This 20 minute honey garlic shrimp is a reader favorite recipe. It’s extra quick, very simple, and delivers big flavor. Served with brown rice and vegetables or over a salad, this healthy dish is sure to join your regular dinner rotation.
Are you looking for a super quick, yet flavorful dinner this week? We have it right here for you. This saucy shrimp owes a lot of its flavor to a bold marinade of honey, soy sauce, and garlic, which is music to everyone’s taste buds. For a little extra flavor, we add some minced fresh ginger, but that’s entirely optional.
Video Tutorial
Tell Me About This Honey Garlic Shrimp
- Flavor: The marinade is loaded with flavor, but our favorite part of this dish is the beautiful caramelized bits of honey and garlic stuck to the pan and edges of the shrimp. Scrape it all up to serve because you don’t want to miss those flavorful bites.
- Ease: Regardless of your skill level, this is a very easy dinner recipe. Prepare the marinade, use half for marinating the shrimp, then use the rest as the sauce for cooking the shrimp. It’s convenient that the marinade is also the sauce—we do this for our maple sesame salmon and honey garlic salmon recipes too.
- Time: The shrimp takes 5 minutes to cook on the stove, while the marinating takes another 15. You’ll have this unbelievably tasty and simple meal on your table in about 20 minutes.
Choosing the Right Ingredients for Honey Garlic Shrimp
- Shrimp. You can use fresh or frozen raw shrimp. Thaw the shrimp completely before starting. Be sure to peel and devein the shrimp first. You can leave the tails on or remove if desired. If using already cooked shrimp, see recipe note below.
- Honey + garlic + soy. This marinade/sauce is packed with so much glorious flavor and is inspired by some wonderful flavors often used in Asian cuisine. (We also LOVE this honey soy glazed salmon from Omnivore’s Kitchen.)
- Green onions. This optional garnish adds freshness and a nice color contrast.
Overview: How to Make 20 Minute Honey Garlic Shrimp
The full printable recipe is below, but let’s walk through it so you understand each step before you get started.
- Make your marinade.
- Marinate the shrimp. Combine marinade and shrimp and marinate for at least 15 minutes or up to 8-12 hours. We usually only marinate it for about 15 minutes and during this time, you could prepare your side dishes such as steamed vegetables and instant brown rice.
- Cook the shrimp. Cook shrimp in a little olive oil, then flip and pour in the remaining sauce until cooked through.
- Garnish. Top with green onions and serve.
More Favorite Dinner Recipes
- Pesto Shrimp
- Sausage Stuffed Peppers
- Crab Cakes
- Cilantro Lime Chicken
- Baked Lemon Herb Salmon
- Zucchini Fritters or Corn Fritters
- Apple Cider Chicken
20 Minute Honey Garlic Shrimp
- Prep Time: 15 minutes
- Cook Time: 5 minutes
- Total Time: 20 minutes
- Yield: serves 4
- Category: Dinner
- Method: Cooking
- Cuisine: American
Description
This 20 minute honey garlic shrimp is a reader favorite recipe. It’s extra quick, very simple, and delivers big flavor. Served with brown rice and vegetables or over a salad, this healthy dish is sure to join your regular dinner rotation.
Ingredients
- 1/3 cup honey
- 1/4 cup soy sauce (we usually use reduced sodium)
- 2 garlic cloves, minced (or 1 teaspoon jarred minced garlic)
- optional: 1 teaspoon minced fresh ginger
- 1 lb medium uncooked shrimp, peeled & deveined
- 2 teaspoons olive oil
- optional for garnish: chopped green onion
Instructions
- Whisk the honey, soy sauce, garlic, and ginger (if using) together in a medium bowl. You will use half for the marinade in step 2 and half for cooking the shrimp in step 3.
- Place shrimp in a large sealable container or zipped-top bag. Pour 1/2 of the marinade/sauce mixture on top, give it all a shake or stir, then allow shrimp to marinate in the refrigerator for 15 minutes or for up to 8-12 hours. Cover and refrigerate the rest of the marinade for step 3. (Time-saving tip: while the shrimp is marinating, we usually steam broccoli and microwave some quick brown rice.)
- Heat olive oil in a skillet over medium-high heat. Place shrimp in the skillet. (Discard used marinade.) Cook shrimp on one side until pink, about 45 seconds, then flip shrimp over. Pour in remaining marinade/sauce and cook it all until shrimp is cooked through, about 1-2 more minutes.
- Serve shrimp with cooked marinade sauce and a garnish of green onion. The sauce is excellent on brown rice and steamed vegetables on the side.
Notes
- Special Tools (affiliate links): Glass Mixing Bowls | Skillet
- Thicken the sauce? Some readers add 1 teaspoon of cornstarch to the second half of the sauce that will be used for cooking in step 3. This thickens the sauce so it isn’t as watery. To do this, use a fork to mix 1 teaspoon of cornstarch with 1 teaspoon warm water. Once cornstarch has dissolved, stir this into the sauce before using it in step 3.
- Garlic: If using fresh garlic that you mince yourself, use 2 cloves. If using refrigerated jarred minced garlic, use 1 teaspoon (or more, to taste).
- Shrimp: You can remove the tail or leave it on. We recommend using fresh shrimp, but you can use frozen. Thaw before marinating and cooking. If using frozen cooked shrimp, thaw, marinate, and cook as directed. You’ll really just be heating the shrimp up in the sauce.
- Consuming leftover marinade is a debated topic. While you could boil it to rid any contamination, the flavor could possibly change. Do what you’d like. In this recipe we only use half of the sauce for the marinade so we have more for cooking. (We discard the used marinade in step 3.)
Keywords: honey garlic shrimp
Way too much honey.
★★★
I hope someone reads this before making. In the tips it says take 1 teaspoon of cornstarch to 1 teaspoon of warm water thats wrong it has to be cold water other wise it will be clumpy. We doubled the marinade we put the amount stayed for the shrimp & the extra with the rice. I also seasoned the rice with broth, garlic, salt, pepper, 1 or 2 drops of sesame oil & any assortment of Asian spices that u like.
★★★★★
Good point about adding the Tsp of cornstarch to COLD water, not warm water.
I plan to make this recipe someday soon, and think I will like the marinade a bit thicker, like a sauce for the shrimp, broccoli and rice
We loved this. So easy and delicious
★★★★★
This was perfect with an ear of corn and summer salad!
★★★★★
★★★★★
This recipe is a keeper! I didn’t have fresh ginger so I chopped up a couple tablespoons of pickled ginger and added it to the marinade. Gave it a little tang, which brightened it up. Also thickened it with a little cornstarch. We’re not brown rice lovers, particularly, but with this dish it worked! Delicious!
★★★★★