Shrimp

A Shrimp's Journey to a Dinner Plate

Shrimp have been a staple in diets all over the world for centuries due to their delicious taste, valuable nutrients, and versatile uses in cooking. From paella to grilled skewers, shrimp can be cooked in an array of ways and served in many different dishes. While these tasty crustaceans can be found in supermarkets, restaurants, and dish plates around the globe, there's much more to these tiny invertebrates than meets the eye. Behind each succulent shrimp seasoning or zesty stir-fry lies the intricate, sometimes lengthy process it takes for a shrimp to make its way from sea to plate.

To understand a shrimp's journey to the dinner plate, one must first understand how a shrimp is created. Shrimp are shell-bearing crustaceans fouling the waters of oceans, bays and estuaries across the globe. Unlike most other sea animals, shrimp usually travel in large swarms, emerging from their hidden homes during the night to look for food.

As with any creature, a shrimp’s lifecycle begins when an egg is fertilized. The egg hatches into a larva, which looks drastically different from a grown shrimp. This larva spends its first weeks floating in the ocean, surviving on plankton and algae. As it matures, the larva begins to grow and ddevelop fins, a carapace, and antennae, elements which help the shrimp move throughent the water and feed.

Once the larvae reach maturity, they are left to roam the depths of oceans and seas, searching for suitable habitats to lay their eggs. For many species of shrimp, this is where they live out the remainder of their lives, while some species undertake seasonal migrations from the ocean depths to inshore shallows or wetlands in order to reproduce.

Before the shrimp reaches its destination, namely a dinner plate, it must first be caught by shrimpers, or fishermen, who use special nets and traps netting shrimp from both inshore and offshore grounds. It is estimated that approximately 35 billion pounds of shrimp are caught around the world every year, with nearly 20 million tons coming from harvest in wild catches alone.

On reaching port, the shrimpers begin the sorting procees, sorting the shrimp according to their species, size and if they have been previously frozen. If the shrimpers don't immediately land their catch at the port, they often disembark with tons of shrimp in large containers or heavy-duty plastic-lined bags. These containers will allow for proper storage of the product without any environmental damage to the marine environment.

Once the shrimpers arrive at the port, the shrimps are brought to processing plants where they undergo sanitation and grading processes. This includes their identification, size, counts, a general weight check and a sort of ‘perfection grading’, where the shrimp are rated according to colour and texture.

When the shrimp are graded, they are packaged in various sizes. Many shrimp can be processed live while some must be frozen before being repackaged and prepared for shipment. Once shuffled through the entire processing line, bags of shrimp are weighed and measured out, loaded onto trucks and sent to various retailers like restaurants and fish markets around the country.

The next step in the shrimp’s journey is to make its way to the dinner plate. When someone orders shrimp in a restaurant, the chef will first decide what kind of dish to make with the shrimp. They may opt for a fast food material like marinated tacos, or something fancier like a shrimp scampi. The chef will then clean and prepare the shrimp as needed for the dish chosen. This usually means peeling, cleaning and cutting the shrimp down to size, depending on how it will be cooked and enjoyed.

Lastly and most importantly, the chef will cook the shrimp in the desired recipe, ensuring that it is perfectly cooked and ready for the consumer. The finished, cooked shrimp is then plated, spruced up with a sprinkle of herbs or some flavorful sauces or oils and then presented to the hungry customer, ready to be bitten into and enjoyed.

From egg to dinner plate, the process of a shrimp’s journey is quite intricate. Its migration through various sources of capture, packing and sorting, freezing, transport and then finally being cooked to perfection all take time and effort, making it an impressive process to witness. Keep in mind, with the ever-expanding global demand for seafood, it is important to be aware of the consequences of overfishing in order to ensure our planet's continued abundance of aquatic life.

So the next time you munch on a succulent shrimp, remember all the hard work it took for it to be dressed and served on your plate!