Spanish Garlic Shrimp (Gambas al Ajillo) - Food Wishes

hello this is chef john from food wishes comm with spanish garlic shrimp that's right this amazing dish ranks at or near the top of many of my favorite recipe lists like favorite Spanish recipes and favorite garlic recipes and favorite fast recipes and of course favorite shrimp recipes I mean this even makes my list of favorite recipes to put on multiple lists and if you've had this before you know exactly why and if you haven't you really need to keep watching so with that let's go ahead and get started and the first thing we're gonna need is one pound of frozen shrimp oh yeah as you probably heard me say in the past frozen shrimp is almost always a better choice than fresh shrimp which is not really fresh shrimp but simply frozen shrimp that's been thawed and put in the case and I'm gonna explain that in more detail in the blog post along with my preferred methods for thein but anyway we'll go ahead and thaw and carefully drain one pound of shrimp and then once that's been accomplished what we need to do is peel these which is going to be pretty easy if you're buying this style that comes split and not just split these have been split and deveined so all we need to do is peel off the rest of the show being careful not to tear off that last little piece of tail meat and I know it's just a tiny little extra bit of meat but this looks much better once it's cooked if you don't rip that end off and I should mention if you are buying shrimp that are not split into vein like these I'll provide a link in the post to show you how to do this from scratch and of course we shouldn't be putting these clean ones back in a strainer but rather we should add these to a mixing bowl and then what we'll do once our shrimp have been prepped is simply transfer those into the fridge while we pull together the rest of the ingredients which is not going to take long because there's only a couple of them with the most important of those being some freshly sliced garlic so we're not chopping we're not mincing we're gonna take a small sharp knife and just slice across like this and please do not be a hero when this gets too small to slice safely just simply tip it over on its side and continue slicing like that and some people freak out if these has started to germinate and there's a little spot of green in the center which is kind of happening here and if you want to remove that part go ahead but it doesn't really bother me unless it's dark dark green and really sprouting but anyway we'll go ahead and slice up three or four cloves of garlic and then above and beyond that in our shrimp we're also going to need some freshly chopped parsley as well as some extra virgin olive oil preferably something from Spain and then last but not least a couple tablespoons of sherry wine and of course you're gonna want to use something very nice from Spain but if you can't find that just use something very cheap from America as it really does not matter in this recipe as long as it's the dry sherry not a sweet dessert sherry and then what we're gonna want to do before we head to the stove is season this shrimp up with some kosher salt as well as and this is totally optional I'm gonna toss in a spoon of hot smoked Spanish paprika or as I refer to it the bacon of spices and once that's in we'll go ahead and give this a mix to coat and by the way I don't think this is in the original recipe so like I said it is optional and you'll have to decide whether to use it or not I mean you are after all the NiO of your Gambas al ajillo but I do recommend it so I'm definitely gonna add it to this matrix and for me not only does that add some nice Heat but that little bit of subtle smokiness really I think works beautifully with the sauce and then once that's set we can head to the stove where we have a pan set over medium heat and we'll go ahead and toss in our sliced garlic along with our Spanish olive oil sure that might look like too much oil but it's not it's barely enough all right I'm not sure if you got the memo yet but it's okay to eat fats turns out it's the carbs that are bad Oh which reminds me you want to make sure you toast some bread before this recipe is done but anyway what we're gonna do is cook this garlic in this oil over medium heat until it just barely starts to turn golden all right we don't really want a lot of color on this but we do want it to soften up a little bit and we want that oil to be fully infused with that garlic flavor and generally what I'm looking for is that those thinner slices just start to take out a little bit of color and also as you may notice some of the garlic will actually stick to your tongs that's another indication it's starting to caramelize and what we have to do immediately when we see that is add our shrimp in otherwise our garlic's gonna overcook so we'll go ahead and carefully add our shrimp and also turn our heat up to high because of course all these chilled meats gonna cool our pan down and what we'll do over high heat for about two minutes let's keep these moving continually with our tongs until they curl up but are still undercooked which like I said is literally only going to take two minutes and then what we'll do once your shrimp are looking a little something like this is go ahead and dump in our sherry which really shouldn't flame up but be careful anyway and then what we'll do once our wine is in is simply cook this for another minute stirring pretty much continually until our sauce comes up to a boil and our shrimp are cooked through and if everything goes according to plan - you look a little something like this and believe it or not that's it once our sauce is boiling and our shrimp is cooked through we will turn off the heat toss in some freshly chopped parsley stir this all together with a spoon another than checking for seasoning we're pretty much ready to serve this up and possibly a Spanish cazuela that we've lined with some toasted bread and we'll go ahead and pile those shrimp up and of course spoon over plenty of that truly amazing sauce and once I had served that up I decided to finish off a little bit of cayenne as well as a little extra parsley over the top except you know what I kind of overdid it and it sort of made the surface of the shrimp look kind of dry so I decided to fix that by spooning over a little more sauce and as you're plating this up you're gonna be thinking there is no way this can taste is amazing as it smells and then it does I mean first of all just these beautiful sweet shrimp cloaked in that intensely garlicky olive oil just that is worth the price of admission but then when you add in the way the heat and a little bit of smoke from the paprika plays off that subtle sweetness from the sherry it is just nothing short of fantastic I'm not sure how they say oMG in Spanish but if I knew I would have said it here and if you think the shrimp's good just wait until you taste that sauce soaked bread because that bite right there is otherworldly just mind-blowing ly delicious but anyway that's it my take on Spanish garlic shrimp one of my all-time favorite things a server to tapas party and if you're not familiar tapas is simply what the Spanish call small bites of food serve with drinks and they actually have an old saying that there ain't no party like a tapas part because the tapas party don't stop until you run out of the garlic shrimp it actually sounds a lot better in Spanish but anyway because of everything I've just said and because of everything you've just seen I really do hope you give this a try soon so head over to food wishes comm for all the ingredient amounts of more info as usual and as always enjoy you

Channel: Food Wishes

Views: 967,378

Rating: 4.9037828 out of 5

Keywords: Garlic, Shrimp, Spanish, Gambas al Ajillo, prawn, seafood, fast, easy, spicy, chef, john, food, wishes, cooking, recipe, appetizer, tapas, tapa

Id: wMO0-r6oqXc

Length: 7min 24sec (444 seconds)

Published: Tue Jun 19 2018

Reddit Comments

[u/Weft_]

I only really like fried shrimp... But I might actually have to try this out!