Food|Summer Seafood Boils Take On Local Flavor
Summer Seafood Boils Take On Local Flavor
Fresh-caught shrimp and sausage are boiled with corn in a Lowcountry boil in South Carolina.
CreditHunter McRae for The New York Times
Ben Moïse, a retired South Carolina game warden, left, specializes in Frogmore stew, which is often called a Lowcountry boil.
Susan Wigley hosted a Frogmore at her home on the Ashley River in early June to showcase Mr. Moïse's talents.
At its most basic, the Frogmore is a mix of shrimp, sausage and corn that have been boiled briefly in spiced water.
The odds are good that if you go to a summer party along the coast of Georgia or South Carolina, the host will make a Frogmore stew.
Wine and strawberry-peach sangria are served along with the boil.
Mr. Moïse has the kind of ramrod discipline that comes from a military school education and decades catching people who thought they could get away with keeping undersize crabs or baiting doves with cracked corn.
Members of Les Dames d'Escoffier made caponata, tomato and goat cheese bruschetta, shrimp paste and sangria and other side dishes to accompany the Frogmore stew at Ms. Wigley's home.
Some people call a Lowcountry boil a Beaufort boil.
Ms. Wigley and her husband, Jim.
Research by a librarian in Beaufort County, southwest of Charleston, traces the first Frogmore stew to a shrimper named Richard Gay. During the 1960s, he threw shrimp and leftovers into a pot of boiling water while he was on a National Guard exercise. He named it after Frogmore, a community on St. Helena Island.
By Kim Severson
A seafood boil is one of the great communal eating experiences of an American summer.
On the shores of the Great Lakes, cooks with a taste for Scandinavian tradition heat caldrons over wood to prepare whitefish or trout scented with bay and allspice.
Near the Gulf of Mexico, propane tanks roar under pots of crab punched up with elaborate spice blends only a Cajun could decipher.
And along the mud marshes in the Lowcountry of South Carolina, shrimp fresh from the net simmers gently next to corn on the cob and sausage.
The seafood and the seasoning may be different, but all summer boils have one thing in common.
"You are talking about messy and minor-league foods that are a pain to work with," said Sandy Oliver, a historian of American food who lives in Islesboro, Me., an island town whose tiny population triples in the summer with tourists longing for a lobster boil.
"All you end up with is a mess in the kitchen," Ms. Oliver said. "But outdoors, it's gobs of fun."
In the pantheon of great American seafood boilers, it would be difficult to find someone as precise about the craft as Ben Moïse, a retired South Carolina game warden. Mr. Moïse, 72, has the kind of ramrod discipline that comes from a military school education and decades catching people who thought they could get away with keeping undersized crabs or baiting doves with cracked corn.
His specialty is the Frogmore stew. The first thing to know about Frogmore stew is that it contains no frogs. The second is that it's not much of a stew. At its most basic, the Frogmore is a mix of shrimp, sausage and corn that have been boiled briefly in spiced water.
The odds are good that if you go to a summer party along the coast of Georgia or South Carolina, the host will make one. It is communal eating at its best, a practice the South has made into an art form.
This particular summer, as Charleston, S.C., begins to heal from the massacre at one of its oldest black churches, eating a Frogmore together will hold even more significance.
Susan Wigley hosted a Frogmore at her home on the Ashley River in early June to showcase Mr. Moïse's talents for a reporter and the local chapter of Les Dames d'Escoffier, an international organization of women in the culinary profession. On Thursday, she and other members took macaroni and cheese and pies to the funeral of one of the shooting victims.
"People gather together to feel better when you've had a horrible experience, and in the South, that means we eat," Ms. Wigley said. "This time of year, with all that fresh shrimp coming in, we're going to be eating shrimp. And we're going to be eating it together."
At restaurants, the Frogmore stew is more often called a Lowcountry boil. Some simply call it a Beaufort boil. Across the country, its star has risen along with those of other Southern dishes.
But Frogmore stew is not a traditional Southern dish, nor are its roots in African culture, like so much Lowcountry cooking.
Along the mud marshes in the Lowcountry of South Carolina, shrimp fresh from the net simmers gently next to corn on the cob and sausage.CreditHunter McRae for The New York Times
By the 1970s, Frogmore stew was showing up in local restaurants and Lowcountry cookbooks. Mr. Moïse came to it in the early 1980s through a South Carolinian political custom: In those days, politicians and lobbyists teamed up to feed people local specialties and, presumably, get some votes.
"This was until ethics legislation hit the ground and they threw the baby out with the wash water," Mr. Moïse said.
Game wardens like Mr. Moïse were enlisted to do the cooking, some developing a talent for barbecue or the oyster roasts that are common in the area in winter months. Mr. Moïse became the Frogmore man, learning his recipe from Jimmy Waddell, a powerful state senator from Beaufort County who tapped him to cook one for a golf tournament.
Mr. Moïse has since made so many batches, for fun and for profit, that he can't count them all. He once cooked enough to feed a thousand people, he said.
Mr. Moïse follows the politician's precise recipe. It starts with a propane burner, outfitted with a metal ring and a high-pressure regulator, topped with a pot big enough to wash a small dog.
He fills the pot, fitted with a giant strainer, with water and a couple of handfuls of what he calls "dust." These days, he uses the commercial seasoning sold under the Old Bay label, but he spent years making his own. It was hot, he said, "but not gum-tickling hot." A Frogmore is never as spicy as its Cajun cousins.
Once the water boils, he adds half-inch-thick slices of Hillshire sausage cut on the diagonal, and frozen three-inch corn cobettes that one may find at the local Piggly Wiggly. Once the water returns to the boil, he adds small Carolina shrimp and cooks them for exactly two and a half minutes.
More dust is added once the strainer is pulled from the pot, and its contents are dumped into a bowl or onto a newspaper-covered table.
It is easy to find dozens of recipes for a Lowcountry boil, many of which add blue crab and vegetables like boiled red potatoes and onions. "Gilding the lily," Mr. Moïse said. Onions make the shrimp too slippery to peel, he said, and starch from the potatoes can make the shrimp stick to the shells.
There has been little scholarly examination of the polyamorous marriage of potatoes, corn and seafood in the nation's boils. The trio shows up in the New England clambake and its boiled version. Lobster boils, too, rely on potatoes and corn to round out supper.
The combination came from the North, not the South, said Ms. Oliver, the food historian. Native Americans likely added corn to region's early clambakes and lobster boils, and the potato joined the party in the mid- to late 1800s, when groups of middle-class diners along the Eastern Seaboard took trains and trolleys to the coast for what were called shore dinners. Corn, cucumbers, salt potatoes and brown bread were staples, served alongside steamed or boiled shellfish.
The potato plays a key role in the Great Lakes fish boil, which also features lake trout or hunks of whitefish cooked in a bag that floats in a pot of water seasoned with onions, bay leaves, whole allspice and peppercorns.
In Port Wing, Wis., on the western shore of Lake Superior, summer culminates with a big Labor Day fish boil whose dramatic peak is called the overboil.
Once the ingredients have finished cooking in caldrons set over wood fires, the cook throws kerosene or other fuel on the fire. The rush of heat makes the caldron boil furiously, so the proteins and oils from the fish rise to the top and flow over the edge.
Ritual is just as important in the Chesapeake Bay area, where they wouldn't dream of boiling a crab. In the Mid-Atlantic, crabs are steamed. Purists say it keeps the meat sweeter and firmer, and allows for better spice control. (It should be noted that boiling proponents say steaming dries out the crab meat.)
The spices — Old Bay or a salty mix developed by the J. O. Spice Company — are sprinkled on the crabs while they cook, and served on the table.
In Texas, where children learn early how to catch crab with a chicken neck on a string, a summer seafood boil will feature either blue crab, shrimp or both.
A good amount of commercial crab-boil seasoning like Zatarain's goes into the pot. Beer is essential. Sometimes it goes in the pot, but more often keeps everyone entertained during the hours it takes to crack enough crabs for a proper supper. And it can take a lot, especially with smaller crabs.
"The one thing about crabs is that they have become way more valuable in Maryland than people are willing to pay for in Texas, so all the jumbo six-inch crabs get exported," said Robb Walsh, a Texas food writer.
He sometimes applies a "Cajun-Asian" approach, developed by Vietnamese cooks who transformed the boils when they settled in Louisiana after the Vietnam War and now serve Cajun-spiced seafood drenched in butter and garlic in restaurants as far west as Los Angeles.
The wildest boiled seafood in the country remains in the Acadiana region of Louisiana, where it's not unusual to see a seafood-boiling rig being pulled behind a pickup truck.
Crawfish boiling season ends in the late spring, giving way to summer shrimp and crab boils whose emphasis is on heat and variety.
A boil here is likely to be spiced with a permeable pouch of shrimp and crab boil seasoning mixed with various brands of Creole seasoning and an application of cayenne. An accompanying parade of vegetables may include whole button mushrooms, celery and peppers, along with corn and potatoes. Garlic and lemon are tossed in, along with a stick of butter, which cooks say makes the shrimp easier to peel.
Whatever the region or style, America's summertime seafood boils all share one sure pleasure. As Mr. Moïse put it, "If you are standing up and eating with your fingers, you got to be having a good time."
Recipes: Frogmore Stew | Lowcountry Pickled Coleslaw | Strawberry Peach Sangria | More Dishes to Cook Outdoors
Meghan Gourley contributed reporting.
A version of this article appears in print on , Section D, Page 4 of the New York edition with the headline: A Ritual Steeped in Local Flavor. Order Reprints | Today's Paper | Subscribe
Frogmore Stew
Lowcountry Pickled Coleslaw
Strawberry-Peach Sangria