With a flavorful marinade of teriyaki, lime zest and juice, garlic, ginger, and cilantro, these grilled shrimp skewers are delicious on their own. Add a creamy peanut dipping sauce, and it takes them over the edge! Shrimp skewers with peanut sauce make a great appetizer, or a perfect main course when paired with rice and a vegetable. This is a vibrant, fresh and flavorful spin on grilled shrimp.
All about shrimp skewers with peanut sauce
This recipe is packed with flavor. It starts off with a simple marinade to flavor the shrimp. Then, the shrimp are skewered with red onion chunks and grilled, which is super simple and takes only a couple of minutes total. While the shrimp cook, the peanut sauce can be made. All in all, this makes such an easy weeknight dinner, even though it looks really interesting and impressive.
I love peanut sauce, mostly because I love anything involving nut butter! But a traditional peanut sauce can be really high in fat and calories (even though they are packed with good fats). To lighten this peanut sauce up, I use powdered peanut butter, which I mix with other flavorful components like teriyaki, rice wine vinegar, and lime juice. The added ingredients really bump the flavor of this sauce up, and it’s nearly impossible to tell that powdered peanut butter is used here.
If you are new to powdered peanut butter, I will be blunt: it does not taste like the real thing. Powdered peanut butter is a great ingredient for baking or for adding peanut flavor to dishes, though, which is how I use it most often. Any powdered peanut butter will work here, and you can find it in the supermarket next to the regular peanut butter.
What will I need to make this recipe?
Here is a general list of ingredients used in this recipe. Some of the ingredients repeat between the marinade and the dipping sauce, so that makes things a bit easier.
- shrimp
- teriyaki sauce
- lime zest and juice
- ginger
- garlic
- red onion
- powdered peanut butter
- rice wine vinegar
- chili garlic sauce
- scallions
- cilantro
How to make shrimp skewers with peanut sauce
All about the shrimp
The first step for this recipe is to get your shrimp cleaned and deveined (and defrosted, if they are frozen). Make sure you are using raw shrimp for this recipe. Either fresh or frozen will work perfectly here.
If you are buying frozen shrimp, you most likely will have to peel and devein the shrimp. It can be a bit tedious, but it’s very easy to do, I promise. Otherwise, if you are buying fresh shrimp, you can ask the fishmonger to clean the shrimp for you.
This recipe calls for 1 lb of shrimp, and the size of the shrimp really doesn’t matter. I happened to use a smaller variety because it’s what I had in my freezer at the time, and it was about 36 shrimp total, for six skewers with six shrimp per skewer. If you use a larger variety, each skewer might have 4-5 shrimp. But it really doesn’t matter.
For this recipe and many others, I often choose to leave the tails on the shrimp for presentation purposes, but you can remove them to make eating this dish easier. It’s all about preference here.
Making the marinade
To make the marinade for the shrimp, peel and mince the ginger, and mince the garlic. Add the ginger and garlic to a small bowl, and then add in the teriyaki sauce, zest of one lime plus the lime juice, the garlic chili sauce, and the chopped fresh cilantro. Whisk everything together, and then pour the marinade over the raw shrimp. Toss them to coat.
If you are making this dish right away, the shrimp doesn’t have to marinate very long. But you can also let this marinade sit with the shrimp in the fridge for a half hour or so for the flavors to combine.
Grilling the shrimp
To grill the shrimp, I used an indoor grill pan (it was raining!). I love using an indoor stove top grill pan to make grilling quick and easy, especially for small batches that all fit in the pan at one time. This is the grill pan I use when I grill on my stove top.
If you are grilling indoors, you do not need to soak the wooden skewers. I have learned that they don’t burn and char the way they do on a live flame on the outdoor grill. If you are using the outdoor grill, I recommend soaking your wooden skewers for a half hour before hand. This helps prevent the skewers from burning.
To make the skewers, chop the red onion and add one chunk of red onion to the base each skewer, followed by the shrimp. Make sure the skewer punctures the shrimp on the top and bottom, so that it is secure on the skewer and doesn’t flip around while cooking. The number of shrimp per skewer will vary depending on the size shrimp you are using; make sure to count your total shrimp to ensure each skewer has a relatively equal number of shrimp.
Once the shrimp is skewered on, finish the skewer with another chunk of red onion. Spray the grill pan with non-stick spray, and cook the shrimp for a few minutes on either side or until the shrimp is opaque and firm.
Preparing the peanut sauce
To make the peanut sauce, add the powdered peanut butter, teriyaki sauce, chili garlic sauce, rice wine vinegar, and lime juice in a small bowl. Whisk together to incorporate the ingredients. Then, stir in the chopped scallion.
Putting it all together
You can use the sauce for dipping, or you can pour the sauce on top of the shrimp skewers if you are eating this meal in a bowl with rice and a veggie. Here, I served ours with a simple slaw made with red cabbage, sesame oil, rice wine vinegar, soy sauce, and sesame seeds. This dish is filling and tasty!
Shrimp Skewers with Peanut Sauce
Equipment
- grill pan or outdoor grill
- wooden skewers
Ingredients
- 1 lb shrimp, uncooked, peeled, deveined
- 1/2 red onion, cut into chunks
For the Marinade
- 3 cloves garlic, minced
- 1 inch ginger root, peeled, minced (or use about 1 teaspoon from the squeeze tube)
- 1 lime, zest and juice
- 2 tbsp teriyaki sauce
- 2 tbsp cilantro, fresh, chopped
For the Peanut Sauce
- 1/3 cup powdered peanut butter
- 2 tbsp teriyaki sauce
- 1 tsp chili garlic sauce, can sub: sriracha
- 2 tbsp rice wine vinegar
- 1/2 lime, juiced
- 1 scallion, chopped
Instructions
- Combine the marinade ingredients and toss the shrimp in with the marinade.
- This mixture can sit for a couple of minutes, or for up to half an hour prior to cooking.
- Note: if using an outdoor grill, soak your skewers for half an hour. If using a grill pan, this step is not necessary.
- Skewer one chunk of red onion, followed by the shrimp (4-6 pieces depending on size), and followed by another chunk of red onion at the end.
- Repeat this step for all six skewers.
- Spray the grill pan with non-stick cooking spray, and cook the shrimp for a couple of minutes per side or until firm and opaque.
- For the dipping sauce, combine all ingredients until creamy.
Notes
- 2 WW points (green plan)
- 1 WW point (blue and purple plans)
Nutrition
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Mediterranean Shrimp and Veggie Skewers
Sarah says
Made this for dinner tonight… another winning recipe!! The peanut sauce had such good flavor that I saved what was left to use with wraps tomorrow. 😉 Thanks, Steph!!
Cindy says
When I put the nutrition in the WW calculator, I come up with 2 points for Blue. This has happened before with some of Steph’s recipes – when I use the nutrition listed it’s 1 or 2 points more. Why is that? I want Steph’s calculator. 😉 Does this happen to anyone else?
Taylor Pettengill says
Use a recipe builder instead of the nutrition calculator. That calculator doesn’t take 0 point foods, like shrimp, into account.
Michelle York says
Made this tonight for dinner, so easy and so good. My kids will not eat shrimp cocktail so I only made this for my husband and I but then the kids tried it and wanted to eat all of ours!! I am gluten free so I substituted GF soy sauce for the teriyaki sauce and it was still great! Thanks Steph for all these easy family friendly recipes.
Marcella says
This was AMAZING
Tanya says
I sautéed in a pan then served over quinoa with drizzled peanut sauce. My husband loved these
Lisa says
The marinated shrimp cooked on the grill was great! We weren’t huge fans of the peanut sauce, but I think it’s because we didn’t like the lime flavor in it, which is more of a personal preference so nothing bad about the recipe. I did like the lime in the marinade so next time I make this I will just try leaving it out of the sauce.
zidane says
thank you for the recipe