Anyone who has seen coastal Georgia or South Carolina from a plane immediately understands why the area is called the Lowcountry. Glassy ribbons of saltwater creeks lazily wind their way through verdant marshes before blending into rivers. Rivers merge into bayous and bays, which are banked from the Atlantic by sandy sea islands. If shrimp heaven exists, this is it.

And as anyone sitting down to a meal in one of the region’s many seafood restaurants discovers, heaven on earth is a plate heaped high with sweet and succulent Lowcountry shrimp. Little wonder that the area is renowned for its seafood—especially its shrimp dishes, from Charleston, South Carolina’s iconic shrimp and grits to the crowd-pleasing Frogmore stew. So tuck a napkin under your chin and get ready to sample shrimp cooked five different ways south of Charleston.

Florida Born and Bred

Our journey begins in Fernandina Beach, Florida, just north of Jacksonville, where Sicilian emigrant Sallecito Salvador and his brother-in-law, Salvatore Versaggi, among others, are credited with launching the shrimping industry in the United States. By 1888, Fernandina shrimpers were already taking in nearly 100,000 pounds annually, all of it caught from small boats via cast nets. But in 1890, a huge decline in the local shrimp haul motivated many watermen to relocate. To the south in St. Augustine, for the first time in Florida, shrimpers could ice down their catch in wooden barrels and ship them straight to the Fulton Fish Market in New York City via Henry Flagler’s Florida East Coast Railway. Not that anyone was getting rich, says Grace Paaso, Versaggi’s granddaughter.

“When my grandfather was shipping barrels to New York, one time his take on an entire load of shrimp was paid in postage stamps,” she recalls. At first, says Paaso, shrimp were considered “sea worms” and tossed overboard, but with the rail connection, shrimping became a major industry in St. Augustine, so much so that the St. Augustine Lighthouse & Museum has organized a permanent exhibit highlighting its multiethnic history.

Paaso remembers that come Easter, Thanksgiving and Christmas, her mother’s table would be filled with Greeks, Portuguese and her extended Italian family. “We would get together at a drop of the hat,” she says. “My mother told the story that when she was little, people used to make fun of them because all they had to eat was shrimp.”

That, of course, wasn’t quite the case, but Paaso says, “We ate shrimp and spaghetti sauce. We ate shrimp Creole. We ate boiled shrimp. We ate marinated shrimp. If there was a way to fix shrimp, we ate it.” A favorite was fried shrimp, cooked her Mom’s way: in a cast-iron skillet, never breaded ahead of time so as not to draw the liquid out, dusted with a little flour and always with the tails on, mind you, for added flavor.

Portuguese Flavors in Georgia

Just to the north, in Brunswick, Georgia, Portuguese shrimp perlou was the plat du jour during childhood for Theresa Martin, who fondly remembers going out on her father’s shrimp boat. As soon as the first batch was aboard, “he would cook us shrimp perlou,” Martin recalls. “He’d sauté some onions and add canned tomatoes, or fresh ones if we had them, and let that come to a good boil.” Rice was added, along with the shrimp, some garlic, oregano and chorizo—Portuguese sausage—and the heat was turned down to steam level until the rice was done.

The Portuguese came to Brunswick after World War I via Fernandina Beach, where they worked on Italian boats, Martin says. Her father-in-law came to America from a small fishing village in Portugal, and crewed with an Italian in Fernandina before earning enough money to buy his own boat. At one time, more than 1,000 Portuguese emigrants called Glynn County, Georgia, home. Martin says her uncle bought a truck—and then a second one, to keep up with demand—and began driving all the way to New York with his shrimp iced down in wooden boxes.

Portuguese shrimp perlou is a little like red rice—“a Savannah staple,” says Connell Stiles, wife of Bill Stiles, whose family has lived in Savannah for four generations. “I’m from Virginia, and we’re potato people.” So she learned to cook grits and rice from an aunt of Bill’s who lived next door to the newlyweds. “She’s a great cook and can really put a hurting on red rice,” Connell says. “I’d be in the kitchen, ready to put it together, and I’d call her to ask how she did it. And she’d say, just take a little bell pepper and onion and sauté it for a hot minute. And then put in the tomatoes and let it cook down, season it with a little salt and pepper and a teeny bit of sugar, and then when that cooks down, you throw in the rice.” The shrimp go in at the end so they don’t get tough. Medium shrimp have a better flavor than jumbos, she insists.

Homegrown Shrimp Dishes Abound

Frogmore stew, named for the little settlement of Frogmore on St. Helena Island between Savannah and Charleston, sounds a lot more intriguing than it is. “No frogs,” my father-in-law, Wofford Malphrus, always tells people as he pours Lowcountry boil, as it’s also called, into the trough he crafted out of pine planks. The trough accommodates the crowds of people on both sides of the table, heaping their plates high with Georgia sausage, shrimp and corn on the cob.

A South Carolina native, Malphrus came across Frogmore stew as a Boy Scout executive in Beaufort in the 1950s and has served it ever since by the bushel to friends, family and Scouters. Richard Gay of Gay Seafood Company near Frogmore claims to have invented the dish in the early 1950s to feed a crowd of hungry National Guardsmen. Steamer Restaurant on nearby Lady’s Island popularized the stew after putting it on the menu in the 1970s.

Charleston’s iconic dish, shrimp and grits, is every bit as homegrown as red rice or Frogmore stew. “It started in someone’s home, probably at the end of the 19th century,” says Nathalie Dupree, who coauthored the Shrimp & Grits Cookbook with Marion Sullivan. “From the beginning, Charleston has been a sit-down, family-style, gathering-at-the-table culture,” says Sullivan, rather than having a chef-inspired, haute cuisine.

Shrimp and grits is anything but fancy. Using corn that the Indians introduced to settlers, and the freshest of shrimp, right out of the nearby Lowcountry creeks, the dish evolved when someone put one and one together and got multiple ooohs and aahhs from family members.

“Now, the crème de la crème of ‘new Southern’ chefs combine grits, shrimp and a variety of ingredients, from crisp bacon to finely chopped truffles, with more than 50 restaurants in Charleston alone serving their own version of shrimp and grits,” Dupree writes in her book. You won’t go wrong using the earliest recipe that Dupree and Sullivan could find for the dish. Stone-ground grits, by the way, take longer, but are worth the trouble.

The Original Breakfast Shrimp and Grits

1 cup uncooked grits

2–3 cups milk

2 cups water

1/2 cup (1 stick) butter

Salt and freshly ground pepper

1 pound raw shrimp, shelled
Add the grits to simmering milk and water in a heavy saucepan (preferably nonstick) and cook as package directs, stirring constantly. Do not let the grits “blurb” loudly, and watch the evaporation of liquid. Add more if necessary. When fully cooked to the texture you desire, remove from heat and add 2 tablespoons of the butter and season with salt and pepper. Meanwhile, heat 4 tablespoons of the butter in a frying pan and sauté the shrimp in the butter until the shrimp turn pink. Add the rest of the butter to the pan and melt. Top the grits with shrimp and pour the butter on top.

Wofford Malphrus’ Low Country Boil

A search online will yield various recipes for Low Country Boil (a.k.a. Frogmore Stew) that feature lots of variations, adding crabs, potatoes, onions, Old Bay seasoning and even—to the horror my teetotaling father-in-law—beer. Wofford keeps his stew simple with just six ingredients. My Low Country relatives who attend the Malphrus family reunion each year will tell you it’s simply delicious.

Wofford won’t even think about using anything but Georgia sausage, and, at 82, he doesn’t seem to have been slowed any by the fat-intensive and juicy links. Although in draining it, you pour off most of the sausage fat with the water anyway, if you prefer a version with fewer calories and less fat, you can substitute with turkey or another lower-fat sausage, and it’s nearly as good. You can even use frozen corn on the cob in the winter when the fresh ears may not be available.

5 quarts of water in a heavy stock pot
Lots of salt and black pepper
1 pound of smoked Georgia sausage (half hot, half not)—or substitute with turkey sausage or another lower-fat variety if you prefer
8 ears of fresh corn, shucked and broken in half
2 pounds of fresh shrimp in the shell, heads removed

Add sausage to the boiling kettle of water seasoned with more salt and pepper than you think you need, with at least one-eighth cup of salt (as a courtesy to diners, flag the hot sausage with a small length of red sewing thread, Wofford advises). Once the pot’s boiling again, add the corn and cook for 5 to 8 minutes. The shrimp goes in last and needs no more than 5 minutes, he says. When you can see light between the back of the shrimp and the shell, it’s definitely done. Drain and serve—and watch your guests go hog wild. Be sure to cover your whole table with newspapers or plastic, provide forks and plates for those who prefer them, and don’t forget the cocktail sauce, lemon wedges, butter and horseradish.—D.B.