Scrumptious shrimp: Versatile seafood can be used in cocktails, soups and main courses

We are crazy for shrimp and will eat it just about any way it is served.

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Photos By Sue Ade

There's never a limit on the number of shrimp that can be used for a homemade shrimp cocktail. Shrimp cocktails should be served icy cold, with plenty of cocktail sauce and fresh lemons. Make them yourself, and you can eat as many shrimp as you like.

Delicious shrimp are versatile, too, coursing through appetizers, soups, salads and main dishes with equal popularity.

A well-made shrimp cocktail remains one of the most popular restaurant appetizers ever, with the only complaint being that there are hardly ever enough shrimp to feel completely satisfied.

But that's how it is with shrimp, whether we're enjoying a first course, or third.

We eat and eat, leaving no bit of shrimp unnoticed until the next shrimp course comes around.

A dish of pasta topped with freshly cooked seafood is not only spectacular looking, but is super fast to prepare from start to finish, and although a soup, stew, or gumbo may take longer to prepare, the star of the meal, shrimp, only takes minutes to cook, imparting the unmistakable fresh, clean taste of the sea on and in everything it touches.

I could offer six months' worth of columns and recipes on nothing at all but shrimp, and I don't think there would be a single objection except for maybe it still wasn't enough.

Forrest Gump's friend, Bubba, felt that way, and his rundown of all the ways to enjoy shrimp in 1994s award-winning movie, "Forrest Gump" was extraordinary, leaving Forrest to memorialize his friend by saying, "Bubba sure knew his shrimp."

I don't know shrimp like Bubba, or even as well as Forrest, but I'm going to run with it just the same.