R. Doug Wicker — Author

Fresh off the Hawai’ian Shrimp Truck? You would think so!

Instead of Fun Photo Friday I’m going with this week’s Hawaiian food theme and presenting a Fun Food Friday. Today I’m going to show you how to make at home that divine Hawaiian Food Truck staple, Hawaiian Garlic Butter Shrimp. You won’t believe how quick, easy, and tasty this dish is.

Ever wish you could get that true, fresh, off-the-truck Hawaiian garlic shrimp taste in the comfort of your own home? Here’s my attempt at doing just that, and it came out tasting very authentic indeed.

Ingredients

What you’ll need:

• 2 pounds of shrimp
• 1 ½ heads of garlic
• ⅓ cup all-purpose flour
• ¼ heaping tsp. cayenne pepper
• ½ tsp. table salt
• ¼ cup olive oil
• ½ stick (4 tbsp.) of butter
• 1 lemon (optional)

Peel, rinse, and pat dry the shrimp.

Prepped shrimp and peeled garlic

Peel and chop the garlic.

Chopping garlic

Mix together the flour, cayenne pepper, and salt.

Everything ready to go

Heat the olive oil in a skillet. Add the butter.

Heat the oil and add the butter

Toss the shrimp into the flour mixture and lightly coat them. If you didn’t pat the shrimp dry beforehand then too much flour will stick to them now. Add the shrimp to the hot oil and butter, but don’t crowd the pan as much as I did here. If you need to cook the shrimp in batches then reserve some of the chopped garlic and add more olive oil and butter to the skillet.

Too many shrimp in the pan!

Brown the shrimp on one side and then flip them over. Add the chopped garlic.

Brown the shrimp, add garlic

When the shrimp are lightly browned on the other side carefully flip the shrimp and garlic several time to coat the shrimp, cook the garlic, and flavor the butter and oil.

Toss in the garlic

At this point you may want to squeeze in some fresh lemon juice, but I prefer this dish without. The garlic and cayenne are flavor enough for me. Serve the shrimps and garlic-butter sauce (pan drippings, in other words) over rice. Ursula made a Swiss-style cucumber salad with this, and the coolness of the cucumber salad was a great counter to the garlic and cayenne pepper.

Served over rice

Variation: I suspect that this garlic shrimp dish would be equally at home over pasta, perhaps topped with some freshly diced Roma tomato and grated Parmesan and/or Romano cheese. You might even choose to substitute crushed red pepper for the cayenne to give it a more “Italian” flavor.

Wine pairing: Have to go with a white wine here. And the spices indicate to me that a Pinot Grigio may be the perfect accompaniment. This is especially true if you do the “Italian” variation suggested above. Or perhaps you might try a crisp, semisweet Johannesburg Reisling to offset the spiciness if you decide to increase the cayenne for a fierier version of the traditional Hawaiian style.