Bacon Brown Sugar Garlic Shrimp, the best shrimp appetizer you’ll ever eat with only 4 Ingredients. Sticky, crispy, sweet and garlicky, the PERFECT weeknight meal.
Brown Sugar and Garlic basically dominate this site led by Brown Sugar Garlic Pork and Slow Cooker Brown Sugar Garlic Chicken. It only made sense to add to our list of easy shrimp recipes with this delicious, quick dinner.
Bacon Brown Sugar Garlic Shrimp
We love a quick and easy super flavorful shrimp dish (check out Kung Pao Shrimp for a punch of flavor!) and this dish is no exception. My promise to you? You’ll eat half the shrimp before you even put it down to serve.
I judge shrimp dishes by the “how many did I taste test while cooking” test. If it’s good enough for the blog I probably tested five or six shrimp before they made it to being served. This dish? I ate the five then kept picking off a shrimp at every turn. Luckily I was working on a test run and not during dinner with people waiting for food!
Why brown sugar and garlic? There’s so much flavor in these two ingredients together. Brown sugar is a moist blend of sugar with molasses which adds a lot of flavor. Mixed with garlic you have a blend of savory, sweet and bold aggressive flavors. Rounding out the dish? Bacon. Bacon brings in a salty and fatty flavor that will make this a recipe you fight over.
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HOW TO PEEL AND DEVEIN SHRIMP:
- To peel raw shrimp, tear away at the shell above the first segment of the shell (the tail segment).
- Take a paring knife and make a shallow cut along the spine of the shrimp (the back of it).
- Using the paring knife or a fork, gently remove the black strip of intestines.
- To remove tails just squeeze the shrimp out from the bottom of the tail segment.
WHAT TO SERVE WITH SHRIMP:
- Grits or Oven Baked Creamy Cheese Polenta would be delicious!
- Wrap larger pieces of bacon around the shrimp and cook for a quick appetizer version.
- Baked Mac and Cheese or Super Creamy Macaroni and Cheese would play well with these flavors.
Can you freeze this recipe? No I don’t recommend making this ahead and freezing as both the bacon and the shrimp will lose flavor, texture and tenderness with the freezing process. This dish is best served freshly cooked.
Ingredients
- 8 slices bacon
- 3/4 teaspoon Kosher salt
- 1/2 teaspoon black pepper
- 2 pounds shrimp peeled and deveined (15-20 count)
- 3 tablespoons garlic minced
- 2 tablespoons water
- 2/3 cup brown sugar packed
- parsley optional
Instructions
- Cook the bacon in a large cast iron skillet until chewy but crispy, leaving a couple tablespoons of the fat behind after removing the bacon.
- In a large bowl add the salt, pepper and shrimp and mix until combined.
- Add the shrimp to the skillet and cook 1-2 minutes on each side before removing from the pan.
- Add the garlic in and cook for 30 seconds before adding the water and the brown sugar and bringing it to a boil.
- Add the shrimp back in to coat and sprinkle the bacon pieces over the shrimp along with parsley before serving.
This was delicious, I served it over cooked ramen.
I don’t eat bacon, but I did it without it and it tasted soooo good!
i don’t eat bacon either but your post is encouraging….will definitely have to try this one now
I loved it, thank you! I highly recommend others try this too.
So glad you loved it, thank you for coming back to leave a review! And on Christmas day, I so appreciate it. 🙂
loved it so delicious try it
There is so much to love about this!
I hope you enjoy it!
So good! Can’t wait to try this!
Enjoy!
This looks incredibly delicious!
Thanks Erin!
Such a gorgeous meal!! I love the flavors in this dish…it’s fantastic!!
Thanks Katerina!
I never thought of this sweet little combo, but it’s so good!
Enjoy!
Holy smokes does this recipe look amazing. I know that combo of shrimp and bacon is so dang good!
Thanks Billy!