This easy and FAST garlic butter shrimp is packed with flavor and only takes 15 minutes to make. Our secret? The most amazing cajun seasoning and a rich, lemony garlic butter sauce. Perfect for a quick dinner or night with friends!
Why You’ll Love This Garlic Butter Shrimp Recipe
No matter how crazy your day may be, garlic butter shrimp will have your family smiling and happy before it’s even out of the oven. Here are a few reasons why:
- Quick and Easy: These garlic butter shrimp are incredibly quick to make and cleanup is a breeze! With only 5 minutes of prep and 10 minutes in the oven, it doesn’t get much better than this.
- Flavor: Shrimp with garlic butter on their own are pretty amazing. But once you add the cajun seasoning, this dish goes to a whole new level of flavor. Savory, spicy, and out of this world!
- Cost Effective: Especially when you use frozen shrimp, the cost per serving of this meal is incredibly low. And with the corn and a piece or two of toasty bread, it’s a complete dinner!
What You’ll Need
You only need a few ingredients for these garlic butter shrimp and most of them you probably already have in the pantry. Scroll down to the recipe card for exact amounts.
- Jumbo Shrimp: You can use frozen or fresh; with or without a shell/tail.
- Seasonings: Crushed red pepper flakes, smoked paprika, dried oregano, bay leaves, and seafood seasoning. For the seafood seasoning, you can use Old Bay or our favorite homemade cajun seasoning.
- Butter: Grab some salted butter for this recipe.
- Worcestershire Sauce
- Lemon
How to Cook Shrimp
This garlic butter shrimp recipe comes together really quickly and makes an excellent weeknight dinner. Here’s how to make it. Check out the recipe card at the bottom of this post for detailed directions and ingredient amounts.
- Prepare: Preheat your oven to 400°F, melt butter to grease a sheet pan, and rinse the shrimp in a colander.
- Season: Place the shrimp on the buttered sheet pan in a single layer and season them with garlic and lemon juice. Add in the corn. Generously coat the shrimp and the corn with the remaining butter and seasoning.
- Bake: Bake the pan for 10-12 minutes. You’ll know it’s done when the shrimp curl and turn pink. Serve and enjoy!
Tips for Success
When it comes to easy shrimp recipes, this one may be one of our favorites. The flavor is amazing and it’s easy to make it your own with a few tweaks. Here are a few tips from our kitchen to yours.
- Spicy: Love spicy food? Go ahead and amp up the heat! You can easily add more crushed red pepper flakes to increase the spice level.
- Add Sausage: Smoked or andouille sausages go really well with garlic butter shrimp. The flavors light up with that cajun seasoning!
- Thaw: Frozen shrimp is a huge money and time savor and we usually always have a bag in our freezer. Just make sure you defrost the shrimp before cooking. Pull them out ahead of time and thaw them in the sink. If you need to defrost them fast, you can keep them under cold running water until no longer frozen.
- Shells: We like to use the jumbo size shrimp with the shells on to help maintain the tenderness of the shrimp while they cook.
- Prep: This is an easy dish to prep ahead of time, which can be great if you’re cooking for family or friends. Complete all the preparations right up until you put the sheet pan in the oven. Instead, cover it with plastic wrap and place in the fridge for up to 24 hours.
What to Serve With Cajun Shrimp
These delicious buttery shrimp are perfect straight out of the pan and can be a complete meal with or without adding sausage. But if you want to amp things, up, there are so many options to choose from!
- Bread: We love cajun shrimp in a Po’ Boy sandwich. But, a lot of times, we want to keep things simple and just have a couple of pieces of garlic bread to dip in the spicy butter!
- Pasta or Rice: We love this shrimp in our cajun shrimp pasta and as a replacement in traditional shrimp scampi. They would also be amazing over some dirty rice or parmesan garlic rice. Get creative!
Can I Store and Reheat Leftovers?
Shrimp is best served fresh, and our garlic butter shrimp is no exception. Shrimp unfortunately get a little rubbery when reheated, so the texture isn’t quite right. With that said, if you want to eat them cold the next day, they’d be great over a salad. Just be sure to peel the shrimp first and put them in an airtight container in the fridge. We do not recommend reheating or freezing leftovers.
More Easy Shrimp Recipes
Sheet Pan Cajun Garlic Butter Shrimp
Ingredients
- 2 sticks salted butter, divided
- 2 lbs fresh jumbo shrimp*, shell on or peeled and deveined
- 4 large cloves garlic, minced
- juice of 1 lemon
- 4 ears of corn, sliced into 2 inch pieces
- 1 ½ tablespoons Worcestershire sauce
- 1 ½ teaspoons seafood seasoning or cajun seasoning
- 1 teaspoon crushed red pepper flakes
- 1 teaspoon smoked paprika
- 1 teaspoon dried oregano
- 3 bay leaves
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 400°F.
- Rinse the shrimp in a colander and set aside to drain. Melt half a stick of butter and spread it around in the center of the sheet pan.
- Place shrimp on the pan and cover with garlic and lemon juice. Try and spread the shrimp evenly on the roasting pan without to much overlapping.
- Add the corn and generously sprinkle seasonings and Worcestershire sauce to cover the shrimp and corn.
- Slice the butter into 1 tablespoon slices and spread the butter evenly over the shrimp/corn.
- Bake for 10-12 minutes. Once shrimp curl and turn pink they are done. Do not over cook or they will be chewy!
Oh well h*ll yes this was wonderful!! I added brussel sprouts, parboiled some potatoes and eye-balled the seasonings, but I would be proud to have this regularly at home and serve it to friends. Thank you so much for sharing your wealth!
I love sheet pan meals, so I’m always looking for new simple delicious recipes and this one did not disappoint! It was so easy to make and was so delicious. Thanks, this is a keeper!
Yay! We love it too, so glad you enjoyed it 🙂
I did it for dinner today. I didn’t have corn on the cob, so I use a pack of steam-able corn. My son loved it. Thank you.
Perfect! That is a great substitute 🙂
Can you add red potatoes?
Yes, but you will need to bake them some before until they are fork tender. The bake time for the shrimp and corn is very quick and your potatoes would not be cooked.
I added zucchini fresh from my garden to this and it was fantastic! The whole thing was full of amazing flavor! We did not have a single bit left and only the two of us ate last night. LOL!
That sounds so delicious! Love that you added fresh from your garden zucchini!
I always rely on the reviews to see what others may have done to enhance the recipe (not that it’s necessary!!! Just curious!!). It would be great if you could list the most recent reviews first instead of the older reviews first. It’s just easier to see what’s happening now, then read on to see what else has been done in the past. Thank you.
Hi Corinne, Thank you for the suggestion, but wordpress is unable to offer that now. Hopefully in the future!(we love reviews too)
Tried it! It was fabulous! All my favorites, shrimp, corn, garlic, butter! Will make again and also save for a Lenten meal since it only takes 20, 30 minutes! Thank you!
Can you tell me what makes this recipe have so much sodium? Crazy amount!
It’s a program that automatically calculates everything, so it’s not always 100% correct. The salt added is in the butter and in the seafood seasoning. So I’d check your nutrition on both of those items to see accurate amount of sodium added! Hope this helps!
i only have frozen corn on the cob. what are your suggestions on how to cook that with this recipe? thank you
Hi Rebecca! Should work out just fine as corn cooks very quickly and can even be eaten raw! I would let it thaw a few minutes on the counter before cooking it, otherwise no changes!
What do,you use for seafood seasoning? Old Bay?
You can use any seafood or blackening seasoning! And yes, old bay will be great!
When do you use the Worcestershire Sauce? I see its part of the ingredients but IM not sure where it is in the instructions?
Hi Kathlene! You add it when you add all the seasonings to the shrimp and corn!
I combined all ingredients as a marinade. Bay leaves need time to release their flavor. Kept warming the marinade in the microwave every 20 minutes at 10 seconds, for about an hour. Added the shrimp to semi-cooled marinade. Dumped everything on parchment paper lined baking sheet. Excellent. Served with remoulade sauce. OMGOSH.
What can be used to replace corn?
You can skip the corn completely! I wouldn’t recommend replacing it with another vegetable because most vegetables will need longer to cook.
Awesome. I’m always looking for quick meals where all of the ingredients can be stored away in the pantry and freezer. I make big plans for dinners on weeknights sometimes and wind up without the energy to cook them. This will be a good go-to on nights that I just don’t have it in me to get a big meal done.
My wife also says I cook too much pork and beef and not enough seafood. This should help make her happy.
We love this quick dinner recipe! And cleanup is a breeze too!
We had this over the weekend and it was PACKED with flavor! So happy to have found this site!
We had this over the weekend and my husband is obsessed with Shrimp and pretty much ate most of the dish himself! This is a definite must make!