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I cannot figure out how shrimp works, can somebody please explain it to me? The Wikipedia is useless, it just says there are hundreds of species, and "five" commercial species (with no pictures) none of which sounds like anything I have been eating.

The background here is that I was happily buying frozen shrimp at my supermarket to make shrimp cocktail, and a couple of months ago the type I usually bought was gone and in its place was a strange looking shrimp, large and gray, not the usual red. So, I said, "fine, i'll try it". So I try the new shrimp and it is disgusting. I throw out the whole bag. Then a few weeks ago I am in a restaurant and THE SAME EXACT THING HAPPENS. I order shrimp cocktail and they serve me the same big, disgusting gray shrimp. What the hell??? Is this some kind of conspiracy?

Anyway, when I think of shrimp, this is what I expect:

enter image description here

As you can see it is reddish. Looks kind of like a mini lobster. Each shrimp is usually about 3 inches long. Now, the nasty gray shrimp looks like this:

enter image description here

As you can see it is fatter and gray. It is about 4+ inches long. From what I can tell, I think this gray crap is so-called "Pacific White Shrimp" or "whiteleg shrimp", a farmed species, Litopenaeus vannamei. However, I cannot figure out what the good shrimp is.

Also, from what I read, "processed shrimp" does not have to be identified, so apparently producers can just bag up any one of the 150 different species of shrimp and call it whatever they want. How am I supposed to figure out what is what?

(Note, this question is about cocktail shrimp, not the small 1-inch salad shrimps they fish down in Louisiana. Also, I am not asking about giant 5-inch prawns, I am asking about 3-inch cocktail shrimp.)

Drisheen Colcannon
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    I'm slightly confused... all shrimp, when cooked, are pink, not grey. How did you know that you got the grey ones at the restaurant? You don't mention cooking the shrimp in your question - did you? They are usually steamed or boiled. – Catija Sep 17 '18 at 18:30
  • @Catija Nope, the shrimp in the restaurant were just white, not red, and I could tell they were the fatty gray white shrimp because of their shape. – Drisheen Colcannon Sep 17 '18 at 18:44
  • I'd love to see a photo of that... I've eaten lots of shrimp in my life but I've never seen a cooked one that was white. I can't even find an image of a cooked shrimp on the web that's not pink, at least in part. – Catija Sep 17 '18 at 18:51
  • @Catija It may have been very slightly pink, but for the most part the shrimps at the restaurant were these big huge white slabs. It was obviously the same thing I had gotten at the supermarket. Also, if you look at the photos you can see how the good shrimp are kind of curled, but the bad ones do not curl much. – Drisheen Colcannon Sep 17 '18 at 19:06
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    While the shrimp in the bottom picture look like they may be larger, they too would be more curled if they were cooked. – Cindy Sep 17 '18 at 19:09
  • Pacific White Shrimp should turn pink when cooked (ref [Google Image Search](https://www.google.com/search?q=Pacific+White+Shrimp+cooked)). – Erica Sep 17 '18 at 19:10
  • Maybe this will help ... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WhfK98f5S00 (or at least entertain you for a few minutes) – Cos Callis Sep 17 '18 at 20:33
  • https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shrimp – paparazzo Sep 17 '18 at 22:00
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    it really looks like you're mixing up raw and cooked shrimp. I've never seen grey shrimp served anywhere, in which part of the world are you? – Luciano Sep 18 '18 at 10:17
  • Possible duplicate of [What is the difference between a prawn and a shrimp?](https://cooking.stackexchange.com/questions/45226/what-is-the-difference-between-a-prawn-and-a-shrimp) – Erica Sep 18 '18 at 10:56
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    I'd like to add another comment that might be useful. The raw shrimp will usually come with the shell (exo-skeleton) on, so you have to peel that off when you want to eat them. Cocktail shrimp usually comes with the shell removed. So in the past, you were probably buying pre-cooked, pre-peeled, cocktail shrimp. And now they only have raw shrimp with the shell on. That might add to the confusion. The second photo in your question is definitely raw shrimp. They will turn pink when you cook them. And you need to peel the shrimp before you eat them. – Cave Johnson Sep 18 '18 at 20:04
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    I'm going to put this on hold pending clarifications, especially whether there's a raw vs cooked issue here as a few have noted, but also your goals. Do you actually want to know about species of shrimp? or just how to get shrimp you like? and what do you mean by good/bad shrimp? "Nasty" isn't very specific. Finally, I'd suggest pruning as much as possible of the rant/story parts, and focusing on the parts people need to answer. You'll get better answers if you're not asking about conspiracies. – Cascabel Sep 18 '18 at 23:06
  • @Fabby Even with the edit it's still essentially the same as before. I voted to leave closed as I view this as cooked vs raw. – Cindy Sep 19 '18 at 15:52
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    @Cindy Edit rolled back, **cancelling upvote and re-open!** – Fabby Sep 19 '18 at 18:12
  • After not getting any help here, I did a lot of additional research and eventually found out the different species of shrimp involved and how to tell the difference between them and why the bad shrimp is getting served in restaurants now. So, basically I eventually determined an answer, so I don't need it reopened. – Drisheen Colcannon Sep 19 '18 at 18:17
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    Could you please share with us what you found? – Cindy Sep 20 '18 at 01:33

1 Answers1

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From your photos, the "disgusting grey" shrimp are raw and should be cooked before using in shrimp cocktail. I assume that the shrimp you used to buy were pre-cooked, peeled, tail-on.

wumpus D'00m
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  • I will research that by going back to the supermarket and check if they say "raw" shrimp. I am pretty sure they were cooked. – Drisheen Colcannon Sep 17 '18 at 18:46
  • You can't really expect us to provide the exact species from already cooked shrimp. Perhaps from uncooked shrimp, but still not likely. There are just too many. – Cindy Sep 17 '18 at 21:54
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    This answer is completely right @DrisheenColcannon, if they are grey they are raw, pink they are cooked and there are no exceptions to this. If pink shrimp was being sold as raw it's simply mislabeled. – GdD Sep 18 '18 at 07:47