Cooked Products

Cooked products are of the ready-to-eat food group; its processing is strictly controlled in food sanitation, biological criteria, and is usually packed in final packages ready for supplying the the distribution channels or supermarkets.

Cooked PTO Product

As you may already know, PTO is shrimp with all shell removed except the last segment and the tail part. PTO is a convenient meat shrimp for home use as well as restaurant use to prepare varous shrimp dishes including the breaded shrimp.

It is necessary to differentiate two types of cooked PTO products: the most common one is to process the shell-on shrimp (HLSO shrimp) to have PTO shrimp first, then this PTO is cooked. The second type is the shell-on shrimp is cooked first (cook-in-shell, cooked then peel), then the shell is removed to make the PTO. The result is cooked PTO product similar in looking, but the intricate color, taste and smell can be different singificantly to experienced tasters. Most of cooked PTO is of the 1st category while the second is limited used and marketed by certain distributors or supermarket systems.

The packing of PTO may vary in weight per bag; number of bags per carton (case). For the American market, the common packings can be seen below.

Cooked PD IQF:

The completely shell-off shrimp meat cooked PD (or cooked PND) is ready-to-eat item, and is a common product available on the markets for home use and for distribution channels to deal with. The item is usually supplied to US market. Similar to PTO, this item can be packed as below.

Cooked HOSO BT/VA SEMI- IQF OR IQF

1. Cooked HOSO B/T for Japan market: This cooked HOSO B/T is limitedly supplied to Japan for some buyers who use it for further processing into traditional Japanese dishes sold for certain holidays / occasions. Among the requirements for this item are the color of the shrimp (should be dark red when cooked), shrimp size (middle to small size is preferred) and demands are usually for the year end/ new year use only. Cooked HOSO Black Tiger is usually  frozen in SEMI IQF form, and packed in small boxes then putting into the master carton.

2. Cooked HOSO B/T (or P. vannamei) IQF for other markets: The item can be processed and packed at buyer's requirements. Currently this product is supplied mainly to EU market.

Sushi shrimp

Similar to Nobashi, sushi is a word originated from Japanese. It's a very common dish in Japan and made of various ingredients, of which shrimp is only one. Shrimp sushi can be processed from BT or Vannamei.

Sushi is processed from good fresh HLSO materials. It is cooked in shell-on state (cook in shell or cook then peel) first then passes a water cooling system. Next the shrimp is cut into two parts to open like a butterfly product. The meat is then trimmed for a more attractive looking. These pieces are then laid on tray, put it bag and vacuum sealed and is frozen. Frozen shrimp trays are ready for put into master carton. The details of packing for each size is in the table below:

Similar to nobashi product, the size indication may vary from buyer to buyer, the tendency is to group the products in to large, medium and small size (indicated by L, M and S) The number before the size letter further categorize them into small case of the group. As an example in above table you can see the length requirement for each size listed. The two numbers indicate that the length of shrimp should be winthin these values to be accepted.