A Tale of Two Shrimp

I asked the Foodie Daughter to pick up a package

of raw, shell-on jumbo shrimp the other day.

Unfortunately,

what she brought home was raw, peeled shrimp.

Raw, peeled shrimp with an extra ingredient:

sodium tripolyphosphate.

Fellow blogger, Rosie Hawthorne

of Kitchens are Monkey Business,

has done an excellent job in the past of

explaining why one should try to avoid

purchasing shellfish that has

sodium tripolyphosphate as an added ingredient.*

* You will need to scroll about half-way down the page

to get to Rosie's explanation.

But you might just want to stay and

read the recipe while you are there.

Since my husband and I were hungry for shrimp,

I sauteed the shrimp

(which never seared, thanks to the STP),

made linguine and tossed that with

butter, garlic, peas, fresh Italian parsley

and freshly grated Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese.

What can I say?

The finished dish can only be as good as

the ingredients that went into it.

The shrimp were bloated,

and tasted mildly of soap.

The shrimp on bottom is the shrimp treated with

sodium tripolyphosphate.

The shrimp on the top only had sodium bisulfate

as an added ingredient.

It has been peeled and deveined for this photo.

This was the bag of the offending shrimp.








You should always read the ingredient list on frozen seafood.



You definitely don't want sodium tripolyphosphate

in your seafood.




This was the bag that I later picked up,

after reading the ingredient list.

Note the lack of STP in this product.

Now, once again look at the two shrimp.

The preferred shrimp is on the top.

It looks like a shrimp should look,

cooks and sears like a shrimp should cook and sear

and tastes like a shrimp should taste.

The shrimp on the bottom is bloated*

due to the retained water

(this also helps to inflate the price of the product),

doesn't sear like shrimp should sear

and doesn't taste like shrimp should taste.

*Please note that the "natural" shrimp is

rated 36-40 per pound,

while the TSP-added shrimp are

13-15 per 10 ounce bag.

Really, who measures shrimp by 10 ounces?

But in the end, the choice is yours.