Easy dishes aren’t usually known for complex flavors, but leave it to the Barefoot Contessa to defy that with her simple baked shrimp scampi recipe.
Ina Garten’s seafood dish looks beautiful, has layers of flavors, and comes together in a few simple steps.
Admittedly, the recipe does require quite a long list of ingredients, but I was surprised at how uncomplicated it was, especially after I finished prepping the shrimp.
Most of the ingredients are just minced and mashed together, and then the whole thing is baked in an oven. No sautéeing required!
First, I gathered the ingredients.
With Garten’s recipe, I found it helpful to divide the ingredients into two groups: the items needed for the shrimp prep, and the ingredients for her flavorful butter-panko mixture.
For the former, I chose frozen, deveined shrimp. The other ingredients were fairly simple — I grabbed some Kosher salt, black pepper, dry white wine, and olive oil.
The butter-panko mixture is really the star of this dish, and has a lengthier ingredient list. For this part of the recipe, I needed unsalted butter, garlic, shallots, parsley, rosemary, lemon zest, crushed red pepper flakes, lemon juice, Kosher salt, black pepper, an extra-large egg yolk, and panko (flaky breadcrumbs).
I prepped my shrimp by peeling, butterflying, and marinating them.
My first step was peeling the shrimp, carefully ensuring their tails stayed on.
Next, I butterflied them — which is to say I used my knife to cut a little deeper into the shrimp and pull the two halves gently apart.
Once the shrimp were ready, I put them in a mixture of pinot grigio, olive oil, salt, and black pepper. Then, I left them to marinate at room temperature while I prepped the butter-panko mixture.
Next, it was time to make the buttery sauce.
I minced garlic, a shallot, parsley, and rosemary, and added them to a bowl with unsalted butter.
After that, I added more ingredients: crushed red pepper, lemon juice and zest, an egg yolk, panko, salt, and black pepper. I mashed all of these together until the mixture looked colorful and crumbly.
I arranged the butterflied shrimp in an oval baking dish.
Garten’s recipe calls for a 14-inch gratin dish.
I grabbed a baking dish of around the same size and arranged the shrimp in ovals, with each piece placed butterflied side down and the tails pointed toward the center of the dish.
Then, I poured the remaining marinade over the layer of shrimp.
I topped the shrimp with the butter and panko mixture, then baked the whole thing.
Using my hands, I broke up the butter-panko mixture into dollop-sized pieces and placed them on top of the shrimp until I had a nice, even layer. Following the featured photo in Garten’s recipe, I made sure not to cover up the tails.
Finally, I put the whole thing in the oven at 425 degrees Fahrenheit for 12 minutes. After it was finished baking, I gave the dish a final squeeze of lemon juice.
This baked scampi was an easy, gorgeous dish with surprisingly varied and robust flavors.
The shrimp was a bit on the salty side for me, so there are a few changes I might try next time. Namely, I’d include a touch less salt in the marinade and a bit more crushed red pepper instead.
I’d also love to try a different dry white wine, just to see how it impacts the flavor.
The dish’s sauce, on the other hand, was my favorite part. I’m a sucker for a meal with a delicious sauce that you can easily sop up with bread, and this baked shrimp scampi definitely did the trick.
Mostly, though, I loved the dish’s robust blend of flavors. I knew the recipe would heavily feature butter, garlic, and lemon, so I expected that I’d mostly taste just that — which would’ve been fine with me, as someone who loves all these ingredients.
However, I was pleasantly surprised that I could taste all of the other ingredients, too, from the rosemary to the red pepper flakes. It made for an exceptionally flavorful dish: very lemony, zesty, garlicky, and herbaceous, all at once.
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