Cooking Shrimp Help...
 

Anyone have success with boiling IQF shrimp where the shell comes away from the meat??? I cooked some for 3 min.. Shell tucked to meat...

Add some butter??? Help..

Thks..

Gunner

A friend of mine uses IQF at his seafood store and boils them until shell releases 10-20 min. sometimes that doesn't even work.

It's a lot of work but I always cut the shell all the way down the back to the end of the tail and take out the poo. And I use a lot of butter. Peels perfect every time.

I've never boiled IQF shrimp, but for regular shrimp 3 mins would be way too long.

IQF shrimp treated with sodium metabisulfite or STTP may show some white spotting on the shell. I have always had problems w/ peeling these shrimp after cooking. pelling raw not as bad.

Gunner, I bought a sack of IQF 12-16's from one of the docks in I.C. about 15yrs back and I had the same issue. I find that if you have them at near room temp before dropping them in boiling water, cooking at 3-4 minutes tops after it reaches a rolling boil again the immediately 'quenching' the boil with ice cubes or cold water (I cool until I can keep my fingers in the water for about 4 seconds without 'losing my religion'). I then let 'em soak for at least 15 minute (but they can hold at that temp without overcooking for quite longer) before serving. This helped quite a bit but there was always a few that had the sticky shells regardless. BTW...this works great on fresh shrimp and other critters as well. with crabs/crawfish I let it boil a few minutes more but not much more.

Using a high output propane burner on full blast so that recovery time is fast, I drop the shrimp in, as soon as water returns to boil I kill the fire and dump ice in the pot (not enough to make the whole thing cold but enough to stop "cooking") and let the shrimp set in the now warm seasoned sater for a bit to soak up seasoning. They come out easy to peel and very well seasoned.

I've tried that method before with mixed results, sometimes great and sometimes not so great. Plan on trying it again to see if I get better results.

Well Redchaser, tried your method again and it worked out great. Shrimp were seasoned well and cooked and peeled well. Only caveat, I only had about a pound of shrimp so it was a small batch, but they came out great. I'm anxious to try it on a larger batch soon.

merci beau coups

I just defrost the shrimp in a sink full of water and then boil them like regular shrimp. You may be getting old or poor quality iqf shrimp though if you're having a problem. I get mine from a guy that are no more than a couple weeks old

Thaw them first. Don't cook to a time, watch the shells and when the meat separates from the shell cut the fire and let them soak. Normally happens in under 2 minutes.

Update.. I defrosted shrimp and changed water several times... Boiled about 2 min... The Meat stuck.

Try peeling some raw and see how they peel? I bought 15 lbs of 21 / 25 IQF Saturday. peeled 2 lbs for skewers and they peeled fine. froze the rest to boil next weekend.