The Least Useful Guide to Fukuoka

You may have seen boiled mantis shrimp on the top of a peace of sushi. Yes, they are one of the classic sushi toppings.

In home cooking, however, we tend to cook them in sugar and soy sauce, which taste great.

But it is not easy to shell them as they put on hard and sharp shells, and unlike prawns or other shrimps, the flesh of mantis shrimp sticks to the shell. I wish someone invented a “mantis shrimp shell remover”.  

After having the shrimps you can enjoy their real feature; a good broth. My mother used the broth to season vegetables and soy pulp, the by-product of tofu. 

As the soy pulp has no distinctive taste itself but absorbs every single drop of the broth in which it is cooked, you can enjoy the flavour and taste of mantis shrimp to the full.

Some people may say eating them is disgusting because it is said mantis shrimp’s diet is mainly on bodies on the seabed…the shortest food chain, isn’t it?