If you’re a shrimp and lime lover, you’re gonna love this!! This light, healthy, colorful dish is soooo good and pretty simple to make. A perfect summer dish and great for entertaining.

Tequila Lime Mango Shrimp Ceviche

Ceviche [suh–vee-chey] is generally defined as a Latin American dish consisting of small pieces of raw fish or shellfish marinated in lime juice with chilies, chopped tomatoes, and herbs. Instead of cooking the seafood with heat you simply let the citric acid break down the protein while it marinates. Here’s my own personal take on this wonderful dish.

Here’s what you’ll need:

• 1 lb. raw shrimp (thawed)
• 1/2 cup chopped red onion
• 3 larger or 4 smaller roma tomatoes (diced)
• 1 Serrano pepper finely chopped
• 1/2 cup of diced cucumber (roughly 1/3 of a cucumber)
• 1 avocado (peeled, pitted and diced)
• 1 Tablespoon of minced garlic
• 1/4 cup (or more) chopped cilantro
• 1/2 cup freshly squeezed lime juice (equivalent to roughly 3 large limes)
• 1 mango (juiced)
• 1 shot of tequila
• 1 Tablespoon of olive oil
• 1 Tablespoon of salt

Denaturing the shrimp with citric acid will break down the protein and it will look and taste cooked, but since you need heat to kill off any bacteria that may be present I usually opt to toss them in boiling water for a good minute or so and then just let the lime juice finish the job off. It never hurts to err on the side of caution especially since I don’t know how fresh the seafood I purchase is here in the Midwest. However, if you choose to let the lime juice do all of the denaturing or “cooking” you’ll want to let the shrimp sit in the lime juice for at least a couple hours longer than what’s listed below.

Here we go:

1. Cook (already thawed) shrimp in boiling water for 1 minute or so, drain water and immediately add to an ice bath to stop further cooking
2. Peel shrimp/remove tails and cut into bite sized pieces (I used large shrimp and cut each one into 4 pieces)
3. In large bowl combine lime juice, mango juice, tequila, oil, red onion, garlic, serrano pepper and shrimp and place in refrigerator for 1-2 hours (stirring mixture 30 minutes in)
4. Add tomatoes, cucumbers, avacodo, cilantro and salt to shrimp/lime mixture and gently stir together
5. Serve with tortilla chips (for a real nice presentation try a mixture of both blue and white corn tortilla chips)