Garlic Shrimp and Sun-Dried Tomatoes with Pasta in Spicy Cream Sauce – a delicious, Italian-inspired seafood pasta recipe. If you want to make something different with shrimp, try this recipe! It’s easy and you’ll love it if you like sun-dried tomatoes.
There is lots of sauce in this seafood pasta. Be careful not to overcook the shrimp (which is easy to do). But even if you do overcook the shrimp, there is so much cream sauce, you won’t even notice if the shrimp does get rubbery. That’s the beauty of this recipe. Garlic Shrimp together with Sun-Dried Tomatoes is smothered in Spicy Creamy Sauce and served over fettuccine pasta. With everything spiced up with basil and crushed red pepper. Italian-inspired comfort food that’s super easy to make!
How to cook seafood pasta with shrimp (step-by-step photos):
Start by cooking sun-dried tomatoes with minced garlic in 2 tablespoons of olive oil, then add shrimp, half and half, and spices:
Add cooked pasta and mix everything in:
Adjust spices by adding more of basil, crushed red pepper, and salt:
This is an Italian-inspired seafood pasta recipe with lots of flavors at play. Garlic Shrimp together with Sun-Dried Tomatoes is smothered in a lot of Spicy Creamy Sauce and served over fettuccine pasta. Everything spiced up with basil and crushed red pepper. YUM!
- 1/2 lb shrimp (Use unfrozen uncooked shrimp. If you have to, you can use unfrozen cooked shrimp - it will work here too)
- 4 oz sun-dried tomatoes in olive oil
- 1/4 teaspoon salt
- 1/4 teaspoon paprika
- 4 garlic cloves minced
- 1 cup half and half or milk
- 1 teaspoon dried basil
- ¼ teaspoon crushed red pepper
- 1 cup Parmesan cheese freshly shredded
- 8 oz fettuccine pasta (use gluten free brown rice fettuccine for gluten free version)
- Note: if using sun-dried tomatoes in oil (in a jar), make sure to drain sun-dried tomatoes from oil, before using them. Reserve 2 tablespoons of this drained oil for sauteing as described below:
- In a large skillet, saute minced garlic and sun-dried tomatoes (drained from oil) in 2 tablespoons of oil (reserved from the sun-dried tomatoes jar - see note above) for 1 minute until garlic is fragrant.
- Add shrimp, sprinkle with a small amount of salt, paprika, and cook on medium heat for about 2 more minutes.
- Add half and half, basil, and crushed red pepper to the skillet with shrimp, bring to boil and reduce to simmer. Whisk the Parmesan cheese into the hot cream and stir to melt cheese, on lowest heat setting, until cheese is melted. Remove the sauce from heat. Add more salt, basil and more crushed red pepper if desired, to taste.
- In the mean time, cook pasta according to package instructions. Drain (reserving some pasta water). Add cooked pasta to the creamy mixture, add more salt, basil and more crushed red pepper if desired, to taste.
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Want another delicious creamy shrimp pasta? Check out this video for Shrimp Mozzarella Pasta:
can you make the sauce the day before?
This dish was amazing! Added a little pasta water at the end and mmm mmm good!
I followed this recipe thoroughly and it was absolutely delicious, used freshly caught shrimp since I live in the coast. What caught my attention is that my pasta looked nothing like the picture, mine was much creamier and thicker.
I am so happy you liked this recipe!
How big is a serving size?
The whole recipe makes 4 servings.
This sounds amazing,but I don’t eat seafood,could I use chicken instead??
Yes, you can use chicken. Saute chicken until it’s cooked through instead of shrimp.
Julia, we loved this recipe! I used rigatoni. It was perfectly spiced and amazing. Easy too. Thank you for another fabulous meal.
You are very welcome! I am very happy you enjoyed this recipe!
My favorite recipe!! I add Italian sausage to mine!
What a great idea to add sausage!
This is a wonderful blend of ingredients! Full of flavor! I am going to make this again and again. Thank you Julia, this is awesome!
You are very welcome! I am so glad you enjoyed it! 🙂