From Sickness to Healthy Eats: Lemon Pepper Shrimp Scampi

Getting over a cold finally!

After several days of soup and tea I was ready for some “real” food. It was so great to turn on the stove and get some healthy cooking going on in the kitchen. I pulled out some shrimp and asked you wonderful twitter-ers to give me some recipe ideas. I’m grateful for the suggestion from Madeline at Food, Fitness and Family (and a contributor here on BSW!) to create shrimp scampi pasta.

I knew my husband was going to love this dish! Something about the word “scampi” gives the illusion of not-so-healthy eats. He likes to eat good-for-you dishes, but I think there would be way more steak and potato meals on the table if it wasn’t for me.

Pasta noodles are always in my cupboard, but when I got home I spied some orzo. This is a rice-shaped pasta that I wish I would eat more often so I thought it would be a great trade-in for this meal. So shrimp scampi orzo it was!

The base to basically all meals for me is garlic and onions. Are you as obsessed as I am? The hubby says he hates onions, but when you chop them up in small pieces like this with my favorite kitchen tool (OXO Vegetable Chopper)he doesn’t know the difference and I sneak them in….to every meal.

With the orzo on the stove I moved on to cooking the shrimp. Cooking shrimp is always tricky for me because there isn’t much time in between the perfect shrimp and over doing it. After adding a bit of butter and a helping of my chopped garlic and onions I added a few shrimp in. I decided to keep the heat on very low and flip often to keep them from going to chewy phase.

Even pasta meals need some greens and broccoli just seemed so fitting, but you could add in whatever your favorite veggie is.

Last step is to remove the shrimp from the heat and make up the lightly buttered sauce. I added a bit more butter to the pan, more garlic and onions (of course) and squeezed a lemon into the mix. Lemon has a strong flavor so it is a great opportunity to cut down on the butter and let the fresh lemon come through. I zested a bit of lemon in for good measure. I let the butter melt down for about 30 seconds or so and then tossed the cooked shrimp into the sauce. After tossing the pasta in some dried parsley (no fresh on hand), I topped the shrimp with a healthy helping of pepper. And that is it! So simple!

I love soup, but a home cook meal definitely soothed the last bit of my sickness away. Even the hubby gobbled his up and said it was excellent (after asking how much butter I had included!). No questions about onions either. See the recipe below and I hope you enjoy your over-my-sickness meal as much as I enjoyed mine.

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Recipe adopted from Cooking Light 

The original recipe is below, but I made a few changes by adding onions and broccoli to the mix. I also used about ½ the amount of butter and added lemon zest for a fresh punch.

Ingredients

• 1 cup uncooked orzo
• 2 tablespoons chopped fresh parsley
• 1/2 teaspoon salt, divided
• 7 teaspoons unsalted butter, divided
• 1 1/2 pounds peeled and deveined jumbo shrimp
• 2 teaspoons bottled minced garlic
• 2 tablespoons fresh lemon juice
• 1/4 teaspoon black pepper

Preparation

1. Cook orzo according to package directions, omitting salt and fat. Drain. Place orzo in a medium bowl. Stir in parsley and 1/4 teaspoon salt; cover and keep warm.

2. While orzo cooks, melt 1 tablespoon butter in a large nonstick skillet over medium-high heat. Sprinkle shrimp with remaining 1/4 teaspoon salt. Add half of shrimp to pan; sauté 2 minutes or until almost done. Transfer shrimp to a plate. Melt 1 teaspoon butter in pan. Add remaining shrimp to pan; sauté 2 minutes or until almost done. Transfer to plate.

3. Melt remaining 1 tablespoon butter in pan. Add garlic to pan; cook 30 seconds, stirring constantly. Stir in shrimp, juice, and pepper; cook 1 minute or until shrimp are done

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Are you as obsessed with garlic and onion as I am? What’s your favorite grain replacement for pasta noodles?

Feature photo courtesy of getwired via sxc.hu