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This classic shrimp pasta recipe cooks in minutes and will totally satisfy your dinner cravings! Juicy shrimp in a light garlic butter sauce with fresh tomatoes feels perfect for an easy elevated meal or date night at home. Don’t miss a single drop of the savory sauce!

An image showing a white serving bowl with a fork on the side, full of garlic butter sauced shrimp with tomatoes, red chili pepper and parmesan cheese.

My old-school Italian-American family always refers to a plate of shrimp pasta with al dente linguine smothered with pan-sauteed shrimp and garlic butter sauce as “shrimp scampi.”

It’s a classic dish of plump, shrimp swimming in a zesty, buttery garlic sauce, and so easy to fall in love with. The ideal garlic-butter shrimp sauce is rich and so savory-tasting you don’t want to miss a single drop of it.

When I went to Italian restaurants back in the day (and wasn’t much of a cook yet) I’d always order the shrimp scampi, sometimes with squid ink pasta, which usually came served over a giant pile of spaghetti. I’d practically cry with happiness.

Pasta noodles in a bowl with a serving of garlic butter shrimp on top and parsley sprigs.

I think the best way to serve garlic butter shrimp sauce is over hot pasta — because the sauce! Preferably the pasta is a long shape like linguine or spaghetti, ensuring the ultimate slurp factor.

Ingredients for cooking a shrimp pasta recipe on a surface, including raw shrimp, garlic, butter, olive oil in a glass jar, small tomatoes and dried spaghetti.

Key shrimp pasta ingredients

This recipe is basically a shrimp scampi without wine, a quick recipe comes together so fast it’s worth getting all your ingredients lined up before you get started.

1 pound peeled jumbo-sized shrimp: Choose raw jumbo or extra-large shrimp, usually 16-20 per pound. I always keep a bag of shrimp in my freezer.
Garlic: Use fresh garlic rather than pre-minced garlic out of a jar, if you can. Because this dish is so simple, you want the ingredients to shine. If you have a rasp grater (my favorite is this Microplane), you can grate the garlic into a fine paste in seconds.
Wine: This is optional, but if you want to add a layer of bright acidity, pour in 1/4 cup of dry white wine (such as pinot grigio) in step 4 after the shrimp are cooked, before adding the butter and tomatoes.

Clean and devein shrimp

You can usually buy shrimp already peeled, deveined and ready to go. Or, if you have a very friendly fishmonger you can ask them to do it for you. Otherwise, it’s pretty simple to do yourself.

Hold the peeled shrimp in one hand and a small, sharp knife in the other.
Make a shallow slit along the center of the shrimp along the back.
Lift out the black stringy-looking part with your knife, then wipe the knife on a towel. If there’s no vein visible, move on to the next shrimp.
Repeat until all your shrimp are clean.

Cooking steps

1. Dry the shrimp well with a paper towel. Season lightly with salt on both sides.
2. Start cooking the shrimp in olive oil. This is a garlic butter sauce, but unless you typically use clarified butter for cooking, sautéeing the shrimp in butter alone will burn it.
3. Swirl the butter into the hot pan after the shrimp is cooked and let it melt into a foamy, creamy sauce with some of the pasta cooking water. That way you don’t need to dilute the flavor with chicken stock, wine or any other liquid.