Knowing how to make a lemon shrimp pasta is not nearly as hard as you’d think! For this authentic version I’m using just a few ingredients and dinner is ready in just 20 minutes. If you’re new to cooking shrimp, I explain step by step how to make this amazingly easy Italian shrimp pasta recipe. I break it down so simply that you can even follow along! I offer helpful tips along the way, like when it’s best to add the lemon… or what if you don’t have fresh lemon?
This recipe is super flexible and you can swap ingredients or adjust quantities.
Here are the ingredients needed:
Long pasta – I used spaghetti, but linguini or fettuccini work great too.
Extra virgin olive oil – I don’t use butter or any cream as my recipe is more of a Southern Italian dish, but if you want to add some butter or swap the olive oil out with butter you can.
Garlic – a few cloves is all that’s needed
Parsley – Italian parsley is best, but regular curly works too
Lemon or lemon juice
Red pepper flakes (optional)
🟢 FULL RECIPE: https://www.simpleitaliancooking.com/lemon-shrimp-pasta/
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🟢 RESOURCES MENTIONED/USED IN VIDEO:
– This is the Induction burner I use for much of my cooking. https://amzn.to/3IXmg9v
– Here’s the pasta strainer I’m using: https://amzn.to/3QFJUvR
– Link to Pasta Strainer video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aCiXOKWngIQ
00:00 Introduction
00:59 Ingredients overview
02:14 thawing the shrimp
04:19 olive oil and garlic
08:26 parsley
11:11 cooking the shrimp
15:18 straining and adding the pasta
16:45 more parsley
16:56 adding the lemon
17:33 taste testing and adjustment
ciao friends welcome to simple Italian cooking my name is Liz and I’m so glad you’re here today we are going to be having an amazing Italian Dish that you are going to learn how to make and do yourself and it’s going to taste just as good if not better than when eating out and that’s using a really basic um olive oil and garlic and shrimp with pasta and the type of pasta we’re using is going to be a long pasta I just put it in some boiling water uh for the um I’m just using spaghetti I’m going to go over what type of shrimp we’re using I’m going to go over how flexible you can be with this recipe so if you have ever been hesitant to make a um pasta and shrimp dish fears be gone because I’m going to show you how to do it all right so the first thing we’re going to do let me just go over the ingredients that that I’m using for this recipe okay using some extra virgin olive oil organic okay if you have organic great if you don’t you know at least make sure it’s extra virgin first cold press best flavor uh and then we’re going to have uh some what do we have here we have garlic GNA be using about two cloves of garlic for this dish okay I’m going to go over the quantities and what to do about them uh depending on how much you’re making so just hang tight uh and then we have some shrimp here I’m going to show you how to Tha it real fast then we have some uh lemon show you when to use it and how to use it properly and then um some optional stuff which is some salt that you can add to the dish um if you like to enhance the flavor just a little bit you don’t need it um so if you’re trying to cut back on that sodium that’s a really this is a good dish you don’t have to have it and then some crushed red pepper the reason why I’m including this because I don’t always use crushed red pepper is some people just love it so I wanted to make sure I at least include it um for those who um who really like a little bit of a kick so all right the first thing we’re going to do is we are going to thaw the shrimp so I have a have quite a bit to say about the shrimp um but it it’s Frozen right now I have a little over 4 ounces what I’m going to do is just simply run it under cold water until they are and they fall really really fast which is really really great okay I can feel it already so these are shrimp that I got at Aldi and I was kind of surprised to find them there now I am not a fan of um buying shrimp and seafood that is um from the Pacific Waters um I don’t think it’s very clean I don’t trust it um so I really always look at the origin I try and find shrimp that is um more on the Atlantic from the Atlantic Ocean um and these particular shrimp so I saw a lot of that at Aldi when I was looking at the shrimp and I see it at other stores and uh so these were actually from Argentina I said that works I’ll try that These are nice and thawed the reason why we want to make sure that they’re fully thawed here don’t want to cook them I just have them in a little strainer here hopefully you can see while I’ve been talking I’m just going to let that drain they cook really fast you want to make sure that they are fully thawed so that they cook evenly see because if it’s frozen partially frozen you’re going to get you know some it’s going to not cook evenly and the problem is is that shrimp when it’s overcooked will get really rubbery and we do not want that so quick note about the pasta all right so hang on um I’m going to turn this onto medium and I’m doing enough pretty much just for myself and some the reason being I was actually going to do Linguini I had just enough Linguini left over and linguini would have been really nice like I said you want a long pasta with this dish adding a few tablespoons of olive oil uh and just going to heat it up on kind of a medium medium heat so I was going to make the Linguini right and my husband does not really care for seafood that much especially like when cooking in the house and anyway I didn’t think he was going to want any so I was just going to use up the Linguini so he came down and saw the shrimp and saw me getting ready and he’s like hm I think I’ll have some of that so I was like seriously okay no problem but we don’t have any more Linguini so I had to go fishing pun not intended and I grabbed a bag of spaghetti and so I’m doing a half a pound of spaghetti okay and so in terms of which will give about for us about two servings I grabbed this is probably about 5 ounces of shrimp right here 4 ounces according to the shrimp bag is what they recommend for a serving what do I say that’s just a guideline so if uh you know you want more put more in if you don’t want more don’t put more in you know use less so there’s no wrong or right you’re not going to ruin the dish if you have one or two more shrimp you know that knock it up to 5 ounces right so be flexible do what you like and really what I’m just doing here is I’m getting the garlic ready I want to mince the garlic because I really want that flavor remember this is not a red sauce recipe um this is not any type of Alfredo it’s just a simple olive oil and garlic recipe which you can use for a lot of things let me tell you I use it for doing zucchini um cooking up zucchini tossing it in with some pasta so you might be wondering like why did I not have my you ual Romano cheese which is like you know I love Romano cheese and the reason is because I’m just not convinced you even need it for this dish right so I’m going to go ahead and add the garlic here and so you’ll notice that um I Ed two oops I only did one clove so I like to use a little bit more because this is the sauce okay uh the olive oil and garlic is the sauce so you don’t want this isn’t like oh just do a little bit to for the garlic and then you’re fine um because we’re going to be adding in tomatoes and all this other stuff no so you want to go up a little bit on the olive oil I may have even skimped a little bit on it but I think it’ll be okay because of the quantity so if you want specific sometimes people give me a hard time on these videos because I don’t always say the quantities and they get frustrated with me well the thing is is that I’m making it pretty much much for myself or for myself and my husband so the quantities I give you are kind of approximations because on my website is where I have the actual like serves four to six and I have the quantities adjusted appropriately for that but when I do these videos um a lot of times I’m just doing a smaller amount but friends I’m telling you when it comes to Italian cooking it is very very rare um unless you’re doing like unless you’re baking okay unless you’re baking something like a dessert exact quantities need to be it is flexible okay so all right so the garlic is getting we want to do this until the garlic is real nice and fragrant I’m actually feel like I should turn this down a little bit but I don’t want the garlic to Brown okay so now what we’re going to do I am going to turn it down a little bit actually very low I forgot to mention something this is fresh uh parsley you do not have to use fresh parsley you can use um dried parsley but I if you have fresh parsley you know and this really kind of goes with any herb if you have fresh over dried go with the fresh okay you know why a few reasons and I’ll tell you um One is because it has to me a little bit more flavor okay you get a little bit more flavor there uh sometimes it’s a different type a different almost a different flavor but I’ll tell you another reason a real practical one I’m just kind of rolling this up in a ball here and we’ll just try and make the best of this right I’m just going to pull it all together and kind of oh I’m sure somebody’s out there’s G to tell me I’m doing it all wrong but you know what I don’t care uh so the other practical the other reason is very practical of why to use fresh because the dried isn’t going to go anywhere it’s not going to go back in the next week or two with how many times have we bought fresh herbs at the store and we’re like oh I’ll just use it later oh I’m not going to make that recipe right now I’m going to do it later and then there we have it it goes bad so um I’m actually going to be doing a video on how to preserve your herbs um keep them fresh really excited to do that so I’m going to be uh posting that and I’ll put the I’ll update description when that’s ready okay so I’m going to add probably about 3/4 of this I’m using I don’t know maybe uh tablespoon two tablespoons again preference no wrong or right and and one thing that’s really cool about this is um we’re going to be adding a little bit of this parsley on at the end so if you feel like you didn’t really add enough don’t worry about it can make up for it okay great so this is going great um you don’t want that garlic to burn so that’s why I keep it low here and now we have a nice sauce here I’m going to show you a closeup of this okay so you can see how delicious that looks I’m telling you right now that it’s already smelling absolutely amazing at this point if you want to add the crushed red pepper it’s a good point this when it mixes with the olive oil it’s really going to um get pretty strong in there so I’m I’m gonna actually not use it for this one but feel free and I’m just I would add a dash I you don’t need a lot okay so shrimp turn it up a little bit okay you want to cook it over medium heat I’m G to kind of keep the herbs and stuff a little bit away from it maybe even off a little bit and shrimp is actually really easy to cook you don’t have to be afraid of cooking shrimp now with the shrimp you might be wondering well what size do I use do I get it D vain do I get it with the shell on or off these are all questions that I had as well when I was not familiar with cooking with shrimp and uh so I mean literally I’ll stand in front of the uh the freezer aisle where the shrimp are uh and I’ll be like just staring at stuff and it just becomes like decision overwhelm so but anyway I decided on for this one I did decide on medium shrimp and I got it dained so I’m going to just show you here hopefully you’ll can see it so yeah this is good happens to be in the exact position works for you so this is the back of the shrimp right here you can notice that it’s kind of cut out well what that means is that normally there is a little black vein it’s kind of like I don’t know looks like a back Bon it’s a vein it’s like a literal vein um all right so we’re at processes so what you want to do is you just want to keep kind of turning it so a lot of times you don’t want that vein in there I mean it’s not even appealing looking especially when you think about what’s in it so it’s really nice to get them pre- devain okay you want to cook this for like three minutes and we’re just moving them around a little bit so they don’t get stuck okay so you might be wondering when do we add the lemon okay so let’s talk about that um the lemon I’m using fresh lemon okay uh if you don’t have fresh lemon it is not the end of the world the dish doesn’t even have to have lemon on it I just like shrimp and that lemon and garlic flavor okay so if you don’t have it don’t stress if you have something like uh concentrate or lemon juice in a bottle add a few drops okay but you don’t want to cook the lemon juice in the olive oil and get it all hot and stuff it changes it I don’t know the science behind it um but what we’re going to do is we’re going to sprinkle that on at the end okay these are kind of beginning to turn and again you don’t want to overcook them but you certainly don’t want to undercook them either so I’m going to go ahead and just turn them over and really shrimp over medium heat probably shouldn’t take more than five minutes but you’re going to know when it’s done when it starts getting pink okay so what do you do did I turn that one already already I don’t know I think I did so what do you do if the pasta is not ready yet right I mean I’m telling you you don’t want to undercook it I’m telling you you don’t want to overcook it okay so really easy answer you remove it from the pan now how crazy is that for an easy answer right okay so I’m just going to let that finish cooking there so I mean even already it’s been like only 15 minutes and that was with me talking and you know going a little slow lower than normal just because I’m doing the video and not like whipping things around and making a huge mess I can’t tell you how good it smells it smells absolutely delicious so by now the pasta is going to be probably done because it’s been cooking longer than I yeah this is done so I need to take this out and stop the cooking if you did not watch my video on this using this pasta strainer you got to watch it um because because uh I have been using it like okay so my I don’t want to give away all the secrets but I really do like it and it’s really easy to use so I’m going to show you how to do that let me get this out of the way and it actually works out because I sprain my wrist while I gota get I gotta get that out here um and uh so this really helps and you can see here I’m able to use both hands while I’m straining the pasta which is really nice so a lot of times I just like hold it on the edge and use a lid or something like that but this way I don’t have to deal with anything my sink can be like a mess kind of like it is now and I don’t have to worry about it and way down and I’m just going to dump some this in okay and mix in that uh pasta to get that olive oil we want that olive oil in there all right now we’re going to do another thing here remember that parsley we saved some we’re going to add it here going to be delicious and then what we’re going to do remember that lemon you get the seeds out definitely don’t want seeds in there right just do this now I could have done this before I added the the um pasta does it really matter I don’t think so gosh it smells so good really really smells good all right so shall we do a taste test and I’m going to get myself a bowl okay okay okay I’m just going to taste it a little bit of shrimp here we go it doesn’t need salt I don’t know if it’s from maybe the shrimp does not need salt that was really really good I think I might do a little bit more lemon actually let’s see here we just do it because this might be a user preference let me say all right here we go MH oh yeah okay oh wait I have this one here I’m definitely adding more L that again you don’t have to use the lemon but I really really recommend it so one thing you have to be really careful for and I have to as well is be very careful that you don’t do what I just did and that is put lemon on a quartz counter because the acid will really affect it it could do damage and I don’t want that to happen I will probably not ever order quartz again for my kitchen for our kitchen because be so careful with it and I don’t like that I am not uh always mindful of that kind of stuff so friends this is how easy it is and I’m going to just give a closeup here so you can see the dish and I want you to see how awesome see how awesome that is it looks so good with the the parsley and the garlic oh my gosh it is delicious it is really really good and the cool thing is is you don’t have to load the dish up with a ton of uh shrimp because you have that olive oil garlic and parsley flavor throughout I mean you could do it without the shrimp but that’s not what this recipe is about so I really hope you enjoy this if you had any fears about cooking the shrimp you just watched me do it it’s very very easy just look for it when it starts turning you know pink make sure not to overcook it um it’s really is as simple as that um please make sure to subscribe and like if you enjoy Italian food get that notification hit the Bell share it with your friends I’d really appreciate it you’re doing me a huge help and yourself a help and all your friends because these are such easy recipes and I know that you and your family are going to truly enjoy it well thanks so much for watching