Easy Baked Shrimp Scampi

Name: Easy Baked Shrimp Scampi
Prep time: 5 min
Cook time: 15 min
Ingredients: 1 lb shrimp (peeled, deveined); 3 cloves garlic (minced); 1 lemon (juiced); 1/4 cup white wine; 1/4 cup panko breadcrumbs; 2 tablespoons light butter (softened at room temp (not melted)); kosher salt + pepper; olive oil spray

December 10, 2020 By Steph 72 Comments

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Easy baked shrimp scampi is flavored with fresh, flavorful ingredients: garlic, lemon and white wine come together to form a flavorful sauce, and panko is mixed with butter to form a decadent topping. This dish is done in under 20 minutes, for restaurant quality food at home. Serve along side potatoes and a vegetable for a well-rounded meal, or, my favorite: on top of spaghetti.

About Shrimp Scampi

Funny enough, Scampi is actually a type of Crustacean, not a style of cooking shrimp. But over time, the name “Scampi” has evolved to describe this particular method of preparing shrimp, involving garlic, butter, and white wine.

There are tons of shrimp scampi recipes out there, and they all typically have similar ingredients. The measurements and methods might vary slightly, but the flavor is always very similar… delicious.

If you go to a restaurant and order this dish, chances are it will be drowning in lots of butter or oil (it makes it delicious, but maybe not the most healthy or calorie-friendly option). I have recreated this recipe using the same delicious ingredients, but just modified amounts of each ingredient. The end result is the same delicious flavor, but lightened-up.

What makes my shrimp scampi “easy”?

This recipe is beyond easy to make. Instead of cooking on the stove top, this entire dish cooks in the oven. It makes for a great meal for guests or for a holiday because of how easy it is to prepare and serve.

Shrimp needs no time at all to cook; this dish cooks in 15 minutes and it’s restaurant-quality, I promise you. You can serve it any number of ways; on top of pasta, with potatoes and a vegetable, over rice. The possibilities are endless here.

What you’ll need for this recipe:

shrimp
garlic
dry white wine
light butter
panko breadcrumbs
lemon
salt and pepper
olive oil spray

What’s the best way to serve this recipe?

This is the easiest shrimp recipe ever; my favorite way to serve this is over spaghetti. I find that the recipe makes the perfect amount of sauce (right in the pan) for about half a pound of pasta. It doesn’t drench the pasta, but it’s perfect for a light coating on all of the spaghetti.

If you serve this with pasta, you can easily make this recipe into 4 portions; cook 8 ounces of spaghetti, and serve each person 1 cup of cooked spaghetti. Then, topped with the cooked shrimp, and pour the pan sauce over each serving.

It’s so easy, delicious, light and refreshing!

You can also serve this shrimp with potatoes and a vegetable, if that is your preference.

How to Work With Shrimp

Shrimp can be intimidating for some if you’ve never prepared them before. But they just might be the easiest thing you’ll ever cook.

You can either purchase shrimp fresh or frozen. If you purchase shrimp fresh, you can ask your fish monger to peel and devein them for you. I like to leave the tails on my shrimp for presentation purposes, but you can remove them if you wish. If you purchase shrimp frozen, it is likely you will have to shell and devein them yourself.

To defrost frozen shrimp, I place them in a bowl of cold water. They defrost within half an hour, especially if you change out the water to help move the process along a bit. Once fully defrosted, I peel and devein the shrimp on a cutting board.

There are two dark veins that run alongside the top and bottom of shrimp; the top one needs to be removed. It is personal preference whether or not you remove the bottom vein; I do remove it. These veins are the digestive tract of the shrimp, and I can assume you don’t want to eat that.

Here is an article from Real Simple on How to Clean Shrimp.

How to Make Easy Baked Shrimp Scampi

There’s not much to it. Since this is all done in the oven, start off by preheating the oven to 425F.

You’re going to start by laying the shrimp flat in a baking dish. If you are serving this to company, make sure the baking dish is one you won’t mind serving out of.

Season the shrimp with salt and pepper, then simply top with the remaining ingredients: the lemon, the wine, the garlic. Combine the butter and panko into somewhat of a paste, which then gets dolloped on top of the shrimp. That’s it.

Then you’ll pop it in a 425F oven to bake. It’s really that simple!

You can also garnish with fresh herbs, like parsley or basil.

When you pull the shrimp out of the oven, you are left with this delicious finished product. My favorite way to serve this is over spaghetti.

I also like to bake the shrimp with the lemon wedges included. It adds more flavor, and is pretty for presentation.