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See why.Shrimp Peeling Tools
We tested five new tools that promised to make the chore of shelling shrimp and removing their veins easier.
Published June 1, 2015. Appears in Cook's Country TV Season 9: Southern Stews
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What You Need To Know
Shelling shrimp and removing their veins can be laborious. We typically use a knife to slice the shell, pry it off with our fingers, and then use the knife’s tip to fish out the vein. But we found five new tools that promised to make this chore easier and faster.
We tested these five, priced from roughly $6 to $17, against our winning seafood scissors, The RSVP International Endurance Seafood Scissors. They’re only about $8 and have been handy in the past for shelling shrimp, crab, and lobster, so we wanted to see how they’d compare with shrimp-specific tools. We also included our winning paring knife: Because we can shell shrimp with a knife, a tool had to be significantly faster, easier, and better at the task to earn our favor.
We shelled piles of small, medium, and large shrimp, removing the shells and veins and leaving the tails on as you would for shrimp cocktail. We timed how long it took each tool to shell 10 of each size shrimp and considered how easy they were to use, how precisely they severed the shells, how the shrimp looked afterward, and how versatile they were with small, medium, and large shrimp.
We saw it all—the good (perfectly shelled shrimp), the bad (flimsy, faulty models), and the ugly (shrimp so mangled that when we cooked them into our fiery Cook's Illustrated Shrimp Fra Diavolo, they looked like squid). The six tools came in four different styles. The first and worst style is what testers called the “expansion” model. These tools get inserted between the shell and the meat and expand, pushing the two apart so that you can pull off the shell. These were a failure. At best, they didn’t pull off the whole shell or lacked a sharp tip to fish out the vein. At worst, they shredded the meat to ribbons.
The second style was shaped like a two-tined fork; testers fit one tine between the shell and the meat and pushed back toward the tail. This was supposed to sweep the shell and vein off and did so quite quickly, but it marred the meat and broke the shell and vein into pieces that were time-consuming to pluck out.
Two deveiners came in a third design that looked like a paring knife with a curved blade. The top edge is sharp and you thread it between the shell and the meat and pull upward, cutting off the shell. One model had a dull, serrated plastic blade that marred the meat and couldn’t get through the shell efficiently. The second was supersharp and precise, but it wasn’t any faster than a paring knife.
The fourth and sole successful style was our trusty pair of seafood scissors, which look just like regular scissors but have curved blades. Their arch fit tidily inside shrimp large and small, and because we ...
Everything We Tested
Highly Recommended
- End Result: 3 stars out of 3.
- Ease of Use: 3 stars out of 3.
- Versatility: 3 stars out of 3.
The scissors’ curved blades neatly snipped off the shells of shrimp large and small. They were intuitive and both faster and more precise than a paring knife because instead of focusing on where and how deep to cut into the meat, we simply made two to three controlled snips up the top of the shell. This nicely laid out the whole vein for tidy removal.
Recommended with reservations
- End Result: 2 stars out of 3.
- Ease of Use: 2 stars out of 3.
- Versatility: 3 stars out of 3.
This shrimp tool resembled a paring knife with a thin curved blade that was sharp on the top instead of the bottom. Testers threaded the blade between the shell and meat and pulled up, and the sharp edge neatly severed the shell. We then used the pointy tip to pick out the vein. It worked well and was precise, but it required focus and wasn’t faster than a paring knife.
Not Recommended
- End Result: 1 stars out of 3.
- Ease of Use: 2 stars out of 3.
- Versatility: 3 stars out of 3.
This tool looked like a little two-pronged fork. Testers inserted one of the tines up the back of the shrimp shell, and it dragged off the shell as we pushed. It was faster than a paring knife but tore the shell off in pieces, marred the meat, and smashed the veins into smaller bits so that we had to fish out each individual piece. We’d rather use a knife and spend a few more minutes for less muss and fuss.
- End Result: 1.5 stars out of 3.
- Ease of Use: 1.5 stars out of 3.
- Versatility: 2 stars out of 3.
This plastic deveiner earned no love from testers. Following directions, testers inserted the blade and pulled upward to sever the shell, but the blunt serrated edge was too dull and required multiple attempts to get through the whole shell. When it did, it was a mess, marring the meat and chopping the vein into pieces that were painstaking to remove. Overall, it was messy and slower than a paring knife; save your drawer space.
- End Result: 1 stars out of 3.
- Ease of Use: 1 stars out of 3.
- Versatility: 2 stars out of 3.
This deveiner looked like a pair of scissors, but instead of two straight blades, it had three linked metal slats that laid flush when closed and expanded into a triangle when we squeezed the handles. The unfolding triangle was supposed to push the meat and shell apart—which it did sometimes, but with larger shrimp, it couldn’t pull off the whole shell, so testers had to finish with a paring knife. They also had to use the knife to fish out the vein: Because the prongs were linked, there was no sharp tip to bat cleanup.
- End Result: 0.5 stars out of 3.
- Ease of Use: 0.5 stars out of 3.
- Versatility: 2 stars out of 3.
This shrimp “master” promised to peel and devein shrimp in “one easy action,” but in reality it mangled shrimp in several messy steps. Following instructions, testers inserted its two prongs between the shell and meat and squeezed the arms closed—this was supposed to open the two prongs between the meat and shell, prying them apart. In reality, the lower prong shredded the meat to a shaggy pulp—if it even fit. The prong couldn’t even catch on smaller shrimp, instead hanging uselessly below.
Reviews you can trust
Reviews you can trust
The mission of America’s Test Kitchen Reviews is to find the best equipment and ingredients for the home cook through rigorous, hands-on testing. We stand behind our winners so much that we even put our seal of approval on them.
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