Pizza Today - February 2016 - 40

hrimp can be an asset to your
pizzeria by manipulating
your menu to accommodate
the many seafood lovers in
America. Granted, some traditionally
inclined people may stick to that old
and dry rule of never allowing seafood
on a pizza, but those tired culinary fairy
tales are being broken like never before
by innovative chefs and restaurants
who combine shrimp and pizzas to
blow your mind.
Shrimp has always been popular because of its natural abundance and the
ease at which it could be caught using
a net. In the fourth century, Plhiloxenus described honey-glazed shrimp
as a favorite of the Greek banquets.
The Imperial Romans went crazy for
"garum" (now called coloratura). It was
a sauce of fermented shrimp, anchovy,
fish and salt. In the 1500s, when the
conquistadors reached the Aztec capital
of Tenochtitlan, they marveled at the
array of freshwater shrimp wrapped

in tortillas with tadpoles, beans and a
froth from the lake (now Mexico City)
compressed into a type of cheese.
As a restaurateur, there are
many traps, misinformation and
just downright "what?" moments

when buying, cooking, serving and
pricing shrimp. I recently bought
a 32-ounce bag of shrimp for $16.
When it unfroze, the shrimp weighed
27 ounces even before shelling them!
So let's immerse ourselves in the 1-23s of shrimp before buying a whole
case and ending up in the drink:
1. Size matters. The industry
has devised a measuring system for
shrimp because there are so many
different sizes of shrimp. This dual
numbering system should be -- but
isn't -- on every bag and case of
shrimp. It's a little box with "shrimp
count per pound" and then two numbers with a backwards slash in between them like these: 13/15; 16/20;

21/25; 26/30; 31/40; 41/50; 51/60;
61/70 and 71/90. The first number
is the minimum amount of shrimp
that equal a pound (16 ounces) and
the last number is the maximum
amount of shrimp equaling a pound.
The higher these numbers are, the
smaller the shrimp. And the larger
the shrimp, the higher the price -
with a few exceptions.
2. Additives. Let's face it: fresh
shrimp are the best...period. But if
you have to use frozen, please know
that a lot of shrimp is immersed
in polyphosphates or tripolyphosphates. A phosphate is a salt
of sulfuric acid found naturally.
This chemical is known to hold in
moisture in the proteins to prevent
"drip loss" in seafood. Overuse can
cause the shrimp to look larger, thus
increasing the price regardless of
that bleachy taste. I try to only buy
shrimp with the ingredients on the
label that reads "shrimp, salt."
3. Price. We've all been disappointed after biting into a giant
fried shrimp only to find a skimpy
shrimp inside the cave of crust. The
same holds true for pizzas, which is
why the "spread" of this topping on
a pie is all-important. For example,
13/15 count shrimp can run you
$.89 apiece. That means that five of
these shrimp will cost you $4.45.
I've used 21/25 shrimp that are
$.42 per shrimp. This can cost up to
$4.50 per pizza, but with less cheese
and cheaper supporting toppings, an
acceptable food cost can look like
this:
Shrimp $4.50
Dough $.32
Alfredo Sauce $.30
Artichoke $.89
Basil $.38
Pamigiano $.93= $7.32 pizza cost.
That $7.32 shrimp pie, if sold for
$19.99, would be a 36-percent food
cost and an increase of revenue of
$12.67. If it were priced at $21.99,

4 0 / P I Z Z AT O D AY. C O M / F E B R UA R Y 2 0 1 6

http://www.ammfg.com http://www.ammfg.com http://www.PIZZATODAY.COM

Pizza Today - February 2016

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Pizza Today - February 2016