Are you a seafood lover? Then an excellent seafood tower is a perfect dish for you to make! The towers are easy and quick to make and can be prepared ahead of time. And they look absolutely stunning, making them the ideal centerpiece for any holiday or dinner party.
A seafood tower is made out of different types of delicious seafood. The tower has many different layers, with each layer representing one type of seafood (such as lobster, crab, clams). Seafood towers are often associated with fine dining restaurants, but they can be adapted for home entertaining.
How to Make a Seafood Tower?
Making your own stunning seafood tower is easier than you think! Here are the steps.
1) Choose the Seafood That will be in Your Tower
Of course, you need to determine which seafood you want in your tower. Seafood can include crab, lobster, prawns, scallops, and any other delicious shellfish or fish that tickle your fancy.
You should choose one type of crustacean (like lobster), a kind of mollusk (like clams or mussels), and two kinds of fish. You can also add a non-seafood item, like a layer with cheeses and fruits.
2) Select a Platter for Your Seafood Tower
You want to select a platter that will be large enough to hold all of the layers and still allow an inch or two of space between each layer. The height of your tower is up to you. Make it on a large serving dish, or select one with the size and shape that you want.
3) Assemble the Layers with Your Seafood
The first layer will probably be solid, like lobster, crab legs, shrimp, or cheese. Other common layers are mussels wrapped with bacon. The last layer should be something green to represent the seaweed, like spinach. You can also add decorative items like grape leaves or seashells if you want.
4) Decorate Your Seafood Tower According to Theme and Taste
You can decorate your seafood towers with items that match the dinner’s theme, such as a fireworks display for a stunning party. You can also have fun decorating it.
For example, you could draw faces on the grape leaves to make them look like little people or paint one layer blue and another green to resemble an underwater scene. Another fun idea is to use seafood-flavored drink mix packets to create a colorful design on the final layer, like shrimp or fish.
5) Add Sauces or Garnishes According to Taste
Your seafood towers can be served with sauces that compliment the ingredients in each layer, such as blue cheese sauce, butter sauce, lemon butter sauce, cocktail sauce, etc. They are also served with lemon wedges for spritzing the flavors throughout the tower. You can add chopped parsley, chives, or other garnishes to make the tower more pleasing to look at and eat.
6) Serve Your Seafood Tower
Serve it on a large platter with decorative toothpicks so your guests can pick up each layer. You can also use special tools to remove items from specific layers without disturbing the rest of the tower. For example, you could serve crab legs by using a crab/lobster fork to pick them out of the crab layer.
After you make your dish, it’s time to eat! You can either wait to make the tower at the table or start building it ahead of time and wait to add the final touches before eating. Seafood towers are best enjoyed with friends and family, making this type of tower a great addition to your entertaining repertoire.
Now that you know what goes in a seafood tower, it’s time to learn how to make it yourself. As you can see, making it is very simple and requires few ingredients.
