Kitchen Tip: Cleaning Shrimp

I love when I can buy nice big shrimp already split, peeled, and deveined - it isn't hard to do, but is time consuming. I wasn't sure how to do this when I first started cooking shrimp so am sharing this little tip to help if you need it. I should have done a video because I couldn't take pictures while actually doing a couple of the steps but I'll talk you thru the process. It's just cleaning shrimp, not rocket science ;)

Two different ways you can do this: 1) if you want to leave the shells on but still devein (say for peel and eat shrimp) cut a shallow slit down the backside of the shrimp thru the shell and a little way into the shrimp. This used to confuse me - which side is the back side? I guess common sense should have told me it's the curved part on the other side from the legs - in this picture my thumb is on the side that you need to devein.

Here I've made the slit along the backside using a paring knife. Next remove the long dark vein that is usually there, you'll find it just under the edge of the shrimp meat, running from head to tail. It's a thin almost string looking thing that isn't actually a vein (so why's it called "deveining"? don't know), it's the digestive tract and maybe it's fine to eat but that's kinda gross so I (and pretty much everyone) remove it.

This is what it looks like after the vein is removed - I rinse it away under
cold water but you can also pick it out with the tip of your knife

The other way to devein is if you are removing the shell before cooking, either leaving the tail on for presentation or removing the whole shell.  If removing the entire shell you can just peel the shell off and then make the shallow slit to devein; or if you want to keep the tails on I still make the slit thru the shell like in the above example which I find helps get the shells off easily while keeping the tails attached. 

To peel leaving the tail on, I firmly hold the shell where I want to keep the tail (so it doesn't get pulled off) and then pull down from one side of the shell where it's cut, up around to the other side in one solid piece. Hopefully you can see in this picture what I mean...make sense? If there is too much shell still remaining (like in the picture below) just hold the tail piece a little further down and peel off the shell until it's where you want - I'd say I usually leave about 1/2" attached. 

smoked paprika shrimp with tails on. check tomorrow for the recipe!