When the living is easy in the summertime, the cooking should be easy, too. Open a bottle of beer and a tin of Old Bay Seasoning, and you’re good to go with this simple and flavorful shrimp recipe.

Using beer as a steaming liquid lends a mildly sweet and hoppy flavor to the shrimp. Choose a light ale or lager, or a citrusy IPA for best results.

The rest of the flavor relies on a generous dusting of dried spices, aka Old Bay Seasoning.

Old Bay Seasoning is a famous spice blend that was created in Baltimore to season seafood — especially crab.

You can certainly tinker with your own spice blend for this recipe, but the precise ingredients and amounts in Old Bay are a well-guarded trade secret.

Suffice to say that its lengthy list of ingredients includes (among others) celery salt, paprika, mustard powder, cayenne and black pepper, plus hints of warm spices, such as cinnamon, cloves and nutmeg.

Since we’re talking easy living (and cooking) for this recipe, you can simply purchase a tin of Old Bay in any well-stocked supermarket.

The homemade dipping sauce that accompanies the shrimp will bring you the satisfaction of creating something entirely from scratch. It’s a traditional red cocktail sauce, infused with lemon and horseradish, with the addition of sweet paprika and celery salt to tie it to the Old Bay.

Lynda Balslev is an award-winning writer, cookbook author, and recipe developer based in Marin. Visit TasteFood at TasteFoodblog.com.