• General Information -
• Buying and Storing Shrimp -
• Preparing and Cooking Fresh Shrimp -
• Health & Nutrition -
• Links -

Shrimp and Prawns are Crustaceans, a branch of the Arthropods (insects and spiders are other branches). Specifically they belong to the Malacostraca branch of crustaceans which also includes crabs, lobsters and sow bugs.

Shrimp or Prawn? To quote a frustrated seafood industry expert, "No one on Earth knows the difference". Biologists actually do know but they tell them apart by obscure details of shell plate overlap, not helpful to consumers. Fortunately, in the U.S. "prawn" has fallen out of use - everything's a shrimp, colossal, jumbo, large or medium, but you still find "prawn" called for in many cookbooks.

An Australian site says they get it right (biologically) down there but in other parts of the world prawns are big and shrimp small, or the other way around elsewhere. The United Nations FAO (Food and Agriculture Organization) has given up and assign "prawn" if it comes from fresh water and "shrimp" if it comes from salt water - often biologically incorrect but the usage seems to be spreading. Actual fresh water prawns are much more perishable than shrimp so are not nearly as common in the markets as shrimp labeled as "prawns".

Wild or Farmed? Most shrimp on the market today are farm raised, some domestically but a lot from Southeast Asia and South and Central America. I've seen articles that gave a narrow edge to wild shrimp for flavor, but I still favor farmed. Pictorial articles I've seen show shrimp fishermen sorting out the catch on deck. Less than 20% is shrimp and the rest fish that die flopping on the deck only to be dumped overboard. To me this is an unnecessary waste of sea life.

Buying and Storing Shrimp

There are hundreds of varieties of shrimp, but mainly we buy by size and price from whatever's available in our local stores. Varieties farmed depend on where they are farmed and may change over time for better yield or virus resistance (see S1).

Fortunately this lack of choice isn't too serious because shrimp all taste very similar, though if a recipe calls for "fresh water" shrimp or prawns you might want to get those if you can. Asian markets have the best selection of all kinds of shrimp and prawns in various stages of preparation from live and swimming to cooked and ready to eat.

The main points are to buy shrimp as fresh as possible (they should have almost no odor) from a reputable source and in the best form for your application. Then keep them well chilled until used. If they won't be used within a day or so, freeze them or buy them already frozen. Use frozen shrimp within a month or two (they tend to dry out).

If you buy shrimp with the head on, needed for many European and ethnic recipes (or if you just want to make a really good shrimp broth), cook them the same day or keep them frozen. Digestive enzymes in the head tend to make the meat mushy.

Shrimp are also sold in other forms, the most popular of which are pictured here and explained below. These forms are important in a variety of Asian cuisines.

Forms commonly sold are:

• Head-On: fresh or previously frozen. Yield: 1 pound = 10 oz of tail meat. These are generally as much by the pound as head-off but yield less meat. You buy these for recipes that ask for head-on or generally to make a richer shrimp stock (particularly for some sauces) than the shells alone would yield. Head-on shrimp need to have been handled carefully and be quite fresh. Sushi bars serve "sweet shrimp" - the tails served raw on sushi rice and the heads sent to the kitchen to be deep fried. When the head is returned to you, you eat it all (unless you are a wimp).
• Head-Off shell-on: fresh, frozen or previously frozen. Yield 1 pound = 15 oz of tail meat (tail left on). There's not much to the shells, but they'll still yield a nice light broth which I often mix into fish stock. The shells can be fried crisp in a little oil before simmering or not depending on the result desired.
• Head-Off peeled and "de-veined": - ready to cook with no further preparation needed. Clearly these are going to be more expensive than "shell-on" because there's more handling. You don't get shells for broth but it may be your best deal if pressed for time and you still have some control over how they're cooked.
• Head-Off peeled, de-veined and cooked: no broth, no cooking control, and probably already overcooked. Good for mixing into banquet salads.
• Whole Dried: found in Asian groceries for use in soups and sauces. Just rinse them (to remove salt) and proceed per recipe. Two common sizes are shown in the photo, the largest one about 1-1/2 inch long.
• Shrimp Paste: made from tiny shrimp ground up and fermented with salt and oil for use in soups, sauces and curry pastes. A Southeast Asian essential available in Asian groceries - top right in photo.
• Salted Shrimp: [Saeujeot (korea)] Salt fermented tiny shrimp used in soups and other dishes in China and Korea - top left in photo. Available in jars in the refrigerated section of Korean groceries but these little buggers have so much salt I can't believe refrigeration is needed (and one of my Korean cookbooks says "keeps unrefrigerated for 1 year").

Yield: - "Head-on", 1 pound = 10 oz tail meat plus a substantial broth. "Head-off shell-on", 1 pound = 15 oz tail meat (tail fin left on) plus a light broth. Other forms 1 pound = 1 pound.

The main tool and requirement for preparing shrimp is a good thumbnail on your primary hand. Keep the shrimp fully chilled until ready to peel and toss the tail meat into a pan of ice water immediately after shelling.

Cut off the head. There is no meat in the main body, only in the tail section. Toss the head in a pot for broth.

Break the shell from the bottom, the weakest place. If you're keeping the tail on hold the shrimp firmly by the last section and pull away the next shell segment forward first, then do the rest in any order.

De-vein if needed. In many parts of the world this just wouldn't be done at all but Americans can be finicky about these things. The "vein" is the digestive tract which runs down the back of the tail. Some farmed shrimp are kept without food long enough to empty out, so if you can't see the vein you don't need to remove it. There's another dark thread on the bottom side which is not digestive and is never removed.

Commercial operations cut a "V" notch down the back of the shrimp but this means lost meat and a shrimp that spreads out when cooked. Just take a thin bamboo skewer and run it between the last two segments deep enough to get under the gut. Pull gently up and back towards the tail, rolling the skewer between your fingers in the direction that would tend to wind the gut towards the tail. If the gut breaks, you can probably find it up at the front and pull it out forward, or just try again with the skewer between the next segments. Don't worry about that last segment, the gut dives through it to the underside and there's no practical way to remove that bit.

This technique can actually be used to de-vein shrimp still in the shell, which is called for in some recipes where the shrimp is served with the shell still on.

At this point I often spread the shrimp out in a single layer on plastic in the freezer compartment. When they are stiff I bag them and keep them frozen for convenient use.

Fry the shell pieces crispy in a little oil and toss them in a sauce pan with the heads (if any), or just toss them in without frying. Add water to cover and simmer about 15 minutes, 30 if there are heads. Strain the liquid and use it in recipes as desired.

Cooking Shrimp

The less the better. Shrimp should go into a recipe last and be cooked for three or four minutes, just enough to cook through.

Shrimp are delicious raw but you want them very fresh from a reputable dealer accustomed to providing shrimp to sushi bars.

Shrimp, unlike some fish, are low enough in the food chain they aren't concentrators of health damaging mercury. They are high in protein, low in fat and have a good mineral content (iron, phosphorus, potassium and zinc) as well as being good sources of vitamin B-6, B-12, biotin and niacin.

Some people avoid shrimp because it's rated high in cholesterol. This is pretty much a non-issue today because it's now known that dietary cholesterol is absorbed by very few people. Blood cholesterol is almost all manufactured within the body, and shrimp has been shown to have a beneficial effect on the HDL / LDL cholesterol ratio in any case.

• S1 - Farmed species - Shrimp News International.
• S2 - Health characteristics - The World's Healthiest Foods.
• S3 - Shrimp Farming - Shrimp News.