Frozen King Prawns: Not Worth the Trouble

I recently tried frozen king prawns, and I'm sharing my honest thoughts.

As a huge seafood fan, I usually order prawns from cafes or buy pre-cooked, canned ones. But when I saw these frozen prawns, I thought I'd give them a try. Unfortunately, I was disappointed. Firstly, there's way too much ice, and they're underweight - about 10 grams less than stated after thawing. Secondly, they're already cooked, which makes it hard to clean them of their innards. They taste okay, but the pros don't outweigh the cons.

Prawn details

The price is 340 rubles (on sale at Yarche);

Weight: 400 grams;

Manufacturer: Russia;

Shelf life: 12 months;

Kind: Unpeeled, 50/70 king prawns;

Description:

Fishing area: Continental waters of Southeast Asia.

Net weight without glaze: 465g.

Ingredients: Prawns (Litopenaeus Vannamei), salt, acidity regulators: sodium citrate, sodium hydroxide, water (protective ice shell).

Nutritional value: Protein - 15.7g, fat - 0.3g.

Energy value: 65.5 kcal.

Don't refreeze the product.

The product may contain shellfish residues.

Store at -18°C.

I love prawns because they're low-calorie, easy to cook, and packed with beneficial micro- and macronutrients - about ten times more than in meat. You'll find sodium, potassium, phosphorus, sulfur, calcium, magnesium, iron, zinc, copper, manganese, iodine, fluorine, chromium, cobalt, nickel, molybdenum, and more. My endocrinologist recommended half of this list to me because of my thyroid issues. I'd rather eat seafood than take pills, so I regularly have something from the sea - maybe once or twice a week. It might seem pricey, but a piece of meat costs just as much as a pack of prawns.

Composition:

Krevetki (litopenaeus Vannamel), salt, acidity regulators: citric acid, sodium hydroxide, water (protective ice coating)

The packaging isn't exactly eye-catching, with a dull blue-gray color that's only slightly more interesting with the shrimp inside. At our store, we only had these to choose from, and I usually prefer cleaned and deveined shrimp since I'm not a fan of the hassle. But what's here, is here, I guess.

Inside the packaging, there's a mesh window that lets you take a peek at what's inside. Honestly, it doesn't look super appetizing, but you can tell the shrimp are decently sized:

On the back of the packaging, there's some necessary information, including 107 calories per 100 grams. And, fun fact, I'm still not sure what 'glaze' refers to.

If we're talking about ice, there's more than enough of it, with ice coating on almost all the shrimp and even some scattered ice:

So, the weight with the glaze is 400 grams, the weight of the shrimp is 344 grams, and after rehydrating, the weight came out to be around 331 grams, give or take 10 grams – not a huge difference, but my inner Jew is still a bit miffed.

Preparation is straightforward, as per the packaging instructions – no need to get creative:

Just grab the shrimp, transfer them to a deep plate, and pour in boiling water for three minutes.

I have to say, my friend and I ended up with a pack of these, and we left them in water for a bit too long - they turned into mush. So, the three-minute rule is pretty accurate. After draining the water and giving them a squeeze of lemon juice, we were good to go.

After three minutes, the prawns were fully thawed, but not heated up, so we ended up eating them cold - which was actually a good thing, since they tasted even better that way:

One pack is enough for two servings or one serving for two times. Since I'm the only one in my family who likes seafood, it's a great value for me - here's what my meal looked like:

They're easy to clean if you know what you're doing. In general, it's just a matter of removing the head, the shell, and then pulling out the guts - and you're good to go. Some prawns are easier to clean than others - they're neat and not overcooked:

But others are a bit of a mess - you try to pull out the guts, but they just fall apart. This usually happens when the prawns are overcooked - they're hard to clean and not very tasty, either.

It's about 50/50 - some are okay, while others are a disaster. So, unfortunately, I wouldn't recommend these - they're just not worth the hassle. Thanks for reading!