I don’t get it. I love shrimp.
But what is the deal with peel-and-eat shrimp?
They are hot so hard to peel when served so you have to just sit there and look at them while everyone else eats.
The sauce/spices are on the shells…which you peel off.
Why is this considered a thing? It’s not cool. It’s not edgy. It is just a pain in the ass.
Peel-and-eat shrimp when they’re farmed in Indonesia are like hard jello wrapped in a dead man’s fingernails. One of the worst excuses for food on the planet.
Peel-and-eat shrimp when they’re freshly caught off the Carolina coast, and you’ve boiled them for three minutes with salt and a little Old Bay, served with lemon butter and sharp cocktail sauce, alongside a baked potato and some broccoli-- holy shit, that might be the best meal in existence.
I’m not sure why. Cooking them in the shell seems to make them more flavorful, sweeter, juicier. The tactile experience of peeling them adds to the joy.
I have a proper shrimp boil once or twice a summer, and it’s always a highlight. But the key is to find excellent shrimp: with mediocre shrimp it’s nothing.
I’ll look for my invitation in the mail 
Sounds awesome.
That was your plan all along, wasn’t it?
Well played.
Even for the sad, weak and low effort peel and eat shrimp, there are some advantages. In general, the shell itself has some flavor (see my keeping them from when I buy on-the-shell shrimp for stock), and it can also prevent flavor loss that pre-cooked shell-off shrimp tend toward when IQF (individual quick frozen). Cooking on the shell shrimp allows me to be a bit less careful for hot and fast cooking methods (and bakes some of that shell flavor back in).
But… yeah, the sort of watery, dipped, and lifeless peel-and-eat shrimp that are the bane of those pathetic half-moons plastic tubs at the store, or served at bargain buffets… no, there’s not much use to them. And certainly not if it bothers you (and it does some people, no judgement) to constantly peel each one and sog your fingers doing so.
I would certainly sup upon @Left_Hand_of_Dorkness’s variety, or any other made with even a modicum of love and care.
The Sense Of Accomplishment
No but…now you mention it I will go with it. 
I was at a fish boil in Wisconsin about 40 years ago. I still remember it as one of the best meals I ever ate.
If yours is close to that I would happily fly to wherever in the world you are for it.
Sooo yummy.
I agree, but I’ll take peeling shrimp shells over trying to extract a minuscule amount of meat from a tiny crab any day.
Ice. A bowl of ice. A sprinkle of salt added to the ice.
No burned fingers.
And when asked what you had for dinner, you can be all frou-frou and say “A lovely shrimp cocktail, my good man”
Crawdaddies are hot in another way. Don’t touch your eyes during dinner. Be prepared for hot lips for a couple hours after.
I love crawdads.
I got super respect as a kid when hiking with some friends around a lake in Wisconsin.
We stopped and had some fun catching crawdads. All sorts of different techniques. We were going to put them back but I suggested we cook them. My friends thought it was not possible…we didn’t have any metal pots. I told them we could use our paper cups we had with us for water.
They didn’t believe me at all. But, we started a fire and, once going, I put some paper cups in the fire with water in them. Magically, they did not burn. I knew they wouldn’t cuz I was a dork but my friends were amazed (that’s where I got lots of pre-teen respect).
We put the crawdads in the boiling water and…Wisconsin lobster. I was surprised that the greenish crawdads turned bright red when cooked. Truly a freshwater lobster to my eyes.
Delicious. One of my most favorite meals ever.
Shrimp shells do more than just protect the flesh; they also significantly enhance its flavor in three ways:
- Shrimp shells contain water-soluble flavor compounds that are absorbed by the shrimp flesh during cooking, thereby enhancing its taste.
- The shells are also loaded with proteins and sugars—almost as much as the flesh itself. When they brown, they undergo the flavor-enhancing Maillard reaction just as roasted meats do, which gives the shells even more flavor to pass along to the flesh.
- Like the flesh, the shells contain healthy amounts of glutamates and nucleotides, compounds that dramatically enhance savory umami flavor when present together in food. These compounds also get transferred to the meat during cooking, amplifying the effect of the glutamates and nucleotides in the shrimp’s flesh.
I don’t have shrimp often, but other than pre-cooked cold shrimp in shrimp cocktails, my usual cooking method is on the outdoor grill. When doing shrimp this way, I marinate them and grill them with the shell on, which helps keep them firm and juicy. There’s lots of room for the marinade to penetrate around the shell – remember that the head is chopped off and the shrimp has to be deveined. I use a pungent marinade (typically a mix of teriyaki sauce and a particular type of vinaigrette style Japanese salad dressing) and believe me, the flavour is abundant when the shrimp is peeled. I always use large sized shrimp for this, so while you do have to peel them, they’re huge and there aren’t very many.
Another variant that I quite like with somewhat smaller shrimp is shrimp and scallop kabobs. Here, the shrimp is pre-peeled, and the skewers of shrimp and scallops marinaded in the same marinade as I use for shell-on jumbo shrimp, quickly grilled for just a few minutes, and served over Basmati rice.
Typically if I go to a restaurant and want shrimp, but I have to peel it myself, I just don’t order the shrimp. I find the feeling of peeling them to be really gross, and it is frustrating since I just want to eat them and not have to do the extra work.
I hope you never order lobster!
Lol, I typically don’t order lobster or crab if I have to de-shell them either. I do enjoy those foods if they come without the shell though.
The only peel-and-eat shrimp I’ve ever had was served cold, like cocktail shrimp you have to peel yourself. So it wasn’t finger-burning or as messy, but it was still a bit of a chore.
What I really hate, and Stephen Colbert is with me on this, is restaurants that serve hot dishes like a pasta or gumbo with shrimp that still have the tails attached. Cocktail shrimp, fine, it’s not messy or hot and the tails make a convenient ‘handle’. But I don’t want to pick the damn shrimp out of the hot sauce or broth and pull the tails off myself, and it’s not like it’s so aesthetically pleasing that there’s any point to leaving the tails on. 
Sure there is - eat 'em! (the tails)
A couple of times I had peel-and-eat shrimp with spicy coatings at a local restaurant. Whatever dubious flavor and “health” advantages there might have been were outweighed by the sheer mess and sticky, tainted fingers involved. I feel the same way about crawfish and other seafood served au naturel at those pseudo-Cajun boil-type places.
It’s just not worth the effort and sloppy eating.
*it’s amazing I ever got to like crawfish, after my first exposure to them was as lawn pests in southeast coastal Texas.
Wow! Loretta Swit is still doing personal appearances at (looks it up) 87?
There’s a Chinese Buffet here with all the usual offerings, plus an amazing salad bar and a huge pile of ice cold cooked shrimp on ice. Peel your own. I get a plate of salad and another plate of shrimp with some cocktail sauce on the side, and just go to town, shells flying.