Why do restaurants serve prawns with the tails still attached? It makes a mess while I try to clean them at my table.
Here’s a tip. I’m not sure this works for prawns, but it does for shrimp. If you pinch the tail with your fingers right at the end of the meat, where the fan-shaped part starts, the meat inside the tail part will break off and it’ll slide out of the last bit of the shell. By the way, are you British or do they actually serve prawns here in the US too?
Doughboy:
Thank you. I live in the San Francisco, California area. Yes, I know the pinch technique. It isn’t appropriate when one is nicely dressed.
My question, however, isn’t how to eat them, but why doesn’t the chef finish cleaning the tasty critters?
UK definitions since i worked at a resturant etc:
Prawn - small little prawns
Shrimp - small little prawns or the big ones
King Prawns = shrimp (big prawns)
Tiger Prawns = these prawns the size of your hand
Oh … shrimp …
I thought this was a variation on chess - capture a piece and eat it, with, ironically the lowest ranked piece tasting best.
never mind
That is just awful!
Since they are not likely to stop doing this soon, here’s something you can try next time you eat prawns or shrimp at a place where using one’s fingers would be deemed inappropriate:
[list=1]
[li]Use your fork in your left hand to pin the crustacean to the plate. This typically works best near the tail.[/li]
[li]With the flat of the spoon (in your right hand) crush the tail where the meat is still inside.[/li]
[li]Now place the tip of the spoon farther back, where the tail has no meat and use the spoon to pull the tail fin away from the meat. [/list=1][/li]
Voilá! You get all the meat (this may take some practice) and none of the mess or indignity.
If you’ve been to a country where they eat (especially farm) a lot of shrimp/prawns, you’ll notice that a lot of the time they simply eat the tails too - I do! Since they are processed there, that’s how they are left… it’s also a pain to pluck tails off all day… you wouldn’t have a handy little handle to pick them up with… they wouldn’t look as fresh or wild (you can buy shelled peeled, cooked, and de-tailed shrimp; but they look bad, like baby mice - Yuck!). Sans tails, how do you know you’re not getting hermit crab asses or the cut-offs from animal nuetering clinics :D?
I like to eat them tails and all. Nice and crunchy. This weirds most people out, including my fiance.
Hey bozos! It wasn’t a troll post. I wanna know! I understand that the net isn’t crawling with this info, I checked, but how about a few chefs or cooks helping us/me out?
Maybe because they look more decorative that way.
Jeez, another food question!
Well yes, I eat the shrimp (prawns are a matter of 4-6 per pound) tail and all. The bit of exoskeleton makes for a supreme nugget of calcium rich munchification. Chefs leave it that way so as to avoid ripping the little sea-floor-cockroach-beasties all to pieces. If you’re worried about your precious tux, do as Shibb says. Otherwise, get all of the crunchy bits in your maw and nevermind the stuck-twixt-your-molars-afters.
Ding ding ding!
Absolutely correct: presentation. Same reason we served lobster in the shell.