Shrimp Scampi Meets Salsa Verde in This Weeknight-Friendly Pasta

I’ve always been intrigued by the idea of a Mexican pasta dish. Not in the Tex-Mex sense—where spaghetti gets tossed with taco seasoning and ground beef—but something that thoughtfully integrates the Mexican flavors I grew up eating into the framework of a classic Italian-American pasta dish. Years ago, I stumbled across a recipe in a 1980s Mexican-American cookbook that combined spaghetti with crema and queso fresco, almost like an Alfredo reboot. That dish was comforting and creamy, but I couldn’t stop thinking about how well Mexico’s vibrant, herbaceous flavors could play in a format more reminiscent of Italian-American scampi.

This dish is my answer to that question. The shrimp and the sauce in this pasta dish sit somewhere between Daniel’s shrimp scampi with pasta and Kenji’s gambas al ajillo—two Serious Eats classics I return to often. From Daniel’s scampi, I borrow the idea of using pasta as a vehicle for a rich, shrimp-infused sauce. I draw the bold, assertive punch of allium and chile from Kenji’s garlic shrimp. But here, I route everything through the fresh, green energy of a salsa verde—lime, serrano, and cilantro—melding it with butter and shrimp for a fusion that’s bright, spicy, and deeply aromatic.

There’s a smart technique behind the scenes, too: I briefly brine the shrimp with a combination of salt and baking soda, which raises their pH and keeps their proteins from tightening too quickly as they cook. It’s a technique Daniel and Kenji employ in their shrimp recipes, and the method leads to plumper, juicier shrimp—no rubbery chew. While they rest in the fridge, I extract every ounce of flavor from the shellfish by steeping the shrimp shells in melted butter. You might not think of shells as edible, but they hold an enormous amount of flavor, and sautéing them in butter results in a rich, shellfish-forward base that gives the finished sauce real backbone.

The heat and aromatics come from serrano chiles and garlic. And do you know what’s easier than mincing them? Smashing them. Using a mortar and pestle, such as an amolcajete, to crush the chiles and garlic—not mincing with a knife—produces a coarse, rustic paste that brings a dynamic texture to the dish. Smashing also alters the flavor of the garlic—it releases a slight pungency and sweetness that knife-minced garlic lacks, as the smashing process causes garlic’s cell walls to produce more allicin than slicing them. The result is spicier, more fragrant, and slightly sweeter than knife-minced garlic. If you don’t have a mortar and pestle, mincing with a knife works too, but I highly recommend the smashing approach for maximum flavor payoff.

As for the chiles, I like serranos here for their grassy brightness and moderate heat. But this recipe is flexible: Dial it down with jalapeños or crank it up with Thai bird’s eye chiles if you’re after more heat and a bit of fruitiness. Just be sure to taste as you go—some chiles can be surprisingly spicy, and there’s nothing worse than a dinner that bites back a little too hard.

Once the shrimp are cooked and the chile-garlic paste has mellowed in the butter, the pasta gets tossed in the pan with everything, and a splash of starchy pasta water is added to help emulsify the sauce and bring it all together. A final toss with lime zest and cilantro adds zip at the end.

This pasta’s got a lot going on: It’s spicy, buttery, citrusy, and brimming with shrimp flavor. And somehow, despite its cross-cultural inspiration, it feels cohesive. Call it Mexican-Italian-American if you like—I just call it dinner.

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