Prawns

Is it shrimp or not?

My introduction to prawns was at my daughter's dinner table a few years ago in Sydney, and my immediate reaction was not good. In Australia, prawns are sold, prepared, and served with their heads still attached. 

How food looks sets my expectations, and even though I was famished, I wasn't about to eat the prawn. 

In the US, they take the heads off dead animals to spare us from having to look into their eyes before we eat them.

I picked up the prawn and fixated on its face. Its eyes, round and beady, were popping out, and the long stringy antennas hanging from the jaws of the creature were startling.

I mean, did she expect me to eat it?  

I remember lecturing my daughters on the importance of expanding their horizons by trying new foods and learning about other cultures. I didn't want to be a hypocrite, although that's what I felt like looking at that prawn!

So, I got the courage to pick up the critter and was about to eat it when my daughter asked, "Mommy, do you want me to take the head off?" 

Eww!

'I'll slip another shrimp on the barbie for you' is NOT a phrase you'll likely hear while visiting the land Down Under. 

A barbie in Australia is their term for a barb-e-cue grill, prawn is the word for shrimp, and Down Under is associated with Australia because the continent is located in the southern hemisphere, below or down under the equator.

When the Australian Tourism Commission wanted to entice Americans to visit their country, they substituted the word prawn for shrimp in their marketing ads because of Americans' familiarity with the term.

They hired the Aussie actor Paul Hogan, aka Crocodile Dundee, to deliver the infamous line that ran in the ads from the mid-1980s-1990.

While folks in Australia, New Zealand, Ireland, and the UK call all shrimp prawns, the latter is a word rarely used in the US, except for a few folks, none I know, who may refer to jumbo shrimp as prawn because prawns are so large.

For me, the prawn vs. shrimp debate raises questions: Is there a difference between the two, or is this just a simple case of the idiomatic phrase tomayto, tomahto? 

Fresh Prawns

In Sydney, the terms prawn and shrimp are used interchangeably, which can be confusing.

It is correct that they look alike and have heads, thoraxes, abdomens, antennas, gills, fan-tails, and faces, but that is where their similarities end.

The head of the prawn overlaps the thorax, followed by an overlapping over the body, like shingles on a roof. The thorax of a shrimp overlaps the head and core together, more like a cummerbund. 

A shrimp's body is curved, but the body of a prawn is straight. Furthermore, shrimp has claws on one pair of legs, and prawns have them on three. 

These physical characteristics alone make them anatomically different. 

Both prawns and shrimp are bottom dwellers who feed on anything; however, prawns are aquatic creatures primarily found in fresh or brackish water. 

Shrimp, conversely, are marine animals that can survive in fresh or salty water but prefer to swim along the bottom of oceans and seas.  

As a result, having been marinated in brine, shrimp are slightly more salted and not as sweet as prawns, 

Fresh Shrimp

Shrimp and prawns are from the family of decapods crustaceans, but prawns fall under the dendrobranchiate suborder, and shrimp belong to the pleocyemata suborder.  

While this may make them related, they are not the same.

Living in Virginia Beach, we have a lot of porpoises that swim in social groups near the shore. 

Most tourists visiting the beach see the porpoises but call them dolphins because they can't differentiate, a mistake I made when I first moved to Virginia Beach.

However, they are not the same. Porpoises belong to the Phocoenidae suborder, and the dolphin's suborder is Delphinidae.

The same is true for crocodiles and alligators. They are both massive scary reptiles with similar features and will bite when provoked, but almost everything else is different.  

While they come from the same reptilian order, they are classified as different animals because they come from other families.  Crocodiles come from the Crocodylidae family, and the alligators family is Alligatoridae.  

They also enjoy different habitats; crocodiles prefer salt water, and alligators like fresh.

So, is the prawn vs. shrimp debate a simple case of the idiomatic phrase tomayto, tomahto? 

Absolutely not! 

That saying refers to an item being the same but pronounced differently.

My son-in-law and I are constantly debating about Aussie foods that are supposed to be the same as American, but to me, they are not. 

If he were to say a prawn is like a shrimp, I would agree.

So, what is the answer to the question posed at the beginning of this post? Is it shrimp or not? 

You tell me!

Trust me, after living in America for my entire life, when a food item is an imposter, I know it. 

I finally got up my nerve to eat the prawn. It was too fleshy and fishy for my palate; however, I love the taste of shrimp!

Prawns vs. shrimp . . . 

Slip another shrimp on the barbie . . . 

Should I take the head off ?. . .

I am NOT in Kansas!

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