Frozen Mantis Shrimp: Whole, Half-Cut and Peeled Meat

Product overview

Mantis shrimp are not true shrimp but stomatopods, flattened crustaceans with a broad, segmented tail and a pair of folding raptorial claws. The tail holds sweet, delicate meat with a texture somewhere between shrimp and langoustine, and the animal has a strong following in East and Southeast Asian kitchens: fried with salt and pepper or steamed whole in Chinese and Hong Kong restaurants, boiled and peeled as shako for Japanese sushi, and grilled or stir-fried across Southeast Asia. Supply is entirely wild, so each lot is specified by species, fishing area and size rather than by farm.

Two species are at the core of our offers. Oratosquilla oratoria, the Japanese mantis shrimp, lives on muddy bottoms in the temperate North-West Pacific and is landed in volume in the Bohai, Yellow and East China Seas, with smaller fisheries around Korea and Japan; it is a mid-sized animal sold mainly whole and as peeled meat. Harpiosquilla raphidea, sometimes sold as giant mantis shrimp, is a much larger tropical species from the coastal waters of Southeast Asia, including Indonesia, Malaysia and Thailand, and it supplies the big whole grades and the half-cut pieces used for grilling. Both are caught by bottom trawl, gillnet and other coastal gear, often alongside other demersal species, and other commercial mantis shrimps are offered only under their own scientific names.

Whole mantis shrimp are graded by pieces per kilogram, for example 8⁠–⁠12, 12⁠–⁠16, 16⁠–⁠20 and 20⁠–⁠25, with the largest grades coming from tropical species and smaller animals falling into higher counts. Half-cut product is split lengthwise through the tail, cleaned and frozen flat so that the meat is exposed for grilling or steaming with garlic, while peeled meat is taken out after a short cook or by hand from raw tails, depending on the packer, and IQF-frozen. Mantis shrimp deteriorate quickly after capture: their own enzymes soften the meat and draw it back from the shell, so the time from landing to freezing matters more than almost any other specification point. Whole and half-cut pieces are usually laid on trays or interleaved before freezing, because the spined tail and sharp claws puncture ordinary poly bags.

Buyers judge mantis shrimp on fill and freshness. A well-filled tail with firm, translucent meat is the target, whereas animals caught soon after molting are light and watery, and meat that has shrunk away from the shell points to delayed freezing. Roe-bearing females command a premium in Chinese and Japanese markets in season, and some buyers order them as a separate grade. Other checks cover dark discoloration at the joints, broken claws or tails, odor after thawing and glaze. Mantis shrimp sits naturally beside langoustine on a seafood menu, and the deglazing and counting method in our frozen shrimp specifications guide works just as well for it.