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Recently I had some shrimp scampi from a restaurant and the shrimp were unnaturally white, a very bright white, and the skin of the shrimp was a bright red, not the usual dull orange. The meat of the shrimp was quite tough, more like a lobster than a shrimp.
Is this some special species of shrimp, or was the shrimp treated by some chemical process to make it that way?
Shrimp skin color depends on the presence of several pigments, the main ones are blue and pink carotenoids. That make shrimps to have a wide variety of shades depending on the subspecies, feeding, location, etc.
When cooked, blue carotenoids dissapear, leaving just the pink pigments wich transform to orange shades.
The final color of the cooked shrimps depend on the original pigments.
