Most People Are Making Shrimp Scampi Wrong! Try These Old Italian Tricks

📖 A hundred recipes my mother never wrote down, finally measured for your kitchen: Link In Comments! You order shrimp scampi and out comes limp pasta in a puddle of melted butter, with shrimp that bounce off your teeth like rubber bands. Or you made it at home and the garlic burned. Real shrimp scampi is sweet, snappy shrimp in a glossy garlic, butter, wine and lemon sauce that clings to every strand and never leaves a puddle. One pan, twenty minutes. Every Christmas Eve my mother Filomena's restaurant in Bensonhurst did the fish dinner, and shrimp scampi was the plate everybody fought over. I peeled the shrimp at the back sink from the time I was ten. In this one I count down her ten rules, and every one starts with plain instructions before I explain anything. Which bag of shrimp to buy and the word to look for on it, thawing them right, the salt and baking soda trick, the stock from the shells, searing hot in one layer, garlic low and slow, wine and stock cooked down, finishing the pasta in the sauce, cold butter and lemon off the heat, and at number one, the minute that decides whether your shrimp snap or bounce. I also settle what scampi even means, and cheese on seafood or never. One pan. Snappy shrimp, glossy sauce, no puddle. So tell me where you are cooking from, and settle it: cheese on seafood, or never? 00:00 Rubber shrimp in a puddle 00:41 Who I am 02:06 What you need 02:44 Why it works 03:23 10. The right bag of shrimp 04:13 9. Thaw them cold 04:51 8. Salt and a pinch of baking soda 05:32 7. Stock from the shells 06:15 6. Seared hot, one layer 06:56 Halfway 07:22 5. Garlic low and slow 08:06 4. Wine and stock, cooked down 08:50 3. Finish the pasta in the sauce 09:31 2. Cold butter and lemon, off the heat 10:16 1. Two short trips, pulled at the C 11:29 What scampi means, and cheese or never 12:10 Why nobody tells you this 12:39 One idea underneath all ten 13:16 Save your shells 13:53 Your job this week 14:21 Next time