The Value of Shrimp Shells
Throwing away shrimp shells is like pouring flavor down the drain.
It’s time to rethink all you thought you knew about shrimp and stop throwing away your shrimp shells. While it’s true that peeling shrimp takes time and can be a tedious task, we believe it’s always worth it to buy your shrimp shell-on...and then to hang onto those shells to harvest their unique properties.
Shell Composition
Shrimp shells are more like plasticky, translucent exoskeletons than actual shells. They are made of a substance called chitin, which does not break down when heated. In addition to chitin, the shells contain proteins, sugars, and tons of ribonucleotides, which are water-soluble compounds that dramatically enhance savory umami taste. These shells are also rich in aromatic compounds that provide shrimp flavor.
Why Buy Shell-On Shrimp?
When shrimp is cooked in its shell, that shrimpy goodness from the shell is absorbed by the meat, heightening its flavor.
The shells shield the shrimp from heat. Shrimp can quickly overcook and turn rubbery, but keeping the shell on helps insulate the delicate meat during cooking.
The shell has served a purpose before the shrimp even come into your kitchen. Virtually all shrimp undergo flash freezing on the boat. The shell provides protection to the shrimp during processing, freezing, and thawing. So once peeled for cooking, the shrimp meat inside is in better condition than its pre-peeled brethren. Plus, you’re left with a beautiful bowl of shells.
Putting the Shells to Work
That beautiful bowl of shells is not garbage: it's untapped flavor potential. It only takes five minutes to use those shells to make a quick, ultraflavorful shrimp stock. It’s a technique we use in our most popular recipe of all time—Shrimp Scampi—but you can put it to use in soups, stews, sauces, risotto, or in any dish you want to infuse with intense shrimp flavor.
The compounds that we associate with shrimp flavor are highly volatile, which means they can infuse plain water with rich seafood-y flavor quickly.
To make that stock even more flavorful, we brown the shells in a little bit of fat.
Because many flavor compounds are fat soluble, the oil will pull those out and hold onto them, and in addition, the high-heat treatment activates the Maillard reaction, generating hundreds of new flavor compounds as well.
Be sure to try our Shrimp Scampi recipe in this class and let science speak for itself.
