Ina Garten-Inspired Shrimp Scampi
If the sauce ends up as a layer of oil at the bottom of the bowl, it never emulsified. It only melted.
Butter is about 80% fat and 16% water, and whisked into a hot liquid in cold pieces it forms an emulsion — the fat suspended in droplets rather than pooling. That emulsion is glossy, slightly thickened, and clings to shrimp and pasta. Melted butter poured in, or butter added to a pan that is still boiling, breaks straight away and you get grease.
Take the pan off the heat, add the butter cold and cubed, and swirl until each piece disappears before the next goes in. French kitchens call it monter au beurre, and it is the only technical step in this dish.
Jump to the recipe ↓Ina Garten-Inspired Shrimp Scampi
Serves 4 · Main
- Prep
- 15 min
- Cook
- 12 min
- Total
- 27 min
Involved7 steps, 10 ingredients, a technique that commonly fails
Ingredients
- 700 g large raw shrimp, peeled, tails on
- 400 g linguine
- 4 tbsp olive oil
- 6 garlic cloves, thinly sliced
- 1/2 tsp chilli flakes
- 200 ml dry white wine
- 150 g cold butter, cubed
- 1 lemon, zest and juice
- large handful parsley, chopped
- kosher salt, black pepper
Method
- Boil the linguine in well-salted water, short. Reserve a mugful of water.1 minute
- Sear the dried, salted shrimp a side in the oil, over high heat. Remove them.45 seconds
- Turn the heat down. Sweat the garlic and chilli without colouring.1 minute
- Add the wine and reduce by half.
- Take the pan off the heat. Whisk in the cold butter a few cubes at a time, swirling, until glossy.
- Add the lemon zest and juice, then the pasta with a splash of its water, and toss.
- Return the shrimp and their juices. Parsley and pepper, and serve at once.
Cook the shrimp for ninety seconds and take them out
They need almost no time and they will overcook while you build the sauce. Sear them, remove them to a plate, make the sauce in the same pan, and return them at the very end with any juices they have given up. A shrimp that has been in the pan for the whole ten minutes is rubber.
Garlic goes in gently, and never browns
Sliced garlic in hot oil goes from fragrant to bitter in about thirty seconds. Turn the heat down after searing the shrimp, and let the garlic sweat in the fat for a minute without taking any colour. Brown garlic in a delicate white wine sauce is the flavour you will taste all evening.
Keep the pan off the heat while the butter goes in
If it starts to look oily, it has got too hot. A splash of the pasta water and vigorous swirling will usually bring it back — the starch helps hold it together — but the fix is not to reheat it.
Storing
Eat it immediately. A butter emulsion will not survive refrigeration, and reheated shrimp are rubbery. This is a twenty-minute dish, made to order.
Questions people ask
Why is my sauce greasy?
The butter melted rather than emulsified. Off the heat, cold cubes, one at a time.
Why remove the shrimp?
They cook in about ninety seconds and would be overdone by the time the sauce is built.
Can I use pre-cooked shrimp?
They will toughen further when reheated. Raw shrimp are worth seeking out for this.
Do I need wine?
It supplies the acid and the liquid the emulsion is built on. Stock and an extra squeeze of lemon is the nearest substitute.
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