceptional care.

Preview

[MUSIC PLAYING] - Now I'm going to teach you how to make an aguachile. Aguachile has become a very popular way of cooking raw seafood or of preparing raw seafood. Aguachiles are traditional of the Pacific coast of Mexico, the Northern Pacific coast. And aguachile is basically a combination of agua and chile, water and chile. And the liquid, the water content, is lime and fish or seashell fumet. It's a really easy way to prepare seafood in a very palate exciting way. We have some shrimp here that we will open up. And I'm going to start by taking off the head because we want just the clean meat. I want the raw meat of the shrimp. And I'm going to cook that in a lime juice that I'm going to prepare with a few herbs and spices. I want to devein the shrimp. Shrimp are very symmetrical so it's easy to cut along the back of it. And you see that vein? It's very clearly defined there. And I just take the beginning of it with my knife. I just want to make sure that it has-- it's clean of all the insides and you only have your shrimp meat. And now I'm going to cut it. I'm going to butterfly it. You can butterfly it and leave it literally butterflied like this or you can cut through all the way. And I use a small knife because you don't want to-- a large knife would be very difficult to use in this. You want to have precision over what you're doing with the shrimp. I always like to salt things so that it sort of cures them before you add the acidity. And it helps to keep more of the flavor. So I'm going to mix it up. Going to salt it thoroughly. And makes it a little bit-- I'm going to add the lime juice. It's very important that you prepare the shrimp first thing. And as soon as your shrimp is ready to go and clean, then you add the lime juice so that this starts curing. Like think of this as a cooking method. And it is not a cooking method. It is a curing method. So I just want to make sure that the lime gets into every bit of the fish. Sometimes it can stick to each other. So I just want to make sure the lime juice with the salt is really marinating it all. I'm going to add a little bit more lime juice. And then I'm going to let it sit. [MUSIC PLAYING] So I am going to really fast pickle onion. These are onions that have been very finely sliced. These are purple onions that give it just a really nice touch. They're going to turn really bright pink. And they're very, very, very finely julienned, which is just very finely sliced lengthwise. And I am going to add a little bit of salt to them just so everything has a little bit of flavor. And I'm going to add the same lime juice that I put on the shrimp. I just want these to marinate while I make my aguachile mix. OK. You see immediately as soon as the lime touches the onions, the juice turns really pink. And this is a very fast transformation. This is exactly how you would make the pickled red onions that you find in many restaurants-- in many southeastern specialt...

About the Instructor

A “star of modern Mexican cuisine,” Gabriela Cámara brings her local, sustainable twist to time-honored traditions. Now the chef of Contramar shares the richness of her culture through the art of food. Learn step-by-step recipes—for dishes of her own design, like tuna tostadas, and staples like tacos al pastor, salsa, and tortillas—and delight loved ones with your own delicious renditions of Mexican favorites.

Featured MasterClass Instructor

Gabriela Cámara

Celebrated chef Gabriela Cámara shares her approach to making Mexican food that brings people together: simple ingredients, exceptional care.

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