Chiff and Fipple Forums

Ok, folks, there are some very smart folks on these boards, so I have an odd question:

I love seafood, but for most of my life I have not cared for shrimp. Everyone else would be chowing down and loving every bite, and everytime I'd try a shrimp it would taste like a mouthful of Clorox bleach. Blech. I'm not talking about a mild or faint taste here: I'm talking tasting just like bleach smells.

I have since discovered that sometimes I luck out and don't get bleachy-tasting shrimp. Sometimes they taste wonderful, like little sweet lobsters. And even sometimes some shrimp on the same plate are good and others taste like bleach.

Also the odd thing is until recently I believed no one else could taste the bleach.

I happened to mention this to my sister when she was visiting my mom last year, and she commented "I can't stand the taste of shrimp--they taste just like bleach to me!"

Can anyone explain this?

Better yet, can anyone tell me: is there any way to consistently pick shrimp that won't taste like they've soaked in Clorox all day?

I and my taste buds thank you!!!

--James

Look for the Certified Bleach Free™ logo, at your local fish market.

I know just what you mean. Shrimp doesn't bother me as much as scallops do though. I had scallops once from a roadside stand in Cape Cod and they tasted tender and sweet almost like candy. But normally that sweet is masked behind a wall of some weird chemical taste and I can't stand them. Its bizarre to me that most people I dine with won't know what I'm talking about if I complain. Lobster and other seafoods usually have the same problem so I avoid seafood.

Maybe you are over-sensitive to some chemical in the shrimp, so it seems to you there's more than what is actually there. I know for myself I have to hold my breath with eggs and chicken - reeks of sulfer to me, but others don't seem to notice. Same with lemon juice on some foods - like strong vinegar to me, catches my breath, it seems so strong. Others don't seem to notice. Just a chemical sensitivity, as far as I can guess.

djm

peeplj wrote: everytime I'd try a shrimp it would taste like a mouthful of Clorox bleach.

... you've had a mouthful of bleach? Yuck!

Dip them in the red sauce first.

I know what you mean, they DO usually taste like bleach.

And for anyone who thinks you have to literally ingest bleach to taste it-
you obviously don't go overboard cleaning with bleach, or you'd know the taste exactly. Breathe much of it, and you really can taste it. (and you'll feel like crap for a good long while afterward too.)

hmmm.... they're salt water critters and salt is sodium and chlorine. Chlorine is also a major part of Chlorox, so maybe there's some connection there although I don't have any idea why some shrimp would taste more chloriney than others.

djm wrote:I know for myself I have to hold my breath with eggs and chicken - reeks of sulfer to me

I agree. It smells that way to me too.

What if it's just leftover bleach they use to clean the storage containers?
Possible.. yes? the large ones have bottom or side drains and there is always some liquid in the bottom.

So then the ones that don't taste like Bleach come from a dirty pot?!

Oh, damned if you do...

Oooo! I know! I know!

Shrimp do taste strongly of 'iodine" at times, particularly if the dark vein down the back isn't removed. Even if they are fresh, they'll taste of salt water, which has an "ocean" salty flavor, with a tinge of iodine. Like iodinated salt, only stronger.

Shrimp, and all seafood, deteriorate rapidly after death, and the decomposing proteins have a distinctive and very nasty chemical taste. This is detectable even in small amounts if you are in-the-know. To me, this taste is reminiscent of dish detergent. You think some soapy water has splashed on the fish. It's often only on a couple of shrimp in a batch, but might be on all.

One of the more scandalous practices of seafood markets, particularly low-volume ones in grocery stores, is that of . . . bleaching the seafood. Yup, that's correct. Most of the seafood they sell is not fresh, but has been previously frozen. Nobody will buy frozen from a market, so they thaw it. Then, it goes bad. So, they rinse the seafood in a solution of bleach to slow down decomposition and knock down the smell so that you can't tell it is going bad.

So, you're not imagining it. You are tasting Clorox.

Chicken eggs do taste of sulfur because the sulfur content in them is very high. Duck eggs do NOT taste that way, because they contain little in the way of sulfur compounds.

Chicken that has been fed on fish-meal and feed made from waste chicken from processing plants has a clearly fishy and/or rotten-chicken taste. You won't notice this if you have been eating this kind of chicken all along, but if you are sensitive to the taste of the rotten-fish chemicals in fish, you'll be able to detect it in chicken, as the chicken feed is made from waste, rotting fish.

All-natural chicken that is really all-natural won't taste like that.

Lambchop wrote: Chicken that has been fed on fish-meal and feed made from waste chicken from processing plants has a clearly fishy and/or rotten-chicken taste. You won't notice this if you have been eating this kind of chicken all along, but if you are sensitive to the taste of the rotten-fish chemicals in fish, you'll be able to detect it in chicken, as the chicken feed is made from waste, rotting fish.

That is why most of the meat that people eat (with a large exception of fish) comes from vegetarian animals. It is only the perverse farming practices of today that we feed these animals other animals (man I am sounding like a vegan). We do not eat crow, cat, or other carnivores. In fact, toxins are accumulated in every step of the food chain after plants (which is the reason some Hare Krishna’s will not eat mushrooms, or so I was told)

Vegetarians taste better!

PS as far as the bleachy-tasting shrimp thing, man, I thought that I had good taste buds, but I never noticed a difference in taste with the nerves down the back or bleach like flavor. Most of the shrimp that I have had were prepared at home from known sources and were not let to “age” like steak. Maybe it was luck, or maybe it was that the bad shrimp were wrapped with bacon

LC, you are scaring me. I love shrimp, but only eat it at restaurants. I love steamed shrimp (actually, most seafood is better steamed). I hope restaurants don't follow the preservation methods you outlined.

ID10T, I'm with you. I'm off to the Hare Krishna centre to rustle me up some vegetarians to BBQ (Tyler is invited, of course ).

djm

Lambchop has it right.

I have a friend who once worked in a large commercial butchershop in L.A. When the chickens would start to sour, they would immerse them in bleach. He claims that only Chinese restauranteurs would buy them. He won't each restaraunt Chinese food ever for that reason. Seems harsh, but you can't argue with experience.

For the record, I have never noticed a bleachy taste on shrimp...We buy em fresh sometimes, or frozen from Costco. I hate deveining and shelling shrimp and I don't relish the esthetic experience of tryna suck 'em out of the shell in my cioppino. Some gourmands do, tho, I reckon.