My Favorite Simply Grilled Shrimp

I don't profess to be a nutritionist or a dietitian, but throughout my weight loss journey, I ate a ton of seafood. It's one of the things that I attribute to my success. I always have a bag of frozen, UNCOOKED, shrimp in my freezer to throw together this quick shrimp dish.

To start, I defrost a handful of shrimp in some water. I've got eight shrimp in a bowl of water here and I change the water about three times over about a 10-20 minute time period to thaw them out. It takes no time at all and is easy to do when in a time crunch.

Once thawed, I remove the shells and place the shrimp on a paper towel to dry. If you don't place them on a paper towel, the shrimp will steam and not get a good sear on them.

I season my shrimp with this spicy garlic blend. It's a combination of dried garlic chunks, crushed red pepper and sea salt. I found this one at my local grocery store, but I've also seen these at places like TJ Maxx as well. 

I sauté the shrimp in a little bit of butter on medium high heat. I set my burner at around a 6 (out of 10) for shrimp. Make sure your pan gets nice and hot before you sauté the shrimp though.  If the heat is too high, the butter will burn. I like butter with the shrimp because it adds a nice flavor to it. I actually used a garlic parsley butter I got at my grocery store (about a teaspoon) this time around, but regular butter works just fine. Sauté about 3 minutes a side, or until you get a nice sear on the shrimp and they're nice and pink.

I served my shrimp this time around with a side of sautéed corn. I added about a teaspoon and a half of bacon grease (gasp!) to a pan and threw in about a 3/4 of a cup of frozen corn. I sautéed it with a little bit of that spicy garlic blend to tie it all together.

I know what you're thinking... I just made a meal with both butter and bacon grease. Yup. Like I said, I never claimed to be a professional, but I know what good food tastes like, and sometimes you need just a little bit of fat to make something taste really good. The key is that it's all in moderation. I don't use a ton of butter or bacon grease, just enough to add a little flavor and cook the shrimp and corn. You'll notice in the above photo that you don't see any of the butter or bacon grease on the plate. That's because I didn't use much. If you want to be even better, you could use some coconut oil with the shrimp or a little bit of canola oil instead. But the key to my success was to make sure I ate healthy while still enjoying the little things in life. If I didn't, I'd find myself splurging more often than not and down a path of destruction.

Enjoy!