Aguachile Verde
MEXICAN · MEXICO

Aguachile Verde

Aguachile verdeSalad

Raw shrimp cured in a fierce green sauce of lime, serrano and coriander, with cucumber and red onion for crunch. It hits like a slap of cold acid — that's the point.

Total
25 min
Heat
4/5
Serves
4

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Flavour profile

Heat
Funk
Acid
Richness
Umami
  • Fresh
  • Herby
  • Sour
  • Spicy

The real deal

Region
Sinaloa, on Mexico's Pacific coast — the aguachile heartland.
Technique
Shrimp cured raw in a blended green chilli and lime 'chile water', never cooked with heat; the acid does the work.
We kept
Raw cured shrimp, serrano and lime sauce, cucumber and red onion, served ice-cold with tostadas.

Ingredients

4 Serves

Main

  • 500 g · peeled, deveined, tails off

Sauce

  • 8
  • 3 · stems off
  • 1 bunch · leaves and tender stems
  • 1 clove
  • 1 tsp

salad

  • 1 · peeled or unpeeled
  • 1 · sliced paper-thin

Garnish

  • 1 · optional · ripe
  • 8 · optional

Method

  1. Put the in the fridge and chill the serving bowl too — this dish lives or dies on being ice-cold.

  2. Blitz the juice of the , the , , and until you have a loose, bright green sauce. Taste it: it should be aggressively sour, hot and herbal, not balanced and polite.

    If your limes are small or dry, you may need more — the shrimp must sit in liquid, not just get brushed with it.

  3. Butterfly each lengthways down the back — cutting halfway through, not all the way — so it opens flat like a book.

    Butterflying gives more surface to the cure and makes the shrimp curl into pretty little ribbons.

  4. Lay the shrimp in a single layer in a shallow dish, pour over sauce, and press them down so every piece is submerged. Cure in the fridge for 15 min — the shrimp will turn opaque and firm at the edges and still be translucent in the middle.

    Do not go past about twenty minutes: longer and the acid turns the shrimp chalky and rubbery. Serve it the moment it's ready.

  5. Slice the into thin rounds and the into paper-thin half-moons.

  6. Spoon the cured shrimp and all of sauce into the chilled bowl over the cucumber and onion, tucking them in so they sit in the green liquid, not on top of it.

  7. Fan over the if you're using it, and serve immediately with for scooping. This is a dish to eat standing at the counter, still cold.

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