Gluten Free Friday – Brown Butter Shrimp

Welcome to Gluten Free Friday!!

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I am not someone who can easily walk into a kitchen, grab a random handful of ingredients, and make an amazing meal.  Basically I would be the first one kicked off of Chopped.  But…every once in a while, I do happen to make a non-recipe meal work.  This one I’m sharing today was a success on multiple levels because

1) it was delicious

2) Skylar ate it up like it was going out of style

3) I actually used spices (a rare thing)

4) I created it all on my own!

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Let’s get to it shall we…

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Lizz’s Brown Butter Shrimp

(Yes, I’m naming it after myself. I am proud of me!)

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Ingredients:

• 14-16 oz of cooked shrimp (peeled, deveined, with or without tails)
• 1 stick butter
• Rubbed Sage
• Lemon Thyme
• Pasta/Rice/Gluten Free Pasta of your choice.

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The whole idea of this recipe started when I found a big bag of frozen shrimp at Walmart for $5!! I immediately snagged one, with a mental promise to do something good with it.  I took it home, thawed them out, and removed the tails (because I was eating with a kid I thought that would be easier, but I do think they are pretty when left on)

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It took a lot to keep little fingers out of this bowl!

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While the shrimp thawed I started thinking about a sauce I could make with the minimal (read: almost none) ingredients I have on hand.  Hmm…I do have butter.  And I love brown butter.  But I’ve never made brown butter.  A challenge?!  Ah ha!

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So, let’s make some brown butter.  It’s much easier than I thought it would be.  Just take one stick of butter, cut it up into even slices, and add to a medium hot skillet.

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Once the butter is melted, you will keep cooking it on low/medium heat until the butter turns an amber brown color, and has a nutty smell.  Be careful not to go too far and burn it.

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I used a slotted spoon to scoop away some of the foam on top.  Then I added in some spices.  Upon digging in my (rarely used) spice rack, I had come across two bottles that I didn’t know I had. 

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Since I’m no spice whiz, I went with the smell test.  I poured a little of each of these into my hand, and gave it a sniff.  Smelled good to me!  I dropped a few healthy pinches of each into the butter.  I didn’t measure because I didn’t know what I was doing really.  You’ll just have to go with your gut on this one.  The spices made a cool sizzling noise when they hit the butter.  Ssssss…..  Then I added in the shrimp.

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Since the shrimp was already cooked, I just kept it in there long enough to really warm it up, get some of those flavors to soak in.  About 3 minutes or so.

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While all of this was going on, I had been boiling up some pasta for myself and Skylar had asked that hers come with rice. (which is conveniently gluten free!).  I put several shrimp right on top of our chosen base, and then poured on a few spoonfuls of the liquid as well.  There was some sludgy stuff at the bottom of that pan, and that really had the best taste.  Don’t leave that part out!  The results?…

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Yum for my pasta dish!

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And major smiles from Skylar for her rice dish!

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I was so happy with the outcome of this, I will absolutely make this again!!  We even had enough left over for lunch the next day.

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And here’s a little trick when making something this fancy and different for a kid:  I didn’t cook all of the shrimp.  I left about a third of it to the side.  Once the shrimp was cooked, I had her taste one before serving her an entire plateful.  Thankfully she loved it, but if she hadn’t I had plenty of un-sauced shrimp for her to eat.  She loved it so much that I added the unused shrimp to our butter sauce and cooked it up for leftovers.

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I hope I made you all hungry!  Have a great weekend everyone!

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Lizz

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I will be linking this meal to the following parties:

For the Kids Friday @ Sun Scholar’s

Simply Link Party @ Simply Designing

Party Mindie Style @ Bacon Time with the Hungry Hungry Hypo

Delicately Constructed Fridays @ Delicately Constructed

My Favorite Things @ Stay at Home Nation

CraftOManiac Mondays @ CraftOManiac

Inspire Me Mondays @ Singing Three Little Birds

Craftastic Monday @ Sew Can Do

Nifty Thrifty Sunday @ Nifty Thrifty Things