Dehydrating #3: Shrimp

Making my own dried shrimp was one of the earlier ideas that popped into my head after we got the new toaster oven. Dried shrimp is known for being more expensive than regular shrimp because the flavor is so much stronger. You don't have to use as much at one time, but it's more versatile because it is dried. When we went to Taiwan last year, I really wanted to bring some back. I saw someone selling a giant bag of dried shrimp at a market one evening but never got around to purchasing it to bring back home. I cannot legally buy it from the market to bring back because it is not properly packaged and labeled. By the time we were getting ready to leave, I didn't make a last minute grocery store trip to bring any home. I talked to a friend about it and she had said some of her friends tried bringing it back before but it is tricky because of the refrigeration. So from the time it gets packed into the luggage in Taiwan and makes it back to your home in the states, many hours (a day?) have passed and the quality may have been affected. 

I had done some research online and they said to dehydrate your own shrimp, start with cooked salad shrimp. This saves the step of needing to boil the shrimp before. I was at HEB getting some groceries when I saw a bag of salad shrimp. I spontaneously decided to get a bag and try making my own dehydrated shrimp at home that weekend. I honestly didn't even pay a very good price for the shrimp. The bag cost me about $7.00 and these were a pound of 150-250 size cooked shrimp. I can get a bag of the same size for uncooked shrimp and save $1.50. I think I can boil my own shrimp at home for less than that. 

Regardless, it was a capturing-the-time moment so I was already at HEB, the shrimp was in front of me, and I bought it. 

Dehydrating the shrimp wasn't difficult. I took the shrimp and laid it out on my dehydrating trays. I set the oven to 135F and the timer for 10 hours. I peeked in a few times to check on the shrimp, but when they were done, they were dry and felt just like the store-bought ones.  

 

My husband was smart. I didn't think about this, but it was a Friday evening to Saturday morning when I dehydrated them. At the time I had asked him, do you want to do the dehydrated shrimp first or *item number 4* first? He told me to do the shrimp first because I wasn't teaching over the weekend so it would give the house some time to dissipate the smells. Boy was he right. 

 

  

 

I'm happy with how my shrimp turned out. They look just like the ones from the store. The size of mine are a little smaller because I probably started out with smaller shrimp to begin with. I buy the size M from the store so they probably start with size 75-125 shrimp or so. The yield was similar. My pound of shrimp turned into 77g of dehydrated shrimp. The packs from the store have 100g of dried shrimp in them. 

 

When they're on sale at the grocery store, I can get the bag on the left for less than $7. The jar of dehydrated shrimp on the right I made myself cost me $7 in shrimp and time/electricity to dehydrate myself. 

 

I don't think I'll ever dehydrate my own shrimp again. The cost breakdown doesn't make sense and my whole house smells like a seafood market for about a half day. If I had access to bulk seafood at super discounted prices, my response might be different. But, for where I live and what I have access to, making it myself won't be cost efficient.  I'm glad I did it once just to have the experience and know-how. But now, I also know that paying for a bag of dehydrated shrimp from the grocery store really isn't that expensive.