You have to work fast. Nobody likes a mushy potato, and overcooked shrimp are an abomination to society and a blight on the Nickens family name. Pulling off a perfect shrimp boil is all about timing, and it’s down to the second. Or at least the half-minute. Between the two of us, my son, Jack, and I have worked the propane burners under ambrosial pots of shrimp boil from North Carolina to Florida to Colorado to Wyoming. It’s kind of our thing. Which is kind of turning into his thing. Which is pretty much how family traditions are supposed to work.

If you don’t know, a shrimp boil — also known as a Low Country boil — is a steaming amalgam of corn, potatoes, sausage, and, of course, shrimp, spiced heavily with Old Bay, served on a picnic table lined with newspaper, and eaten, mostly, with your fingers. Some folks call it Frogmore Stew, a nod to its possible origins in that small community near Beaufort, South Carolina. But I’m less concerned with the history of the dish than about how much I can heap on a paper plate before it collapses and dumps my dinner onto the ground.

Come Memorial Day, scenes of summer fill Ocean Isle Beach as families head to the coast to welcome the new season.  photograph by Faith Teasley

Our shrimp boil tradition started some 20 years ago, as a growing group of young parents gathered at Ocean Isle Beach each Memorial Day. We brought beach toys, sand buckets, 10 kids, eight pounds of Advil, and a couple of oyster steamers ready for shrimp boil duty. In the cool shade under the house pilings, the menfolk drank beer and fine-tuned the propane flames, calculating to the second the correct moment at which to toss in the ingredients.

That tradition dissolved as the kids got older and schedules got complicated, but the Nickenses still throw a Memorial Day shrimp boil at our vast 950-square-foot estate in Morehead City. Which is where Jack comes into the picture.

• • •

There are few hard-and-fast rules when it comes to a shrimp boil. It pains me to admit it, but I love what the South Carolina Encyclopedia says about the dish, er, the pot: “That is its innate beauty — it is like a tidal marsh with infinite variations of creeks, eddies, and bays.” My South Carolina friends serve a version with blue crabs, which seems never to have caught on in my neck of the swamp. I’ve considered adding North Carolina ingredients to my recipe, but I haven’t yet figured out how to strain the hair out of the pot if I were to toss a whole hog into the mix.

Jack picked up a few crazy ideas from a half-summer spent at a camp in Florida, and while I’m not so sure about Worcestershire sauce and butter, his addition of mushrooms, quartered onions, and garlic heads is A-OK. He’s taking up the baton on our shrimp boil, putting his own spin on it, and that’s how tradition works, too.

Jack is taking up the baton on our shrimp boil, putting his own spin on it. That’s how tradition works, too.

But I’m a stickler for a few other items. I only use large, wild-caught shrimp because imported, farm-raised shrimp are an abomination to society and a blight on any North Carolinian’s name. I use North Carolina shrimp because I am a native son and a very good boy. I use red-skin potatoes and smoked sausage. Fresh corn on the cob if I have it and frozen if I don’t. I use a mix of Old Bay seasoning and Zatarain’s Crawfish, Shrimp & Crab Boil. The latter comes in a tea-bag-like pouch, which you can retrieve from the pot, snip open, and spread atop the groaning table of goodies.

Ingredients aside, there are things that you cannot, must not, never-ever change about a shrimp boil, and those are the timing and order in which you add the goods to the pot. That schedule is as immutable as a fossilized shark tooth. It goes like this: First in for a rolling-boil spa treatment are the potatoes, for a carefully timed five minutes. Then the onions and sausage for 15 minutes more. At the 20-minute mark, add the corn. It’s not a bad idea to stir at this point to make sure things cook evenly. But watch it — splatters of boiling water and flip-flopped summer feet don’t mix!

It looks like a hodgepodge, but the elements of a shrimp boil are carefully considered — for the author, anyway. His recipe involves precise timing for maximum deliciousness. photograph by Tim Robison

Get another rolling boil going for 10 minutes, then dump in the shrimp. Cook for one minute and give the pot another stir. This is when things get dicey. With boiled shrimp, perfection is within seconds of disaster. When the first shrimp turn pink and float, we kill the heat and drain the pot.

The crowd gathers around the table, which is layered with newspaper. A few experienced pals pull the edges of the newspaper up around the table, as certain items are known to make a dash for the exits when we dump out the pot. When a red potato tumbles off the table, I holler, We got a runner! Losing a precious piece of sausage to the lawn brings on groans of disappointment.

And then we all step back to marvel at the mountain of mouthwatering awesomeness that is a Nickens family shrimp boil. It’s obvious that the times they are a-changing — who put those brussels sprouts in there? — but the whoops and hollers around the table assure me that some anchors hold fast.