A rich and buttery garlic white wine sauce coats juicy shrimp and slinky strands of angel hair, making this 30-minute pasta recipe taste like a dish from a fancy Italian restaurant. But with the convenience of staying in. And because we eat with our eyes, I like to add tomatoes for color.
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“I made this tonight for dinner and it was amazing!! Better than any I’ve had at a restaurant! This will be a new family dinner staple.” — Kate, FoodieCrush reader
Restaurant-Quality Pasta, Made at Home in 30 Minutes
Fresh tomatoes, garlic, and basil. Three simple ingredients that magically transform into very special recipes when a few simple additions are made. Add toasted bread and you have bruschetta. Add mozzarella and you’ve just made a classic caprese.
This recipe takes those same classic flavors and pairs garlicky shrimp scampi with slinky angel hair pasta for a family-friendly dinner everyone will enjoy.
Shrimp scampi pasta goes from stove to table in 30 minutes flat and works equally well with fresh or frozen shrimp. Weeknight pasta dinners don’t get much easier than this.
Enjoy!
Heidi’s Tips for Recipe Success
Use frozen shrimp for ease. Walk past the thawing shrimp at the seafood counter (they were once frozen, too!) and grab a bag of flash-frozen raw shrimp with the heads and tails still on. Shrimp in the shell will be cheaper and more flavorful.
Defrost beforehand to avoid a watery sauce. Shrimp cooks so fast that you can technically get away with chucking it straight into the hot pan without defrosting it first. However, this will release excess moisture into the scampi sauce and water it down. Plus, the shrimp will steam and likely end up rubbery.
Avoid “cooking wine.” Cooking wines contain salt and stabilizers, which will wreak havoc on your shrimp scampi pasta. Instead, purchase a white wine you’d actually drink; it doesn’t need to be expensive, it just needs to taste good.
What’s in This Recipe?
The full recipe, with amounts, can be found in the recipe card below.
- Shrimp — Wild-caught shrimp will deliver the best flavor. My favorite is large 21/25 Key West pink shrimp, which have a sweet and juicy flavor.
- Angel hair pasta — Can be swapped with another long and skinny pasta, such as spaghetti, fettuccine, or linguine.
- Herbs and spices — A healthy amount of kosher salt is needed to season the angel hair pasta, while crushed red pepper flakes and a handful of fresh basil flavor the garlic white wine sauce.
- Olive oil + butter — I prefer sautéing the aromatics in olive oil, then adding the butter last for flavor (and to prevent it from burning).
- Garlic — A heaping tablespoon infuses the pasta with bold garlic flavor.
- White wine — Choose a dry white wine, like a sauvignon blanc. The alcohol flavor will cook off as the sauce reduces, leaving behind a bright and lively pan sauce that you’ll use to toss the pasta in.
- Lemon — I juiced half a lemon, but if yours isn’t very juicy you might need a whole one.
- Tomatoes — I suggest using Roma tomatoes, which contain more flesh than seeds and won’t water down your scampi sauce.
- Parmesan cheese — Freshly grated Parm melts like a dream and won’t clump up like the powdery stuff in a green can does.
How to Make Shrimp Scampi with Pasta
- Boil the angel hair pasta until al dente. Remember to generously salt the pasta water (after it’s come to a boil — don’t pit your pots!). As the angel hair cooks, it will absorb the salty water and be seasoned from the inside out.
Heidi’s Tip: Reserve some of the starchy pasta water before draining the cooked angel hair. This is what you’ll use to thicken the scampi sauce and help it cling to the pasta.
- Sauté the garlic and red pepper flakes. You’ll want to stir the garlic regularly to prevent it from burning.
- Deglaze the pan. Pour the white wine and lemon juice into the pan, then add the chopped tomatoes. After 3 to 4 minutes, the tomatoes should be softened and the wine reduced by about half.
- Cook the shrimp until opaque. The shrimp will cook very quickly (about 2 minutes on the first side and 1 minute on the other). If your pan isn’t large enough to cook the shrimp in a single layer, cook it in batches to prevent accidental under- or overcooking.
- Bring it all together. Once the shrimp have finished cooking, you need to work fast. Toss the cooked angel hair pasta with the shrimp scampi, then add some of that reserved pasta water to bind everything together and a few pats of butter for silky richness. I like to garnish my shrimp scampi pasta with Parm and fresh basil.
If you make this recipe, please let me know! Leave a ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ rating below, leave a comment to tell us what you think, and tag me on Instagram @foodiecrush.
Shrimp Scampi Pasta Recipe
Ingredients
- 10 ounces angel hair pasta
- 1 teaspoon Kosher salt, divided
- 2 tablespoons olive oil
- 1 tablespoon chopped garlic
- ¼ teaspoon crushed red pepper flakes
- 1 pound large shrimp (26/35 per pound), peeled and deveined
- ¾ cup white wine, such as Sauvignon blanc
- juice of ½ lemon, or more to taste
- 1 ½ cups Roma tomato, seeded and chopped
- 2 tablespoons butter
- ½ cup chopped fresh basil
- ¼ cup freshly grated Parmesan cheese
Instructions
- Bring a large pot of salted water to a boil. Add 10 ounces of dried angel hair pasta and cook for 8-10 minutes or until al dente. Drain (do not rinse), reserving ½ cup of pasta water. Add the pasta back to the pot and keep warm.
- While the pasta cooks, season 1 pound of shrimp with ½ teaspoon kosher salt and set aside. Heat 2 tablespoons olive oil in a large 12-inch skillet over medium. Add 1 tablespoon chopped garlic and ¼ teaspoon crushed red pepper flakes. Cook for one minute or until the garlic becomes fragrant, stirring so the garlic doesn’t burn. Add ¾ cup white wine, the juice of ½ lemon, and 1 ½ cups chopped tomatoes. Cook for another 3-4 minutes, or until the tomato softens, stirring while scraping up the browned bits from the pan.
- Add the shrimp to the skillet in an even layer. Cook for two minutes on one side, then flip and cook for another minute, or until they just turn opaque.
- Add the reserved pasta, ⅓ cup pasta water, and 2 tablespoons butter and stir well, adding more pasta water as needed to make a sauce. Add the pasta to the shrimp, garnish with ½ cup fresh chopped basil and ¼ cup grated Parmesan cheese, and serve.
Nutrition
FAQs
If you don’t have shrimp or it’s not within your budget, you could try making this pasta with diced chicken breasts instead. You’ll want to season the chicken generously since it’s not as flavorful as shrimp, but I bet it’d work well here!
Purchase large, wild-caught 21/25 shrimp in their shells. This will give you the most bang for your buck, and the shrimp will be much more flavorful.
Avoid using small shrimp in this pasta recipe; they cook so quickly that I nearly always overcook them by mistake. Large shrimp cook in just 3 minutes, so the timing won’t be that different if you’re used to using smaller shrimp!
If you added the shrimp to the pan before they were fully defrosted, accidentally measured out too much pasta water, or went a little too hard on the lemon juice, your sauce is more likely to be runny or watery.
If that happened to you, add an extra tablespoon of butter to thicken the sauce. You can also mix 1 teaspoon of cornstarch with 1 teaspoon of water to create a slurry, then pour that into the sauce (cornstarch should be a last ditch effort, though).
In a pinch, you can replace the wine with an equal amount of chicken or vegetable broth. In that case, I’d suggest using more lemon juice since the wine adds lots of bright acidity that broth can’t replicate.
Side Dish Suggestions
- Bread — Homemade Garlic Bread or Garlic Knots
- Salad — Arugula Salad with Parmesan, Antipasto Salad, or Caesar Salad with Garlic Croutons
- Veggies — Roasted Asparagus, Parmesan Roasted Cauliflower, or Garlicky Sautéed Spinach
More Shrimp Pasta Recipes to Try
- Mexican Shrimp Orzo
- Shrimp Pasta with Sun-Dried Tomatoes
- Roasted Red Pepper, Artichoke, and Shrimp Pasta
- Shrimp Scampi with Zoodles
- Shrimp Macaroni Salad
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Carole
This Shrimp Scampi is honestly beyond delicious! Everyone from our 10-year-old to Pops loved it! There was 1 cup of pasta and 1 shrimp left over and I ate it for lunch the next day. It was still incredible!
Oh Carole, if only there were a few more shrimp left for the leftovers :) I guess that’s what happens when it’s so good you can’t stop eating it. Pleased you all enjoyed it! Thanks for the comment and 5-star rating.
Joanna
Not sure if anyone tried making it and following the recipe time yet but it seems like either I’m missing something or the cooking times are wayyyy off. First off angel hair cooks in about 4-5 mins not 8. Also with the amount of liquid it needs to simmer because now my dish looks like it’s a noodle soup dish. Super disappointed.