Fresh Gulf Shrimp, Pleased to Meet You

Fresh Gulf Shrimp, Pleased to Meet You

I’ve bought “fresh” shrimp many times, but in the Midwest, that means it’s been “previously frozen,” of course, so I was pleased this past weekend when I was actually able to procure and cook up genuinely FRESH, as in never frozen, shrimp. I bought these guys at a flea market (of all places) in Venice, Florida, a few hours after they’d been yanked from the Gulf of Mexico.

Differences noted:

• Sweeter tasting, with more depth and personality to the meat.
• Much finer texture. Freezing is going to screw up meat, even if the meat in question is fast-frozen, and these fresh shrimp were firm in their raw state and had not a hint of rubberiness when cooked (due, in part, to skillful preparation ).
• Small point: the meat was perfectly white, no beige, no almond color, just pure white.
• There’s yucky stuff in shrimp: I usually get my boys headless, though I’ve munched on fried heads at Little Three Happiness and elsewhere, but some of the stuff I was pulling out with the vein was vile, such as translucent green goop (it didn’t smell bad, but it looked quite unappetizing).

Anyhow, my somewhat starting conclusion from all this is that fresh shrimp are better than previously frozen…can you believe it!?

Hammond

David,

Not just fresh shrimp, but fresh Gulf shrimp. They don't get much better.

Hammond, Thou doest vex me! I opened this thread eagerly hoping that I was going to find a place selling fresh gulf shrimp here in Chicago.

I grew up eating South Carolina/Georgia Brown and Gray Shrimp which are indigenous to the tidal marshes of the southern Atlantic coast. I find them even a bit sweeter than the gulf Shrimp. We used to cast nets and pull them right out of the marshes in the summer. In the fall, for a three week period, you could drop bait (fish meal combined into a ball with tidal marsh mud) and collect quarts and quarts of shrimp in one evening of casting. We would freeze a lot of those and found that the shrimp, frozen in a block of salted ice water in tupperware, maintained much of their "creek flavor".

The Rosengarten Report published a fresh shrimp issue a few months back. It had numerous sources for quality fresh Gulf and Tidal Marsh Shrimp. None were cheap. I'll dig around and see if I can find it.

YourPalWill wrote:The Rosengarten Report published a fresh shrimp issue a few months back. It had numerous sources for quality fresh Gulf and Tidal Marsh Shrimp. None were cheap. I'll dig around and see if I can find it.

Will,

The shrimp I bought were about ten bucks a pound, maybe 20 count at the small end.

I did find basically two colors: brown/red and a green/gray -- I supposed these were two different "types" of shrimp, but cooked up, they looked pretty much the same.

Hammond

When I lived in Brasil, we used to buy shrimp at the beach from fishermen who rowed out in large dories--they were back on shore by 7:30 am and laid out their catch on the sand. The shrimp were so fantastically fresh, we would eat them just cooked "a la plancha" style--hot griddled, and they were so fresh that they could be eaten shell and all. I still eat shrimp shells if I find a place--often a chinese restaurant, they're not too hard. They will have a texture like a buckram crab (the shells, that is).

Dave, those are the two species mostly found in the southeast. The browns and grays that I pulled out of the creeks in the Carolinas are less mature, smaller and sweeter. As the grow to maturity, they tend to migrate out to the gulf stream where they're caught by shrimp boats. They're a little larger and still pretty devoid of "shrimpy" flavor.

Growing up, we always thought of smaller as better when it came to shrimp. That was until I started eating shrimp cocktail in fancy steakhouses where it takes ten to make a pound.

I'm envious of your experience. I may have to sneak down to South Carolina for a mini-vacation during baiting season this year.

YourPalWill wrote:Growing up, we always thought of smaller as better when it came to shrimp. That was until I started eating shrimp cocktail in fancy steakhouses where it takes ten to make a pound.

The relation between food size and eating satisfaction is vexing.

On the one hand, smaller vegetables sometimes have a more intense taste (zucchini being the classic example), but I don't think this principle applies to the taste of creatures, such as shrimp.

On the other hand, the mouthfeel of larger shrimp is more pleasing, I think: more lush and textured.

Therefore, my tendency is to go toward the larger shrimp (though I pull back when shrimp start getting to the size of small lobsters -- I've found some of that meat to be a little "tough").

According to the guy I bought shrimp from in Venice, FL, the sweetest shrimp were the 20 counts -- not the bigger or smaller ones (note: he had several sizes in his cooler, and they were all the same price, so I didn't feel he had motivation to scam me).

Hammond