In the summer I like to make shrimp skewers on the grill; the downside is having to peel the shrimp and then remove the veins from them. That can be a tedious undertaking but things like the Shrimp Cleaner from OXO can help. This is a plastic tool that is slid under the shell of the shrimp to lift it up and away from the body of the shrimp; once you get the hang of using this you can remove the vein and the shell at the same time but it took me a couple weeks of using this to be able to remove both things at once. Even if you buy cleaned shrimp with the shell removed, there is a chance that the vein is still going to be left in it. You are going to want to clean that out of the shrimp before you serve it because it can have a slightly gritty taste to it not to mention that it's the shrimp's fecal matter. The large or jumbo sized shrimp have a large vein and even with the shell removed, unless the vein is opened up it isn't going to be cleaned when it is cooked or boiled. Using this shrimp cleaning tool is easy and as mentioned, once you get the hang of using it you can go through the shells and vein at the same time. You will still need to rinse the shrimp and check for pieces of the shell and legs that might be stuck to the body of it. To clean the vein, slide the tool under the small flap of skin at the end of the shrimp and slide it up the spine of it. The small piece of flesh that is removed should be discarded although I have some friends that will rinse the pieces and save them to make a seafood stock or puree them to make a shrimp flavored sauce. This does have a sharp point to it as well as a serrated edge so that it can get through the shell; I purchased an inexpensive cover for this to prevent getting scraped buy it when going through the drawer to look for a spatula or knife. If you eat a lot of shrimp and buy them fresh, having this cleaning tool can make shell and vein removal a lot easier.

AlexFortune

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