What is ceviche?

[Gabriel Lewis]

The only kind of ceviche I've had is a shrimp based one. Shrimp, tomato, cucumbers, onions and a touch of citrus... yummy.

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If the lime juice doesn't kill the parasites, why is it ok to eat shrimp cerviche?

I always thought shrimp were one of those things you should never eat raw... are raw shrimp generally ok to eat?

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You shouldn't eat shrimp raw because their digestive tracts contain a lot of bacteria that, while symbiotic when the shrimp are alive, cause the shrimp to detoriate rapidly when dead. This is why shrimp are usually sold head removed, as the digestive tract is located between the head and tail. If the shrimp are fresh enough, I would have no qualms about eating them raw. The FDA and the like always make a big fuss about ceviche not killing all the bad stuff, but if the seafood is immersed in undiluted lime juice long enough for it to fully penetrate all the way to the center of each piece, I don't see how any bad stuff could survive. The pH of lime juice is much too low for any microbes, or any form of life really to survive any signifcant period of time in such an acid medium. If you do make shrimp ceviche, I would use small shrimp are cut larger shrimp into smaller pieces though, and I would only use fresh shrimp, sort of the same way one approaches fish choices for sushi.

The time the fish needs to sit in the lime juice will depend on how thick it is, i.e. how long it will take the lime to fully penetrate the fish. Whenever a peruvian friend of mine made this it only took about 10-15 minutes, as the fish was fully immersed in lime juice ,and the fish was cut very thin. You could tell it was ready when the fish had turned fully white. I don't have as much experience with traditional ceviche, but it would take a lot longer if the fish were cut into chunks.

My peruvian friend also usually used seabass, but he always said any white fleshed ocean fish would do.

[Domestic Goddess]

I echo the fact that you need very fresh fish for cerviche. My mom would only fix cerviche when she found freshly caught/delivered fish at the market or when Dad would jog early in the morning to catch fishermen returning to land with their haul.

Taking in consideration the cleaning with vinegar and marinating time, I would say 10-15 minutes. You want the fish to turn white but not get tough in the vinegar. But I would confess indulging in leftover cerviche marinating in the fridge for hours.

[Chris Amirault]

You've inspired an eG Cook-Off: click here!

[bigbear]

This is an photo of the shrimp ceviche as it is served by the El Tambo restaurant in Tumbaco, Ecuador.

I posted this photo and others about 3 years ago in the eG Ecuador topic.