Preparing Shrimp 'faster than a lightning bolt'

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Preparing Shrimp 'faster than a lightning bolt'

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Swiftly de-heading shrimp for money while growing up on St. Helena Island made Pattie Golden a natural for entering the 2007 Beaufort Shrimp Festival's shrimp de-heading contest.

Summers spent de-heading as many as 500 to 600 pounds of shrimp in a day helped Golden win the title of fastest shrimp de-header last year.

Golden de-headed a pound of shrimp in about 30 seconds -- half the time allotted her fellow contestants.

"The speaker asked me if I was sure I was done already," Golden said of last year's shrimp de-heading competition. "The announcer said, 'You're faster than a lightning bolt.' "

The 27-year-old began de-heading shrimp as soon as she could reach the shrimp table by standing on a 5-gallon bucket when she about 2 years old.

"I learned from my dad and my mom," Golden said. "I started off with one hand, and my mom (Barbara) used to say, 'Oh, no, use both hands. If you don't have both hands on the table, you'll never get done.' "

Her dad, William "Lonnie" Golden, said working with shrimp comes naturally for all of his four children: Bobbie Golden Thomas, 33, Lonnie Thomas Golden, 24, and Debra Golden Glass, 22.

"These kids were like kids who were raised on a farm who learn to milk cows and feed chickens," Lonnie said. "They know how to head shrimp, peel shrimp and pack shrimp. And Pattie's pretty ... good at retail."

Pattie estimated the most shrimp she's ever de-headed was 500 to 600 pounds in one day.

"When I was a child, I headed every day," Golden said. "At first I didn't like it, because it made my hands and fingers sore -- you know the shrimp acid burns your hands. But when I learned to make money doing it, I liked it. I head it, clean it, but I don't eat it. My theory is we ate too much shrimp when we were little."

Golden's daughters, Elizabeth Humphries, 6, and Hayli Humphries, 3, are following in mom's footsteps by learning to head and clean shrimp. Elizabeth, like her mother, has had her fill of eating shrimp, but Hayli will eat them cooked more ways than Bubba Gump can list them.

As a toddler, Golden held the shrimp by their whiskers pinching with her index finger and thumb, just between the head and the body to remove the head. She calls that the beginner's method.

Golden's winning technique is grabbing a shrimp in each hand, then pinching and tossing, heads in one direction -- shrimp in another -- at a rate of about 3 pounds in less than 30 seconds.

While Golden has attended the Beaufort Shrimp Festival since 1995, it wasn't until her younger sister Debbie challenged her to enter last year's contest.

"Shrimp are our livelihood," said Golden, a member of a fourth generation shrimping family. "If we didn't catch them, head them and sell them, we wouldn't have a job. It's a family tradition."

Today, de-heading shrimp is not on Golden's list of priorities. She works at River Oaks Residential Care. "I have a real job now," Golden said.