Tuesday, March 1, 2011

A Terrific Way To Clean Shrimp!

I recently learned this genius new way to clean shrimp, which gets rid of that "shrimpy" smell. This technique is credited to my new chinese friend, from our little International Cooking Club (we did China last week). The smell I am talking about seems to be one main reason that people who don't eat shrimp (for reasons besides allergies) continue to avoid it. It does a wonderful job of cleaning shrimp, and getting rid of the smell. Here is the method, for approximately one pound of shrimp. All you need is salt, cooking wine (whatever you have - I used sherry), and cornstarch! It doesn't get any simpler.


Peel the shrimp, pull off the tails, and remove the yucky black stuff from the ends, then rinse thoroughly in water. Then, add about 2 generous teaspoons of salt, and about 1/4 cup of the cooking wine. Mix thoroughly (yes, with your hands) to make sure all shrimp are coated. Then add about 2 or 3 tablespoons of cornstarch and mix well for about a minute. Then rinse well and wipe all the moisture off and make sure they are thoroughly dry. Your shrimp is now ready to sauté, steam, grill, bake, or cook any way you want!
I just cleaned a whole lot of shrimp and prawns this way and will be posting several shrimp and prawn recipes this week!

5 comments:

Unknown said...

Wow! Who knew? The smell doesn't bother me but it makes me self-conscious if someone comes to the house during a seafood day :-)

niha said...

Glad you enjoyed the post, Lorie. I will be posting an awesome new Garlic Shrimp recipe that smells FANTASTIC while cooking!

Unknown said...

I use gram flour here, works wonders too!!

Anonymous said...

A friend of mine from San Diego taught me how to peel, devein, and get the stink out of shrimp if it was necessary. She would lay the cleaned shrimp in one layer on damp paper towels and sprinkle them heavily on both sides with straight baking soda and let them set for 10 minutes or so. Then she would rinse them well and pat dry and cook with them. Thanks for the new method. I'll try it the next time I cook with raw shrimp. Begonia,MyLittleFarmInTown

niha said...

It's nice to have so many options! Now if only we had better access to fresh shrimp...or seafood in general, for that matter! That is the unfortunate thing about where we live.