Wondering what to do with baby shrimp? This guide covers how to pick it, cook it, store it, and swap it, plus 15 recipes to put it to work.

What is baby shrimp?

Baby shrimp are the tiny, pink, fully cooked shrimp you buy already peeled, often labeled salad shrimp or bay shrimp. Each one is roughly the size of a thumbnail, and a single pound holds well over a hundred of them.

They come precooked and ready to eat, which is the whole point. You don't cook these the way you would a raw shrimp. You thaw them, drain them well, and toss them straight into cold dishes or into warm ones at the very end.

Their flavor is mild and sweet, and their job is convenience. When a recipe wants shrimp folded through something rather than featured as the star, baby shrimp spare you the peeling and deveining.

How to Use Baby Shrimp

Cold dishes are their home turf. Baby shrimp are made for shrimp salad, where they fold into a dressing of mayo and lemon with celery, and for chilled seafood mixes like Lexington Avenue Seafood Salad. They bind beautifully into a Shrimp Spread #1 or an Italian-Flavored Shrimp Dip.

They also slip into hot dishes at the finish. Stir them into a chowder or bisque, or into scrambled eggs and an omelet, in the last minute, just long enough to warm through.

Because they are already cooked, that is all they need.

Holly's Crockpot Seafood Cheese Dip and Shrimp Croustades both lean on them for exactly this reason: the shrimp turn up already tender, so the recipe never has to cook them.

The one rule is to add them late. Heat is the enemy of an already-cooked shrimp, and every extra minute over the burner only takes them further the wrong way.

Handling and Common Mistakes

Thaw frozen baby shrimp in the fridge overnight, or quickly under cold running water in a colander. Then drain them hard, because they hold a surprising amount of water and a wet handful turns a dip runny or a salad watery.

Pressing the drained shrimp gently between paper towels gets the last of it out. For a dip or spread especially, this step is the difference between a tight, scoopable texture and a loose, weepy one.

The cardinal mistake is overcooking. Simmer precooked baby shrimp for more than a minute and they seize into rubbery little pellets that taste of nothing. Add them off the heat, and never let them boil.

The second mistake is skipping the drain. Their packing liquid is salty and watery, and stirring it into a recipe both dilutes and oversalts. Drain first, then taste before you add any more salt.

Substitutes

Larger cooked, peeled shrimp are the obvious swap. Buy them already cooked and chop them down to bay-shrimp size, and they behave the same in any salad or dip, just at a higher price.

Raw shrimp work too, but you have to do the labor baby shrimp were meant to spare you. Peel and devein them, poach or saute just until pink, cool, then chop. They will taste a touch fresher for the effort.

For a non-shrimp stand-in, flaked imitation crab or cooked, picked crabmeat slots into the same cold seafood salads and dips, bringing a similar sweet mildness.

Buying and Storing

Baby shrimp are sold two ways: frozen in bags, and thawed on ice at the seafood counter. The frozen bags are usually the better buy, since you thaw only what you need and the rest keeps for months.

Look for shrimp that are firm and pink with a clean, briny smell. Any ammonia odor or mushy texture means they are past their prime, so pass them by.

Keep unopened bags frozen until you need them; they hold their quality for several months. Once thawed, treat them like any cooked seafood and use them within a day or two, kept cold in the fridge.

Don't refreeze shrimp you have already thawed. The texture suffers badly the second time around, so thaw only the amount a recipe calls for.

Quick facts

In Chinese

婴儿虾

British (UK) term

Baby shrimp

en français

petites crevettes

en español

bebé camarón

Recipes using baby shrimp

There are 15 recipes that contain this ingredient.

All 15 recipes