The Classic Dressing Ina Garten Uses As An Unbeatable Dip For Shrimp

There are about a billion ways to make the little crustaceans we call shrimp. A shrimp cocktail is about as basic and delicious as you can get. Crunchy, deep-fried shrimp, at the opposite end of the home cooking spectrum, is also super satisfying. But one might spend so much time planning how to prepare the petite seafood that they overlook all of the vast and varied dips that they might also want to pair. Something like a three-ingredient cocktail sauce can be great, but celebrity chef Ina Garten uses Thousand Island dressing in a Food Network recipe for her roasted shrimp.

Although Chowhound did surface some nice store-bought options in our ranking of the best and worst Thousand Island dressings, Garten assembles hers from scratch. Because her roasted shrimp instructions are so easy to follow — season and bake for a few minutes at 400 degrees Fahrenheit — some home cooks might find the condiment's creation more labor-intensive than the roasting itself. But provided you have the compulsory ketchup, mayonnaise, and a few other pretty common ingredients kicking around, you can pull the dip together relatively quickly.

If ever there was a case for mixing something "to taste," Thousand Island dressing is it. Garten's base calls for ¾ cup of mayonnaise and ¼ cup of ketchup. Provided you already know what those quantities look like, and that a finished Thousand dressing will have a pale salmon color, you can probably estimate the measurements and avoid dirtying any extra measuring cups. Garten's recipe also uses 1 teaspoon each of minced capers, gherkins, and lemon juice, plus 1 tablespoon of sweet pickles, and a little salt and pepper. It all creates a perky balance of salty, sour, and confectionary.

Some Thousand Island dressing instructions swap the ketchup with chili sauce, which will give it a little extra heat right off the bat. You can also swap the capers with something like pickled jalapeños for a similar salinity, but with even more of a kick. A few dashes of hot sauce can also obviously have the same effect without any noticeable textural changes. Garlic devotees will find that Thousand Island dressing is also an excellent canvas for the pungent, minced allium, and a bit of anchovy paste will bring an umami burst with minimal extra effort.