hello this is chef john from food wishes como with hawaii and garlic shrimp
scampi that's right i've received a bunch of requests to make this and after
tasting it i understand why and if you're a garlic lover you're gonna want
to grab a pen and pull out your bucket list and add this recipe to it and yes
by the way scampi does mean shrimp so this recipe is actually called hawaiian
a garlic shrimp shrimp bob redundant names aside I absolutely love this and I
really think you will too and what we'll do to get started is peel an entire head
of garlic and to do that I'm going to show you an old trick for doing it all
at once by using a couple bowls and all we need to do is separate the cloves
into One Bowl and then once that's done we'll put the other Bowl over the top
and we will give it the OL shake of shaken for about thirty seconds or so or
until all those peels are knocked off the cloves oh and let me give you a
little warning if you're freakishly strong like I am I think I might have
shaken this a little too hard or a little too long because it appears
that one or two of my cloves broke apart but forget that the point is all those
peels came off really easily and we didn't have to peel those one by one oh
and I was too lazy to walk over to the sink but if you pour a little bit of
cold water into this bowl that's close a real easy to grab out and then what
we'll do once we have about eight or ten nicely peeled cloves of garlic is take a
knife and chop them up but not super fine okay we don't want mince garlic
here because what we're gonna do next is toasted golden brown and some butter and
if it's too small there's a chance it could go too far and burn and when I
first start out with this I'm not just mindlessly chopping down I'm actually
aiming for some of those bigger pieces and going a little bit slowly and
deliberately until it looks like I have a lot of consistently sized pieces and
then we can speed up and chop this as small as we want which like I said is
not gonna be super small okay I think the perfect chop size for Hawaiian
garlic shrimp is right about here and that's it that is now ready to go into
our butter so what we'll do next is melt four tablespoons of butter over medium
heat and we will all take a couple seconds here to watch that butter slide
across the pan which I find very relaxing and maybe a little too relaxing
since I never focused the camera for the shot of the garlic going in the melted
butter but anyway once that butter melts and
starts to foam up we'll go ahead and stir in our chopped garlic and our plan
here is to cook this during over medium until it turns a beautiful golden brown
and while you don't have to stir constantly don't go anywhere
all right golden brown is good the golden black is not gonna work so we're
really gonna need to pay attention here and catch it right at that perfect level
of toastiness which for me was right about here and don't forget after you
turn the heat off this is gonna toast even a little bit more so you're not
gonna want to go any farther than this and then once that set we'll pull it off
the heat transfer it into a bowl and we'll reserve that so we can add it back
into the pan once our shrimp are cooked speaking of which what we're gonna need
here is one pound of fully thawed deveined
but shell on shrimp which is usually sold with some kind of name like easy
peel and while you can make this with the shell off that's not how they do in
Hawaii and by leaving that shell on you get so much extra flavor or at least
that's what they officially tell people okay I'm gonna be testing that theory
later as I'm gonna try second batch without the shells oh and the reason for
the paper towels is you want to make sure these are as dry as possible so
make sure you drain these very well and then Pat them nice and dry and then once
those are set the only other component we need is our star cheese spicy coating
which is gonna be made with a couple tablespoons of rice flour or if you want
regular flour but rice flour does work better and it's not that hard to find
all right just head for the gluten-free aisle and then to that we will add a
tablespoon of regular paprika plus a teaspoon of the finest Cayenne you can
find and then we'll finish up with some salts at which point we'll simply give
that a mix and once combined it's ready to toss with our shrimp so we'll go
ahead and remove those paper towels and then go ahead and sprinkle over that
kody mixture and the reason we're being so generous with that as well as with
our garlic butter mixture is because if we are using the authentic method and
we're peeling off the shells a lot of that goodness is not going to
be attached to the meat so we want to make sure we have plenty to go around
but anyway we'll sprinkle that over at which point we'll take a big spoon or
spatula or spoon eula and mix these until they are very evenly coated making
sure of course every nook and cranny is covered and that's it once those are
thoroughly completely covered in our coating we will head to the stove to
cook these up which will do over medium-high heat in a
nonstick pan in a few tablespoons of olive oil and a pound of shrimps gonna
make two portions and I'm just cooking one here because we do not want to crowd
these all right we definitely want to use what I call the Beyonce method which
is just a single layer just a single layer just a single layer just a single
layer all right so if you want to do the whole batch you got to use a bigger pan
and since we're not gonna crowd these they're only gonna take a couple minutes
per side so we'll give that first side about two minutes and then we'll flip
them over and then give the other side about the same and of course when I say
two minutes per side that's just a guess are you're the one that actually has to
decide based on how big your shrimp are I mean you are after all the con Aloha
of how long to go brah but a couple minutes per side is a pretty good guess
oh and in case you're wondering the best size shrimp to get for this dish I think
are the 21 to 25 per pound size all right when you buy shrimp there's
usually two numbers on the bag like 16 20 21 25 and those numbers simply refer
to how many shrimp per pound and then what we'll do once these have been
beautifully cooked on both sides is well go ahead and toss in our toasted garlic
and butter and we will stir all that together and cook that for about 30
seconds or so at which point is going to be ready to
serve and if you enjoy the smell of cooking garlic which I really really do
it does not get any better than this it is just absolutely intoxicating but
anyway let me pull together and pull these off the stove so I can serve them
up on some white rice alongside the traditional fresh lemon and please do
not be shy about spooning that toasted garlic and butter over the top and that
my friends is nothing short of garlic shrimp heaven or in this case garlic
shrimp shrimp heaven so let me go ahead and squeeze over some lemon and dig in
and with the shells on these you basically have two approaches to eating
we can go ahead and pop the whole thing in our mouth and then spit out the shell
once separated and that method will deliver the maximum amount of flavor
which by the way was tremendous but the downside is the feeling of shrimp shells
in my mouth is not one of my favorite sensations so the other much more
popular approach is to pull the shell off before eating which is of course
very messy and does take a good amount of effort but in fairness and isn't
quite as hard as I'm making it look here since I was trying to do this with
and which is not recommended alright what you want to be doing is not filming
this at the same time and eating this outside on a picnic table going at it
with all ten fingers and also adding to the challenge here every once in a while
you get a batch of shrimp where the shells are really really super thin and
paper like and this batch was like that and don't worry I will go back and eat
that meat I left in the tail sections when I should mention just that toasted
garlic butter on the rice is pretty much worth making this recipe for all by
itself so good and yes at a certain point I did give up on the one hand
method which did make things a little bit easier but anyway to summarize
Hawaiian garlic shrimp scampi with the shell on is insanely delicious and
absolutely one of the best garlic shrimp recipes you'll ever enjoy ok searing
these in the shell really does add some flavor and does help keep the shrimp
from drying outs but if we're being honest definitely a little bit of a
hassle to eat so in the name of science I did a second batch and other than
peeling off the shells I did everything exactly the same all right same garlic
butter same coating same searing in the pan same rice and same fresh lemon
although I did change the placemat and in my opinion I found these to be just
as flavorful are just an explosion of garlic shrimpy goodness and of course
way way easier to eat however there is one major difference right with the
authentic method we're not necessarily supposed to be eating all the coding
which is why we use so much whereas here it's seared right onto the shrimp so
that aspect is definitely more pronounced and we do get somewhat less
of a pure garlic and shrimp flavor profile but when you weigh that against
how much easier these are to eat I think I do prefer these over the authentic
shell on version and I keep using the word authentic although I'm not really
exactly sure how authentic these are since I've never been to Hawaii all
right to be honest I've always been a little bit afraid to go ever since I saw
that Brady Bunch episode when I was a kid but from what I've seen what we did
was pretty close so ultimately if you decide to make these you're gonna have
to decide whether to go with the shells or not but the good news is no matter
which version you make they are both incredibly delicious and a must make for
any garlic and or shrimp level which is why I really do hope you give
these a try soon so please follow the links below for the ingredient amounts a
principle written recipe and much more info as usual and as always enjoy
you