I can understand shrimp cocktail having the tails on because of the appearance and you can just bite it off at the tail and discard it. When I see a pasta dish or similar, why do they leave the tails on? Are you supposed to pull the tail off then eat the shrimp with the pasta, or awkwardly bite it with the tail on? It makes so much more sense to me to just remove the tails at some point before serving so that it can be eaten in one bite along with the pasta.
So you have a handle to grab hold of when you pick it up and eat it. Also, when you’re peeling them, the tail doesn’t usually come off and it would be an extra step to take it off. And, if you’re batter-frying them, you probably hold it by the tail, dip it & fry it, and the tail doesn’t get battered so again you have a handle to grab it by.
The handle idea makes sense in some circumstances, but the picture I saw that prompted this post was similar to a linguine Alfredo with tail on shrimp in it. You’re going to be eating the pasta with a fork anyway, why not be able to just stab a shrimp and eat it in the same bite as the pasta rather than reach your hand into Alfredo sauce and pull out a shrimp to eat by itself.
I’d say they are lazy if they leave the tails on for shrimp in pasta and the like. I buy frozen cleaned but tail on shrimp at Costco but always remove the tail after thawing. My wife expects it!
I don’t like it. Quite often, tail pieces come off during cooking and then you get an unpleasant chewy piece. I made biryani recently that said to leave the tails on. Pah! Off with their…er…tails.
Yeah, I’ll be honest. I don’t quite understand it. If the shell is left on, then I understand keeping the tail on. And I do like shrimp with the shells unperturbed. But if you’re peeling the shrimp, I don’t understand why you would leave the tails on. It’s kind of all-or-nothing for me.
Ever eat at a sushi place? Order Sweet Shrimp with the head. The shrimp body is raw served Nigiri style. The head is lightly battered and deep fried. When I say head, that includes antennae, legs and all. Pretty good.
Mrs. Greenjeans is Japanese, and she eats the tail. (Of the shrimp, that is.)
Ehn, my Grandmother taught me how to eat shrimps tail on and to delicately use a knife and fork to remove the tail from the body without wasting the meat inside the tail.
Hm, how to describe it.
With the shrimp on a plate, insert the tines of the fork into the meat just outside the tail. Take the tip of the knife [I tend to use the butter knife so it is not sharp] and insert under the shell parallel to the meat, then sort of tilt the point down and move the shell part away from the fork, so you are sort of sliding the shell off the end of the shrimp with the knife and holding the shrimp from moving with the tines of the fork.
I probably should just get a couple shrimp out of the freezer, thaw them and make a short video on how to do this. Really, with a little practice it is not difficult. Though I just prefer to get my shrimp already peeled and avoid the whole mess.
[though this would give me an excuse to go to Red Lobster and get some scampi I didn’t have to cook first :p]
For fried shrimp, I often eat the tail with no ill effects. For shrimp cocktail I always just try to pull the meat out from inside the tail and discard them, or just bite off at the tail and throw the rest away.
I too am baffled by pasta dishes and whatnot that have peeled shrimp in them but leave the tails on. The tails are edible, in a strict sense, but they usually aren’t pleasurable to eat at all. It’s a massive hassle and I just think it’s lazy to leave the tails on in a dish where the shrimp is going to be eaten with a fork alongside other ingredients like pasta and vegetables.
I eat the tail many times.
I take the tail off when peeling shrimp for pasta dishes.
I’m not Japanese, and I eat the tail. 
You can eat the tail. I used to do it all the time, before I developed an allergy.
Makes the shrimp look bigger.
I love tail.
Another tail eater here - pretty much how I’ve eaten shrimp since 1978 or so.
And I LOVE the fried shrimp head served at sushi restaurants.
Several things;
the shell does, in fact add flavour to the sauce, there are people who eat the tails they are easier to nab if you prefer to pluck them and eat them, they make the shrimp look bigger, in a restaurant setting they want you to notice every shrimp, the flesh is pale and easily disappears in the dish.
BITE?!?!
Wasteful.
KNIFE AND FORK?!?!
Time-consuming.
PULL?!?!
Unnecessary effort.
No, no, no…you just SQUEEZE the bit of shell around the tail and it pops right off! No waste, super quick, super easy.
I don’t know why they do it, but it drives me crazy. If there’s any way to deal with it without getting sauce all over your fingers, I haven’t found it.
Mostly this, I cynically say.
But also this.
At home, my daughter is the shrimp sheller. She’s amazingly thorough and quick with raw shrimp. She started the job around age 4, when she wasn’t quick, but she was very very thorough. I just had to make sure I asked her to start shelling shrimp a good hour before I started cooking! She declares it much easier and more pleasant to shell raw shrimp than shrimps on her plate, and so it shall be done.
Then we take the pile of shells and tails and loosely tie them in some cheesecloth, or if it’s just a few, I use an oversized tea ball (I have no idea what the thing was designed for, but it looks like a giant tea ball) and put the shells/tails in the cooking dish. Then I can easily fish them out before we eat. It really does make quite an impact on the flavor of the dish.