Viet-Cajun Seafood Boil for Date Night with My Girls

I’m a dad of three girls with a full-time job, I create content, and I still make it a priority to cook at home. I’m collaborating with Chime for “There’s Food at Home,” where I’ll show you how to prepare delicious meals at home while saving money by avoiding restaurants and dining out!

For Date Night with my girls, I cooked a flavor-packed, spicy, and garlicky Viet-Cajun Seafood Boil! It’s the perfect way for us to bond and catch up.

To save money, I headed to my local Asian grocery store with my daughter to pick up the freshest, most affordable ingredients for this mouth-watering seafood boil. All these ingredients cost me $75—compared to the $250 I’d spend if I took my family to our favorite viet-cajun seafood restaurant in San Jose.

You can view the Chime episode in the links below:

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Instagram – TBD

Ingredients:
2 pounds head-on shrimp, cleaned
2 pounds clams, cleaned
1 Dungeness crab, cleaned
4 corn on a cob
4 gold potatoes, quartered
2 hot links, cut into thirds
Seafood Boil Liquid
Viet-Cajun Garlic Butter Sauce

Seafood Boil Liquid Ingredients:
4 quarts of water
1 3 oz package of Zatarains’s Crawfish, Shrimp & Crab Boil
1 large onion, halved
1 lemon, halved
1 large orange, halved
1 tablespoon salt
3 bay leaves

Viet-Cajun Garlic Butter Sauce Ingredients:
2 head of garlic, roughly chopped
2 sticks of salted butter
1/2 cup Seafood Boil Seasoning
¼ cup ketchup
1 tablespoon of brown sugar
1 large lemon, juiced
parsley, for garnish

Seafood Boil Seasoning Ingredients:
3 tablespoons Cajun seasoning
3 tablespoons garlic powder
3 tablespoons chili powder
3 tablespoons lemon pepper
3 tablespoons paprika
2 tablespoons cayenne pepper

Steps:
Make Seafood Boil Seasoning– Combine Cajun seasoning, garlic powder, chili powder, lemon pepper, paprika, and cayenne pepper in a medium bowl. Mix well and set aside.

Make Seafood Boil Liquid – In a large pot, combine 4 quarts of water, Zatarain’s Crawfish, Shrimp & Crab Boil, onion, lemon, orange, salt, and bay leaves. Bring to a boil, then simmer for 20 minutes.

Make Viet-Cajun Garlic Butter Sauce – Place garlic and butter in a medium saucepan over medium-low heat for 15 minutes and stir occasionally. Add 1/2 cup of seasoning, ketchup, brown sugar, and squeeze in lemon juice. Mix well.

Prepare Seafood Boil—After the boiling liquid simmers for 20 minutes, increase the heat on the stovetop to medium-high, add potatoes, and close the lid for 10 minutes. Add crab, and close the lid for 10 minutes. Add corn and hot links, and close the lid for 5 minutes. Finally, add clams and shrimp, turn off the heat, and close the lid to allow everything to finish cooking for ~10 minutes.

Assemble Viet-Cajun Seafood – Use a spider skimmer or slotted spoon to remove the ingredients from the large stockpot into a large food-safe bag or a long aluminum tray. Add the Viet-Cajun Garlic Butter Sauce and toss.

Tips:

• This recipe cooks 4 pounds of seafood, but you can choose the combination of seafood however you like.
• If you want more seafood, using the same boiling water should be fine, you just need to increase the ingredients in the garlic butter sauce.
• Simply boiling the seafood in a pot of salted water is acceptable if you don’t have the Seafood Boil Liquid ingredients.
• If the butter sauce looks too thick, it’s okay, once you add it to the seafood, the residual liquid from the seafood will thin out the sauce.
• If you like a spicier garlic butter sauce, add more cayenne pepper!