When I was dating my hubby a few years back, I was no Martha Stewart, nor a Betty Crocker in the kitchen. My husband (boyfriend at the time) would simply purchase our favorite meals from supermarkets and pre-heat. Don’t get me wrong, both my hubby and I knew how to cook, we just ‘didn’t’ do much at the time. Looking back, shrimp scampi was always on our ‘to-buy’ list and became a weekly staple on the kitchen table. Our favorite kind usually came in a ‘box’, frozen, and ready to add over pasta or rice. So cooking scampi last night was reminiscent of our ‘dating days’ and just how much we’ve come a long ways with our cooking skills in the kitchen…
What I have for you is an easy way to enjoy shrimp in a flavorful manner. With a prep time of 10 minutes and cook time of 5 minutes, you simply can’t go wrong!
If you are using frozen shrimp, defrost them quickly and safely by putting the shrimp in a large bowl of ice water.
Ingredients
- 1 pound large (16-20 count) shrimp, shelled and de-veined, tail-on for presentation if you want
- Salt
- 3-4 garlic cloves, mashed, or 1 tbsp minced garlic (After mashing the garlic cloves, I like to throw in the whole of it in the pan to give my dish a rustic look, this is optional of course. My husband, on the other hand, likes to slice the garlic thinly to ‘help infuse the olive oil on the pan’.)
- 2 tablespoons olive oil
- 2-3 tablespoons butter
- 2 tablespoons finely chopped Italian parsley
- 1/2 cup white wine
- 1/2 to 1 teaspoon red pepper flakes
- Freshly ground black pepper to taste
- 1 Tbsp lemon juice
* Whether you prepare the shrimp shell on or off is really up to you. Cooking the shrimp with the shells still on will impart more flavor, but they are much messier to eat. Shelling the shrimp before cooking them will make the shrimp a lot easier to eat and you can save the shells for shellfish stock if you want.
Directions
1 Heat a sauté pan on high heat. Reduce the heat to medium-high and add the olive oil and butter. Once the butter melts, foams up and subsides, add the garlic and red pepper flakes. Sauté for a minute, or until you see the edges of some of the garlic just beginning to brown.
2 As soon as the garlic begins to brown, add the shrimp to the pan. Then add the white wine and stir to combine and coat the shrimp with the butter, oil, and wine. Spread the shrimp out in an even layer in the pan. Increase the heat to the highest setting and let the wine boil vigorously for 2-3 minutes.
3 Turn the shrimp over, or toss them so the cooked sides are mostly facing up, and boil the wine for another minute. Remove from the heat, add the parsley and toss to combine. Add the lemon juice and black pepper.
Serve alone, with crusty bread, over pasta, or over rice.
Yield: Serves 4
This looks so yummy and so easy to make! 😀
Wow! Looks so good and simple! Nice story…
Hello Manu! Thank you…and as I speak, once again cooking in my kitchen 😉. Haha…hope all is well in Peru and thanks for stopping by😊