Paula Deen's Shrimp Creole

We tried Paula Deen's Shrimp Creole recipe today.  I thought Sunday would be a good day to make this recipe because it looked fairly simple and it cooks in the crock pot for 3 hours.  I figured I could get this ready in the morning before we headed to church and be back in time to finish it and enjoy it for lunch.

Ingredients

2 tablespoon olive oil

1/2 cup diced green bell peppers

1/2 cup diced onions

1/2 cup diced celery

1 teaspoon chili powder

1 (14-ounce) can tomatoes

1 (8-ounce) can tomato sauce

1 tablespoon hot sauce

1 tablespoon Worcestershire sauce

1 teaspoon white sugar

salt and pepper to taste

1 1/2 lb peeled and deveined shrimp

green onions for garnish

Directions

Preheat crock pot on high. In fry pan, heat olive oil. Add peppers, onions and celery. Cook until softened. Add chili powder and saute until caramelized. Remove from heat and pour into crock pot. Add tomatoes, tomato sauce, hot sauce, Worcestershire, white sugar, salt and pepper. Cook for 3 hours. Add shrimp and cook for about 3 minutes. Serve over rice. Top with chopped green onions.

Servings: 8 servings

Prep Time: 5 min

Cook Time: 3 hours 10 min

Difficulty: Easy

Here's the chopped bell pepper, celery and red onion in 2 tablespoons of olive oil.  Once they were soft I added the chili powder, let them caramelize and put then in the crock pot.  I added the rest of the ingredients, except for the shrimp and green onion.  I left the crock pot on high while I went to church with my family.  When I returned (about 3 1/2 hrs later) I added the shrimp.  The shrimp I used were kind of large.  I cooked them for about 10 minutes, 3 minutes wasn't long enough.  I used wild caught gulf shrimp because that's the type we like.

Here it is in the crock pot just waiting to be served.  Isn't it pretty?  Pretty yummy, I hope!

The Results...
I served it over rice and topped it with green onions like the recipe suggests.  This dish looked pretty, but how did it taste?  We did clean our plates, but this dish didn't blow us away.  My family wouldn't mind if I made this again, but it wasn't impressive enough for them to gush over it.  So, the result.....not bad, but not fantastic, somewhere in the middle.