Shrimp in garlic bread sauce!
No, but GARLIC BREAD SAUCE. 🎯🎯🎯
What the WHAT. This blog has reached new levels of delicious insanity. I’m going to start this post by convincing you that, in fact, garlic bread sauce is not as weird as it sounds. More like it’s one of the most delicious ways you could ever eat shrimp.
We start with the bread that’s fried in a little bit of olive oil until golden brown, and then pulsed into a garlic bread paste of sorts with fresh parsley, almonds, and garlic. Fried bread –> into a paste? It’s the truth of this recipe. Can you handle it? Your hungry self will give you big thanks for your bravery with this one.
The rest of this recipe just involves adding said garlic bread paste to the olive-oil-and-broth sauce base to thicken it into something resembling Magic with a capital M (more specifically, almost like a light cream sauce) – and then adding the shrimp to the pan to simmer up into something that is weeknight-level easy but company-level fancy. And most importantly, something that is 💯 for your mouth.
Even though it sounds really crazy and garlic-bread-obsessive, this shrimp and garlic bread sauce concept has to be somewhat of a good idea because it comes from the experts at Saveur. It’s a recipe from my favorite cookbook of all time (as of January 2015 when I started using it) – Saveur’s The New Classics cookbook. I got it for Christmas from Bjork last year and I think we are both pretty happy that this book is in my possession. It has 70 5-star reviews on Amazon. And honestly, I wish I could rate it 10 stars.
There are very few cookbooks in my life that I have cooked from more than a handful of times, and this is one of them. It’s obsessively earmarked, written in, and oil-splattered like only the best kinds of cookbooks can be.
Other Pinch of Yum recipes inspired from this cookbook:
- Vietnamese Chicken Salad with Rice Noodles
- Chopped Chicken Sesame Noodle Bowls
- Skillet Chicken with Bacon and White Wine
- Yellow Curry Paste / Thai Yellow Curry with Beef and Potatoes
- Toasted Bread and Parmesan Kale Salad
- Moist Chocolate Layer Cake which has yet to see the light of the blog – but maybe soon, friends…
- And now this: Spanish Shrimp with Garlic Bread Sauce
All the fooooods. Cannot handle.
Food processor = a dream come true. YOU NEED ONE. I love mine so much that I wrote a full post showing off 12 magical ways that I use my food processor. Must must must. Go now.
I don’t want to be bossy, but plz plz plz serve this with the lightly fried garlic bread that I described in the notes of the recipe. It is officially THE BEST THING YOU COULD EVER DO with this recipe.
I love all caps.
And I love you guys. And I really love this shrimp.
Spanish Shrimp with Garlic Bread Sauce awaits! You must, you must, you must.
Spanish Shrimp with Garlic Bread Sauce
- Total Time: 30 minutes
- Yield: 4-6 1x
Description
Spanish Shrimp with Garlic Bread Sauce – made with just 7 familiar, easy to find ingredients and fancy enough for company!
Ingredients
- 1/2 cup olive oil
- 3 cloves garlic
- 1 slice crusty white bread, about 1 inch thick, crust removed
- 1/4 cup fresh parsley
- 1 cup almonds
- 2 cups vegetable or chicken broth (or ideally fish stock – but I couldn’t find any)
- 1 bay leaf
- 2 lbs. large shrimp (16-20)
- additional bread for serving
Instructions
- Heat the oil in a large skillet over medium heat. Add the bread to the oil in the pan. Fry for a few minutes on each side until golden brown and crispy. Place on a paper towel lined plate to cool. Turn the heat off on the oil.
- Place the fried bread in a food processor and pulse until crumbs form. Add the 3 cloves garlic, parsley, almonds, and a few tablespoons of the broth into a food processor and pulse until a paste forms.
- Pour the broth and bay leaf into the pan with the oil (if it’s too hot, the oil will splatter, so be careful) and simmer for 10 minutes or so. Stir in the bread paste and mix well – the sauce should start to thicken into a consistency almost like a light gravy or cream sauce. Add the shrimp and simmer for about 5 minutes, until the shrimp are pink and firm.
- Serve with extra bread for soaking up the sauce.
Notes
For the best garlic bread: heat a thin layer of olive oil in a skillet. Add a smashed clove of garlic and let it saute for a few minutes to infuse the oil with the garlic flavor. Remove the garlic and fry each piece of bread in the oil until golden brown and crispy. Remove and place on paper towel lined plate. This bread is EVERYTHING. It’s so simple and perfect for serving with this recipe! Our dinner guests raved.
Variation: I also made another version of this that was equally as delicious – I added a 28 ounce can of San Marzano tomatoes with the oil and broth in step three and let it simmer till the tomatoes broke down a bit. I added the bread paste to the sauce as directed and let it cook down into a rich tomato sauce. It was REALLY good – even just the sauce plain was good served on bread.
- Prep Time: 15 mins
- Cook Time: 15 mins
- Category: Dinner
- Cuisine: Spanish-Inspired
Keywords: spanish shrimp, shrimp recipe, garlic bread sauce
Disclaimer: This post contains affiliate links for The New Classics cookbook bcuz I love this cookbook so much. You can find it on Amazon or in any mainstream bookstores. We actually even found it at Costco around Christmas time last year!