Prawns
 

Went to buy prawns the other day and noticed that there were probably ten different varieties on sale, varying in size and location - Eduacor, North Atlantic, Mediterranean, etc. Is there really any one body of water in the world that, by consensus, has the best tasting prawns? For what it's worth, I love the larger ones grilled with a little olive oil. Makes me hungry thinking about it

As a general principle .... everything else being equal .... fresh cold water prawns - and for that matter most seafood - will always taste better than prawns from warmer water areas. I guess it's because they grow slower and they work harder for their food. So you should be guided by the geography of the waters rather than anything else. The more Northerly the water sourcing ... the more flavour. Farming or non-farming effects taste less that the North / South consideration.

With larger prawns the majority will be farmed - and farmed in warmer water. So these prawns with almost no intrinsic flavour rely more on the flavours added when cooking - and their display value ie they are attractive on the plate - than their natural flavour. To be frank I think this is a food where eating with your eyes sometimes deceived the palate and it is curries, garlic, grilling etc that makes the flavour in wamer water prawns. To be fair, when you grill you intensify the latent flavour by water reduction and caramelising sugars therefore increasing the small amount of natural flavour. Basically I have yet to taste a tiger prawn or other large warm water prawn au naturel that has any worthy discernable flavour. It's what's added or done.

In the UK sadly our best seafood ie oysters, crab, langoustine etc is exported to other countries who appreciate it more - it is worthy of tears ..... but many UK people still think that the best local "prawns" are the very small fresh brown shrimps you can sometimes buy if you are in the right place at the right time.

You know, that is interesting considering how much you hear about Gulf Coast shrimp. The ones I bought this weekend were Mediterranean. Sounds like I should have bought the North Atlantic. I learn something every day on FT.

There's also a texture thing about those big, grilled prawns that I find very appealing.

Don't tell me that! I'm still likely going to be moving to the UK next year.

I think the clue is in the reason why they say "North Atlantic" rather than just "Atlantic" ...

Texture point is an interesting one. If you think about texture with respect to meat ie fillet or rib-eye steak v other the better the meat the "less" texture and the more latent texture ie ignoring slow cooking etc the less flavour. I think it's the same muscle argument with seafood. And so with prawns. It seems to me that the less taste the more texture and the more flavour the less texture or chewiness if you like.

Local markets will always seek marketing advantage by selling "localness" and romantic branding ....

When you come to the uk you'll just need to work harder ....:)

I think that the key is you need to find a brand, location, farm, type that you like. The reason they have bred most of the flavor out of the farm ones is because people want them that way (and want the fake ones too). They want shrimp that doesn't taste like shrimp.

No, I don't know why.

Without a doubt, the best I've ever had was on the dock in Oslo, the boats were cooking them as they came in and you bought it hot off the back of the boat. One of those shrimps had the flavor of a pound of pretty much everything else.

In our local markets, the fresh wild caught from the Gulf of Mexico are probably the most flavorful we can easily get, but again, there are some people who don't like them when we have them, they taste too "fishy"

Everything I've looked up on cold water shrimp indicates that they are the tiny critters, about 50-100+/lb, always sold shelled and pre-cooked. Is this correct?

Very small ... shrimp sort of means "very small".

They are either normally shelled and sold like that. .. or more often in the uk they would be "potted" ie they are shelled and mixed with butter and cayenne pepper and put into pots (they are preserved for longer this way and Brits will then spread them on toast - it use to be a sort of Sunday "tea" treat) or sold in their shells. When sold in their shells some shell them (very picky) and some will eat them with their shells on.

These are my favorite - but I live on the beach, so I'm a little biased. They actually taste like shrimp (which is probably the "fishy" taste people don'tlike).h

I'm ashamed to say that some of the frozen prawns are so awful .... I love to substitute good quality chopped up crab sticks with marie rose sauce ( just salad cream and ketchup) with some lettuce in sandwiches.

We get some lovely large frozen prawns here unfortunately most of the time we get a load of crap ones and they don't come cheap.
Consistency in food quality here is awful....you just don't know what you're going to get....same applies to the smoked salmon. The UK is seafood paradise in comparison even the supermarket stuff.

Worst prawns I've had have always been those large pink ones airlines serve....tough as old boots they are.

So where would you go in the UK for fresh seafood? It's been ten years since I lived there, but I don't remember any of the supermarkets having a fresh fish counter.

Most supermarkets these days do have fish counters, but the quality is really variable and I only really buy prawns and smoked fish from there. If I'm wanting good fish, I go to a fishmonger. I have one I go to which only smells of the sea, not of fish.

In London there are several really excellent fishmongers - Moxon's in Clapham being amongst the best. A trip to one of the farmer's markets (or Borough) will also provide.

Waitrose also have a pretty good fresh fish counter.

While I generally agree that colder water = more flavor, I have to put in the strongest vote for wild (non farm) Gulf of Mexico shrimp, the flavor is amazing and puts to shame every other prawns I've had. Gulf shrimp consistently provide that wow shrimp flavor, no matter the preparation.

BC Spot prawns get a lot of attention locally and they are both cold water and on the larger side.

The appellation "prawn" seems often attached to what to me are simply shrimp. Then there's "langostine" which also covers a lot of territory. In my eyes (and to my taste), prawns come from colder waters and are larger, sometimes with claw appendages.

For shrimp, having grown up with wild caught Gulf Grays/Browns, they remain my fist choice. Folks who have eaten Gulf shrimp since childhood often claim with some validity that smaller shrimp have more flavor, having had not been "prepped" by removing the "vein".

maybe that is it, I never remove the vein.

Does it really make any difference with respect to the flavor? We always de-vein because someone in the family is a bit squeamish..

I had a date one time who ate the shells and all. That stopped me

It does. It is the prawns intestines and is bitter. If you don't remove the vein you are largely eating prawn poo.

You decide!

Sounds rather nasty to me. I'll keep taking the vein out...

For those of us in the "Boil'em, peel'em & eat'em" class of shrimp addicts, the amount of time and effort to perform the extensive microsurgery necessary to devein small shrimp would be ridiculous.. The best 'eating" shrimp are small, and you folks must be dealing with some awfully big "jumbos".

True shrimp fans prefer cooking the little buggers with the heads on. No, unlike frequent crawfish eaters, we don't often "suck haids", but protecting the shrimps' tails from total immersion of the open end, leaching out flavor, is traditional and beneficial.

Around here, we speak of "Hotel" shrimp, those frozen and defrosted bright pink jumbos offered at cocktail parties and buffets, "chewy" and bearing only minimal resemblance in flavor to real shrimp. So big that the digestive track may contain identifiable grains of sand, deveining is needed.

Okay, I think I have it - it's not a taste issue but a labor issue. For a brief moment I thought you were implying that the vein somehow added to the flavor of the shrimp. I didn't really want to go all Anthony Bourdain, but I might have been tempted

And here you have the great Atlantic divide ....

And how would you better use the time you had wasted on deveining? Eating more poo soaked prawns,.:eek:

What is the point of going to all the trouble to eat something as potentially sweet and wonderful as a tender little prawny in a perfect state compared with the temptation of gobbling them down in much more quickly and in some quantity inflated by the taste of prawn poo? You devein lobster?

No one in the uk will devein what we call brown shrimp .. but anything from small prawns upwards .... it will probably be deveined.

Much of us Brits are burdened with the East End ethos and traditions. It was a cockney tradition to decamp to the local Tubby Issacs stall outside the pub and have the welks, and jellied eels and winkles and prawns before heading home. The annual holiday was a trip down to Westcliff, or Southend or Leigh-on-sea. Sitting down together and enjoying the shrimps was prolonged by the deveining ceremony. It made the shrimp last longer.

Some of it started there and remains .....:)

I brought back some Basik's Angler's Blend from RSW. This with some olive oil is gooood!

Someone mentioned eating the shells here on FT one time. I tried it (I'll try just about anything :D) but I'm not sure what the appeal is.

Over the years the best that my wife and I have had were either in Ireland, or Scotland.

Not frozen, not farmed, but fished (nets) local out of the cold bay waters.

And the best way to cook them is grilled, simply with nothing added. Perhaps a little sauce on the side but nothing on the prawn itself.

Served on airlines ? Yes, Well ..... I'll be diplomatic and state that nothing beats fresh grilled prawns, or shrimp out on the beach or quayside.

On this we both agree. When it comes to shrimp around the world, we differ. I prefer head-on, and my wife head-off.