Garlic shrimp with lemon and butter is such an easy recipe to make and it’s so very flavorful. Ready fast, it’s the perfect weeknight dinner!
I love these garlic shrimp and make them often. It’s the simplest recipe – shrimp cooked with garlic, butter, and lemon juice – and it’s ready super fast.
How to make garlic shrimp
Scroll down to the recipe card for the detailed instructions. The idea is very simple. Cook shrimp and garlic in butter. Off heat, add lemon juice, lemon zest, and parsley. That’s it! Dinner is served.
How to choose sustainable shrimp
In the United States, shrimp fisheries are well regulated. But local fisheries can’t meet the local demand, so we end up importing a lot of our shrimp from places where regulations are not as strict. Here are some good tips for choosing sustainable shrimp and consuming shrimp responsibly.
How to serve garlic shrimp
If you don’t mind carbs/gluten, the obvious choice is to serve them over rice or pasta, or with thick slices of crusty bread to soak up the buttery sauce.
As a low carber, I usually serve this saucy dish over cauliflower rice. Another low carb option is to serve garlic shrimp on a bed of shirataki noodles.
What shrimp to use in this recipe?
I love shrimp and always have packages of raw shrimp in the freezer. Just 5 minutes in a bowl of cold water and they defrost. It’s the ultimate weeknight dinner!
The packages I usually have contain 14 oz of shrimp, so that’s how I wrote the recipe, but if you have a full pound of shrimp, the recipe will work just fine with that.
I like to use large, tail-on shrimp in this garlic shrimp recipe, simply because they are so pretty. But you can use tail-off shrimp, and you can also use smaller shrimp. Smaller shrimp will be ready faster – they will likely need only 4 minutes of cooking.
More tasty shrimp recipes
In addition to these garlic shrimp, other favorite shrimp recipes in our household include these boldly flavored spicy shrimp and a super easy recipe for baked shrimp.
Garlic Shrimp
INGREDIENTS
- 2 tablespoons unsalted butter
- 1 tablespoon minced garlic
- 1/8 teaspoon cayenne pepper
- 1 teaspoon kosher salt (or 1/2 teaspoon fine salt)
- 14 oz large shrimp, 21-25 count per pound, peeled and deveined
- 1 medium lemon, juiced and zested
- 1/4 cup chopped parsley
- 1/4 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
INSTRUCTIONS
- Heat the butter in a large skillet over medium-high heat, about 2 minutes.
- Add the garlic, cayenne, salt and shrimp and cook, tossing occasionally, until shrimp are pink and opaque, about 5 minutes.
- Remove from heat. Toss with the lemon juice, lemon zest, parsley and black pepper. Serve immediately, spooning the shrimp and sauce over cauliflower rice.
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Vered DeLeeuw, LL.M., has been following a healthy real-food diet and blogging about it since 2011. She has taken 
