Shrimp scampi with celery leaves

scampy means a lot of things all over the world here in the states it generally means shrimp with garlic and butter I'm gonna show you a very simple version of it served with rice that my dad taught me then I'm gonna show you a slightly more elaborate version of it that I do with pasta both versions use my dad's secret ingredient I almost always buy my shrimp frozen it's cheaper the quality is more reliable and they thaw very fast I'm just submerging them in plenty of lukewarm water from the tap if you're in a hurry you could change this water once or twice or leave the faucet trickling but shrimp are so small that these will thaw in like 20 minutes with no further attention from me during which time I'll get my rice started this is how I usually do white rice this is not how my dad taught me basically I started like risotto a little butter in a hot pan then in goes a cup of jasmine rice which has really nice flavor and then I just move it around and toast it in the pan for a minute I have not rinsed this rice maybe I'm in the minority but most of the time I actually want my rice to be clumpy not fluffy okay in goes one and a half cups of water to one cup rice I tend to like the firmer drier texture that you get by being conservative with the water I'll mix in a big pinch of salt and immediately turn the heat down to a low simmer and cover it that's ample rice for two people and making two portions of the rice scampi and two portions of the pasta scampi now vegetable prep I'm peeling and chopping half a head of garlic that's a lot of garlic for two portions but that's what scampi means to me you can use less now here's dad's secret ingredient celery leaves they are so good whenever I buy celery I look for the stalks that have the most leaves still on them it's basically just a fresh herb that tastes strongly of celery without having the celery texture that some people such as my wife find objectionable I'm just roughly chopping a nice big bunch so that I have kind of equal piles of garlic and celery leaves shrimp is thawed here's a plate covered in paper towels to hold my peeled shrimp they cook better when they're dry and you can see here that these are quote-unquote deveined but unpeeled shrimp that's usually my preferred way to get them the processor is cut off the heads and then cut down the back of the shrimp thus making them much easier to peel the big question is whether you want to bother trying to get the shell off of the tail a lot of people are happy to just leave them on and then eat around them on the plate I prefer to try to get it off you kind of have to pinch the tail shell at the very end and gingerly slide it off without accidentally tearing off the meat inside it 10% of the time I fail but I would rather sacrifice a little bit of meat than have to worry about shells when I'm eating there you can see the vein that we're talking about it's of course not a vein at all but the shrimp's intestinal tract containing remnants of its last meal even if the bag says devein there's usually some shrimp in there that still have it it's gross to think about but it's not really a problem people eat the vein all the time it's not really perceivable and it's not dangerous it's mostly silt now when you're done you can just pour out the water and then do yourself a favor and throw those shells directly into your compost or outdoor trash shrimp shells can stink up a kitchen real fast so that's a pound of shrimp enough for at least four people I might dab them with another paper towel just to get them as dry as possible you can see my rice here has been done for a while it only takes like 15 minutes but I always get it going early as possible because I prefer rice after it's just kind of rested on warm for a long time all right pan for the shrimp goes on medium heat and I'll melt in just a little bit of butter to start with we're gonna put in more butter later this is just enough for getting the shrimp cooked through when the butter is good and hot I'll dump in half a pound of shrimp enough for two big portions and I'm making sure that they're all in one layer and lying flat my dad lays them in one by one which is probably smarter shrimp cooks incredibly fast two to five minutes total depending on their size I reckon these will take four minutes when the first side is visibly cooked when it's changed color I will flip them around dad flips them one at a time with tongs my approach is admittedly more chaotic I'm not seasoning these by the way because I'm using salted butter and shrimp are naturally salty anyway when the shrimp have just gone opaque all the way through I will remove them to a plate if you had a wider pan than I do you could maybe just push them all to the sides but this will make it all but impossible to overcook them then in goes more butter I'd say at least a tablespoon proportion the butter is the sauce for this get it melting and then throw in the garlic move it all around and get it cooking for a sec just to soften the pieces and to take the edge off the flavor then in goes the celery leaves and the shrimp you could put in some pepper but if you're using salted butter like I am you probably don't want any additional salt get everything coated and then take the pan off the heat cover the plate with rice I love my rice a little clumpy like that maybe make a little well the center to hold the shrimp and then shovel in the shrimp being sure to get any of the loose garlic butter that might still be in the pan there you go one of the first things my dad taught me how to cook the flavor of those celery leaves go so well with shrimp and they look pretty you can squeeze on some lemon over that if you want I'm going to show you in a sec how I've tried to advance this recipe a little bit but this is a totally solid easy weeknight meal plus it's quite cheap if you look for shrimp that are on sale and getting the best deal on anything online is crazy easy with the sponsor of 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for free at join honey calm slash Ragusa let's join honey calm / Ragusa okay here's where I've taken my dad's scampi recipe I start with same 1/2 head of garlic and an equivalent pile of chopped celery leaves for two big portions I've got some water on the boil for pasta and I've got my super deep chrissy teigen pan for the shrimp you need something big enough to toss the pasta and the shrimp together in medium-high heat on the pan and then olive oil not butter I don't want to just cook the shrimp I want to Brown the shrimp and butter might burn at this higher temperature when it's hot in goes half a pound of shrimp again making sure that they're all more or less flat and in one layer I find the timing works perfectly if I give the shrimp in and then put in my linguine which will take about 12 minutes in salted boiling water yes I break my pasta in half my dad breaks it his Italian mother broke it it just makes long pasta is easier to eat but you do you now shrimp like any meat tastes amazing when it gets browned but people rarely cook it that far because they're afraid of overcooking the shrimp and turning them into rubber my solution to this problem is to cook the shrimp really hot and like 80% of the way on one side I'm only browning side a you can really smell the Browning by the time they're ready to flip and when I flip after about three minutes I use a wooden spoon to scrape them up off the pan they'll be stuck then I'll just move them around and let the rest of each shrimp finish cooking through via Steam or direct heat for like another minute then remove them to the plate might want to turn that heat down and then real quick before the Fond burns in goes the garlic just fry that for a minute then deglaze with white wine I guess that's maybe half a cup I'm also gonna squeeze in a little lemon just a few drops or more if you really like lemon then I'm gonna reduce this almost dry or off sec as the French say because my goal here is to make a crude beurre blanc sauce that's an emulsion of melted butter and reduced white wine and or vinegar or lemon juice if you wanted to avoid the white wine my advice is always water spiked with white balsamic vinegar you have to cool the pan down before you put in the butter otherwise it will break the bubbling should be almost over my Heat's off and that's ready people usually mix in a few little chunks of butter at a time because if you introduce the butter too fast again the emulsion will break the fat will just separate out but I find that if you put in one giant chunk of cold butter it's gonna melt really slowly because of the low surface area I'm doing 4 tablespoons of butter that's to proportion just mixing constantly and letting it melt in the residual heat of the pan we're gonna toss our pasta in there and I have found that the heat of the pasta can be enough to break this sauce so what I do these days is put in a tiny little pinch of my new best friend in the kitchen xanthan gum you can get this in the baking aisle of grocery stores now it's an amazing stabilizer and thickener if you try to dissolve it into water it clumps up horribly but it dissolves smoothly into fat this is a melted butter you can see the powder dissolves right into that even though butter is like 15% water so for a mostly fat sauce like beurre blanc you can just drop in a pinch and that is gonna make this sauce just bulletproof it will not break I like some chili flakes in there for heat and also some black pepper really no additional salt again because I'm using salted butter pasta is now done and I'm pouring off some of the water but not all I'd say 1/4 cup of that water is an essential ingredient in my sauce in goes the pasta with that little bit of water and I'll start stirring it in I find that if the sauce looks a little bit too loose and soupy at this stage then it's gonna be perfect by the time I actually eat it in goes those delicious celery leaves and the shrimp I just want to heat both back up again and get them integrated I don't want to cook them any more I think I want some more chili flakes and there you go tongs are usually best for getting this kind of thing out onto a plate because you can use them to grab any stragglers shrimp some people have rules against mixing shellfish with cheese not just religious rules but I mean culinary rules which too many Italians are basically like religion I don't know a little grated pecorino tastes real good on this to me but you do you that sauce is so delicious and the xanthan gum takes all the stress out of it it also improves the texture I think real smooth dad's celery leaf trick is of course genius and look at the color on that shrimp when I first figured out that I could brown shrimp without overcooking it that was a game changer for me so dad's version are my version take your pick and dig in

Channel: Adam Ragusea

Views: 1,088,678

Rating: 4.9326243 out of 5

Keywords: shrimp scampi recipe, shrimp scampi, how to make shrimp scampi, shrimp recipe, shrimp recipes, date night, pasta recipes, how to cook shrimp, shrimp pasta, easy shrimp scampi, shrimp scampi with pasta, italian recipes, shrimp scampi recipe with pasta, how to make shrimp scampi sauce, how to make shrimp scampi pasta, how to make shrimp scampi with rice, shrimp scampi without wine, shrimp scampi with rice, how to thaw shrimp

Id: -ulwUCKyNJs

Length: 10min 4sec (604 seconds)

Published: Thu Jan 09 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/nothingxs]

I don't understand the need for an emulsifier. Isn't the starchy pasta water an emulsifier...?