Ask a Chef

Shrimp is widely available seafood that can live in either fresh or salt water and can be found in both cold and warm waters. With year round availability shrimp has become the most popular seafood in the United States today. Americans consume more shrimp than any other country in the world. The great thing about shrimp is that it can be cooked in so many different ways.

There a hundreds of species of shrimp some of them less flavorible and some even inedible. The most common shrimp we will see are: Gulf White, Mexican White, Gulf Pink, Gulf Brown, Black Tiger, and Chinese White. Even with these most store are going to label shrimp by color that is the color it is before it is cooked: white, pink, brown, or black tiger.

Buying Shrimp:

Shrimp can be bought either fresh or frozen. The two main things to check for when buying fresh shrimp: first check that their bodies are firm, do not buy them if they fell soft and sticky; second the smell of the shrimp it should smell slightly fishy, avoid any that have an ammonia odor to them. With frozen shrimp the main thing that is that they are not cover in frost or dried, these are signs that it has been re-frozen and will not have great flavor to them.

Sizes of Shrimp:

Shrimp are also graded by their size meaning how many come in a pound:

Colossal (10 or less)
Jumbo (11-15)
Extra-Large (16-20)
Large (21-30)
Medium (31-35)
Small (36-45)
Miniature (about 100)

Peeling and Deveining Shrimp:

I prefer to peel shrimp for any dish that I am making because I don’t want to have to do this while eating. As a general rule if the shrimp is going to be in a sauce or in a dish where it will be hard to see them they should be peeled. But it is completely up to you if you want to peel the shrimp.

To peel the shrimp, grab the feelers/legs on the underside and pull this should take the shell completely off.

Deveining shrimp is when you remove the vein (which is the intestinal tract) from the shrimp. My personal preference is to devein any of the larger shrimp (large to colossal) and the vein is much more noticeable. As for the smaller shrimp (medium and down) the vein is not as noticeable.

To devein shrimp make small shallow cut allow the back side if the shrimp and pull the vein out.

A good thing to not is that more and more places are starting to offer to devein the shrimp for you, this may cost a little more but it will save you a lot of time.

Well we should now be ready to cook shrimp.

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