Species sheet · The Edible Ocean
giant tiger prawn
The most farmed prawn in the world, and the one that cost the most mangrove.
- Grilled whole after a garlic marinade
- Wok-fried over a fierce flame
- Poached briefly to stay pearly
- In French
- Gamba tigrée
- Scientific name
- Penaeus monodon
- In the water
- Benthic; brackish; from 0 to 150 m, rarely past 60 m; estuaries, mangroves, seagrass and shell bottoms.
- Season & buying
- Farmed year-round across Asia and Madagascar, with no local season: it always arrives frozen; check the origin on the label and be wary of a frost-covered shell, a sign it has been refrozen.
- Common length
- ~35 cm
- How to identify it
- A large prawn, up to 35 cm
Dark bands across the body
Prominent toothed rostrum
On the plate
Firm forthright flesh, a stronger taste than the farmed white prawns.
Avoid: Cooking it shelled: the shell is what holds the juice and the aroma.
Its farming destroyed close to a fifth of South-East Asia's mangroves in thirty years, before certification slowed things down in the 2010s.
In Umay recipes
One Umay recipe calls for it.
