Quick Grilled Shrimp Recipe

Grilled shrimp are great because they're quick and easy to cook up and surprisingly versatile once prepared. You can serve them as-is for an appetizer, as the protein portion of a meal, or chopped up and added to anything from tacos to salad to pasta to soup. Also, you can prepare your skewers hours before you grill them up, giving you more time to schmooze with guests, run down rowdy kids, or for a bit less stress and effort regardless of mitigating circumstances.

All in, says chef and food writer Maren Epstein of Eating Works, these "grilled shrimp kabobs with lemon and olive oil marinade take about seven minutes [of prep]." And there's the six minutes on the grill. Do the math, and you'll see the equation comes out to quick, easy, and most importantly, tasty.

And thank you for sparing us any "shrimp on the barbie" jokes until now. Get them out of the way if you must, and now let's get to getting these shrimp on the grill.

Aside from the shrimp itself, and maybe the skewers, you probably have all the ingredients needed for great grilled shrimp on hand already. And if you find you love this recipe, you can start keeping shrimp in the freezer; that way, even with the thaw time, you'll never be more than minutes away from great grilled shrimp.

You'll need one pound of raw shrimp, peeled and deveined, five wooden skewers (soak the skewers in water for at least a half hour before grilling to prevent burning), two lemons, 4 tablespoons of butter, melted, 2 tablespoons of olive oil, two cloves of garlic, minced, a 1/2 teaspoon of sea salt, and a 1/4 teaspoon of ground black pepper.

If you have not already, now is a good time to start soaking your skewers. And if you bought cleaned and prepped shrimp, which is a fine move to make, you can skip to the end of this step and start heating your grill. 

Clean and devein the shrimp by slicing the back of the shrimp open lengthwise down the spine with a sharp pairing knife, cutting down where the spine and stomach would be. Pull out the black tube (the intestine) and discard. (Yes, this part is visceral.) Now peel away the hard, "crunchy" outer skin and toss that, too. Rinse the shrimp with cold water and pat each dry.

Now thread four to five shrimp onto each skewer, set them aside, and go turn on the grill so it can start building up some heat.

Combine the lemon juice, melted butter, olive oil, garlic, sea salt, and pepper in a small bowl and then whisk away until everything is well combined. Now drizzle about half of that sauce over the shrimp, or brush it on with a basting brush. Save the rest of the sauce for serving.

Now go and (carefully!) coat the grates of the grill with oil to prevent the shrimp from sticking. (Don't use a cooking spray on a hot grill, for the record.)

Place the shrimp on the hot grill and cook the kabobs on each side for three minutes or until the shrimp are pink and white all the way through — you can (and should) test by cutting open one or two of the thickest shrimp. 

Remove your shrimp from the grates and serve immediately with the leftover sauce drizzled on top or in little cups for dipping. You could also remove the shrimp from the skewer, chop the tails off, and dice the meat into pieces for use in any of the fine foodstuffs we talked about earlier. Tacos, pasta, salad, whatever suits your shrimp fancy.