In article >, Bob
> wrote:

> Stark wrote:
>
> > Had a good cream reduction sauce going, down to a thin batter
> > consistency when I added a handful of shrimp, letting them cook while I
> > poached some eggs. Maybe a little longer than 5 minutes, but when the
> > eggs were poached and the shrimp pink, my sauce had broken up.
> >
> > Added a little cream and stirred; the sauce was edible but I wouldn't
> > call it presentable.
> >
> > What happened? The shrimp were thawed but wet. Was there residual
> > water? Should I have taken the sauce off the heat? Would the shrimp
> > have cooked off heat? I couldnt whisk the sauce with the shrimp in
> > there. Maybe I just looked at it wrong.
>
> Interesting. Yes, the shrimp certainly released residual water and other
> fluids as they cooked, but without more specific details about the sauce, I
> couldn't say whether that was what caused the sauce to break.
>
> If you're going to try that same dish again, you might try cooking the
> shrimp separately, plating them, and then pouring the sauce over or around
> them.
>
> Can you give more details about the sauce?
>
> Bob
>

Sweated onions, celery and bell pepper in oil, added a little white
wine, cooked it down then added creole seasoning, bay leaf and a cup
and a half of half 'n half instead of heavy cream. Slow cooked that
for half an hour until I had a smooth consistency of pancake batter,
then dumped in the shrimp which needed to cook for a couple of minutes.


The sauce never boiled, but it may have stayed on the eye for a couple
of minutes too long for that's when it broke down, sort of granulating.

Didn't want to pull it off since all the shrimp hadn't turned pink yet,
but it was probably that last couple of minutes and the wet shrimp that
did it.

I think cooking the shrimp separately is probably the answer since all
the shrimp that I can buy has been frozen somewhere along the line.