Grilled Langoustines with Butter, Garlic & Parsley

This recipe also works brilliantly with king prawns or any other shellfish, and is a great way to cook with seafood without needing too many ingredients! 

Makes 16 half langoustines
Serves 2 as a main, or 4 as a starter

Ingredients

• 1-2 lemons
• 50g of butter
• 8 fresh or frozen langoustines
• 1 bunch of flat parsley
• 3 cloves of garlic

Method

1. Grab 50g of butter straight from the fridge and begin grating it with a micro plane or grater into a small bowl. Grating the butter increases the surface area allowing it to warm up to room temperature faster than it would in the block. This allows you to start mixing and working with the butter without needing to heat or melt it which can often ruin the butter. 
2. Finely chop the bunch of parsley & 3 cloves of garlic. Add the parsley, garlic and some salt & pepper to taste into the butter, and mix with a fork until combined into a dry butter clump. 

    

   
3. Using a sharp knife, split your langoustines down the middle & clean by removing the digestive tract that runs along the length of the langoustine. Then place these on a pan or plate.
4. Take small nobs of your butter mixture and dot it all over on top of the meat of the langoustine halves. The more butter you put on, the more its going to melt and cook into the meat, so be generous! 

    

   
5. Heat up your barbeque or oven grill to its hottest setting - approx. 250 degrees Celsius. 
6. Place the langoustines onto your barbeque or oven grill meat side facing upwards, and grill with the lid on for 2 minutes. Make sure they all have enough space between them so there is enough heat and airflow to cook them evenly.
7. After 2 minutes, your langoustine meat should have turned from being translucent to white and opaque, which means they are ready. Seafood requires very little cooking time, so be careful to not overcook. It's always safer to pull them out just before they look ready, as they will continue to cook for a bit longer once you pull them off, similar to when cooking steak.
8. Then place onto a platter, add some lemon wedges and squeeze over the langoustines just before serving. Serve hot and fresh and eat immediately!

Recipe FAQ's:

Can you use Tiger Prawns instead? And if so, does it change the recipe/method?

Yes you can! As long as they are on the bigger size, because once they are split in half they are a lot smaller. If they are smaller prawns like banana prawns, i normally grill the whole prawn on the BBQ, shell on marinated in olive oil, salt & pepper and a bit of sugar to caramelise the meat, then peel them to serve and eat. 

Otherwise, other shellfish like lobster, crayfish, moreton bay bugs and king prawns works well too!