Though Gambas al Ajillo has a handful of ingredients, shrimp is the star of the show in this dish. Including shrimp, these are the only required ingredients:
Ingredient quantities are detailed in the printable recipe card below.
Shrimp
If you’re in the United States and don’t have access to fresh shrimp, we recommend using frozen 16/20 shrimp with the heads on. Frozen, you ask? We say yes. In general, unless you’re literally living next to the seaport in a coastal Catalan fishing village like Palamos, you likely don’t have access to freshly caught prawns. And that’s okay.
Frozen shrimp is a wonder. It literally takes about 30-45 minutes to defrost in cold water and will keep for a couple months in the freezer. If you buy a large quantity, you’ll have enough shrimp to cook fried rice a few times and for the grill.
We buy our shrimp with the heads on which is how they’re commonly sold. Don’t worry – we don’t waste the heads. Instead, we freeze the heads and shells to later create stock and cook shrimp risotto.
Before cooking prawns, we incorporate an Asian trick of dredging shrimp in a couple teaspoons of cornstarch and washing the cornstarch off. Since we’re not scientists, we can’t explain why the cornstarch washes away the slime and gives the shrimp a plumper texture. But, since this technique works every time for us, we recommend that you do this too.
Also, from a tip we picked up from famous chef Thomas Keller, we brine our shrimp in a cup of water with a teaspoon of salt for 15 minutes. This process more than adequately seasons the shrimp so that we don’t need to add salt when cooking it.
Garlic
We like to use A LOT of garlic. When we were developing the recipe, Daryl chose to use about 6 cloves of garlic, which he thought would be enough. Since Mindi prefers bold flavors, we upped the garlic clove count to 8 and both prefer the more intense flavor. You can use 6 cloves if that’s what you prefer.
Smoked Paprika
The chefs at Cervejaria Ramiro don’t add pimenton (which is called pimentão doce here). However, since we like the special smokey flavor that this Iberian form of paprika brings to the dish, we add smoked paprika to our recipe.
White Wine
Are you wondering what kind of white wine to use? We say that as long as you would drink it, use it. A wine like Yellowtail or even Barefoot is just fine for cooking this dish. However, since you only need a small amount of wine for the recipe, we recommend using a wine that you’ll be happy to drink later.
Olive Oil
We use good Portuguese extra virgin olive oil that we buy at the grocery store. While you don’t need to splurge on olive oil, we recommend using a good store brand of EVOO.
Chili Pepper
We use fresh piri-piri pepper, a small chili originally cultivated in Africa, when we make Gambas al Ajillo at home. This small pepper provides a lot of heat, similar to tabasco chili. You could use a red Thai bird chili, a hot red Anaheim or even a 1/4 teaspoon of Italian chili flake as a substitute.
