[Sca-cooks] OP: shrimps

[Phil Troy/ G. Tacitus Adamantius]

Also sprach Barbara Benson:
><snip lots of great comments from Masta A as usual>
>>  Adamantius> Heavens to Murgatroyd, why pop their heads off at all, if
>you're
>>  cooking them in the shell? Unless, of course, you bought them that
>>  way?
>
>'cause that's the way my Momma taught me how to do it. And no, we did not
>buy them (hence the cast nets, I can throw a 5 footer but Mom can throw an
>8).

Beats me. I can cast with a spinning rod, and less accurately with a 
fly rod, but a net is what you use after you've caught your fish ;-). 
But I figured you weren't buying them, just trying to figure out 
reasons why one would behead them. And the most obvious to this UUY 
is that you got them that way...

>  The fun part was if you put them in a bucket of lagoon water and plopped
>it into the deepfreeze they would frequently live through the process and be
>wigglin when you thawed them.

Kewl! Just like some IRS employees...

>And leaving the head on makes it difficult to get the vein out. ;)
>
>Actually, I was talking about the partial shell technique that we were
>discussing. Pop the head off, grab the little legs and pull the shell off
>like you are unwrapping a candy cane. Maybe that is why the end tail bit
>gets left on, when you grab the legs you just take off the part of the shell
>that would cover the vest area, if shrimps wore vests. It takes an extra
>step to get the tail bits off. And I agree, it does add taste.

The method that seems perfectly natural to me, and the one which I've 
seen ultra-efficient food-service professionals watching me, as if 
they were seeing a hitherto unknown, but worth stealing, technique, 
is to pull the head off your [raw] shrimp, or proceed if they're 
already headless. Slip the point of a small sharp knife into the vein 
opening at the shrimp's convex belly side, and slit down the shell 
along the digestive vein to the tail. The vein usually just slides 
down to the tail. Grasp  the shell like a book cover and lift the 
body meat up from the head end to the tail, stopping to get a good 
grip on the meat before gently, but firmly and steadily, tugging the 
meat free from the tail. Generally, unless the shrimp aren't fresh, 
the tail fin meat will slip out of the fin shells, and the vein will 
pull off last, staying with the shell.

Note of marginal relevance: frozen shrimp (and most of the shrimp we 
eat, unless you catch them yourself, fall into this category), are 
possibly the only meat or seafood that it is not better to thaw in 
the refrigerator. I've found it's actually better (to the point where 
I once actually had to do a clinical test demo of this technique for 
various Upper Management types) to thaw them under running water, 
gently separating them from the "block" as they thaw. The only 
explanation I can offer is that at least some shrimp, or the ocean 
ones I was using, anyway, are cold-water critters, and their 
digestive enzymes do their job at temperatures well within standard 
refrigerator temperatures. What does a headless, dead shrimp digest 
in the fridge? Would you rather not know? Well, it partially digests 
itself, and eating such an unfortunate beast is quite an experience 
if you're expecting that crunchy sweetness we normally associate with 
shrimp.  'Nuff said?

>But then again, when I think about it, even when we were cooking in the full
>shell we still took the heads off. Don't know why, see earlier comment on
>being taught by Momma. When I see her for X-Mas I'll ask. (How much you want
>to bet it is what her Momma taught her?)

I wouldn't be surprised. But then maybe someone, somewhere along the 
line, was making shrimp essence and selling it for $24.95 for a 
two-ounce tub. That'd sure show us, huh?

Adamantius