This recipe is taken directly from Taste of Home — Seafood Boil on the Grill (published on the recipe card as “Cajun Boil on the Grill”), created by home cook Allison Brooks of Fort Collins, Colorado, and tested by the Taste of Home Test Kitchen. It swaps the giant stockpot and strainer basket a traditional seafood boil needs for individual foil packets on the grill, which makes it easy to scale up or customize per person.
The packet method solves two real problems with a stovetop boil: it doesn’t fill the house with seafood smell, and there’s no big pot or basket to buy or store afterward. Everything steams inside its own sealed foil packet instead, so the corn, potatoes, shrimp and sausage all pick up the same seasoning without ever touching boiling water.
Ingredients
Makes 4 packets.
- 1 package (20 ounces) refrigerated red potato wedges
- 2 salmon fillets (6 ounces each), halved
- 3/4 pound uncooked shrimp (31-40 count per pound), peeled and deveined
- 1/2 pound summer sausage, cubed
- 2 medium ears sweet corn, halved
- 2 tablespoons olive oil
- 1 teaspoon seafood seasoning
- 1/2 teaspoon salt
- 1/4 teaspoon pepper
- 1 medium lemon, cut into 4 wedges
- Optional: butter and chopped parsley, for serving
Method
- Cut four rectangles of heavy-duty aluminum foil, about 18×12 inches each.
- Divide the potato wedges, salmon, shrimp, sausage and corn evenly among the four pieces of foil.
- Drizzle each portion with olive oil, then sprinkle with the seafood seasoning, salt and pepper.
- Squeeze the lemon wedges over each packet and tuck the squeezed wedges in with the rest of the ingredients.
- Fold the foil up and around the mixture, sealing each packet tightly so steam can’t escape.
- Grill the packets, covered, over medium heat for 12 to 15 minutes, or until the salmon flakes easily with a fork, the shrimp have turned pink, and the potatoes are tender.
- Open each packet carefully — hot steam will escape immediately — and serve with butter and chopped parsley if you like.
Checking for Doneness Safely
Taste of Home’s cues here are all visual: salmon that flakes with a fork, shrimp that have turned pink, potatoes that are fork-tender. Those are reasonable checks, and the fish cue in particular lines up with FDA guidance — the agency’s standard for fin fish is that it’s done at 145°F (63°C), or when the flesh is opaque and separates easily with a fork. For the shrimp, the FDA’s benchmark is flesh that’s gone firm, pearly and opaque, alongside that same 145°F reference point. Because everything is sealed in foil, you can’t see color changes as they happen, so if you’re at all unsure when you open a packet at the 12-minute mark, reseal it and give it another few minutes rather than serving it underdone.
Note that this particular recipe adds two salmon fillets to the packets alongside the shrimp, corn, potatoes and sausage — Taste of Home includes it “for added heft,” but it’s easy to leave out if you’d rather keep the packets closer to a classic boil.
A Few Practical Notes
Use genuinely heavy-duty foil, or double up on regular foil — a torn packet mid-grill means lost steam and juices dripping onto the burners. Seal the seams with a tight double fold rather than just pinching the edges closed, since that’s usually where a packet gives out first.
Summer sausage is fully cooked and shelf-stable already, so its job here is mostly to render a little fat and pick up smoke flavor rather than to cook through — if you’d rather use a raw Cajun-style link like andouille, budget extra time and confirm it separately, since it won’t be done on the same schedule as the shrimp and potatoes.
Leftovers keep in an airtight container in the fridge for up to four days; reheat gently in a covered pan with a splash of water so the seafood doesn’t dry out or turn rubbery.
Keep reading
- Taste of Home’s Campfire Cheese Hash Brown Packets
- Weber’s Grilled Halibut with Lemon-Caper Dressing
- Weber’s Grilled Swordfish with Jalapeño-Mint Butter
- Grilled Whole Branzino or Snapper with Garlic and Lemon