Roasted Garlic & Shrimp Spaghetti

Shrimp night is always a huge deal at my house.  My kids love shrimp and they love spaghetti, so I’m always looking for new ways to combine them.  On this night, I roasted garlic in the oven before beginning our pasta so the garlic had plenty of time to get nice and caramelized.  I also used enchilada sauce as the base to the recipe to give the pasta a little boost of flavor instead of plain tomato sauce. The result?  My family ate it up!  Shrimp is such a quick meal on busy nights, so I hope you give this little recipe a try!

This recipe serves four.

Shopping List
1 bulb of garlic
Extra Virgin Olive Oil (EVOO)
salt and pepper
1 onion, chopped
1 (19 oz) can of enchilada sauce (I used mild)
1 (6 oz) can of tomato paste
1 (10 oz) can of Rotel tomaotes
1 pound of spaghetti, fettuccine or linguine noodles (I used fettuccine noodles)
1 pound of cooked and deveined shrimp (from the freezer department is great!  Just defrost first per package instructions)
Grated Parmesan cheese to garnish
Chopped parsley to garnish

Preheat oven to 400 degrees.

About an hour before you’re ready to start cooking, you need to roast your garlic.  Take your entire bulb of garlic out and chop the top off revealing the little cloves inside.  Just slice off the top.  Drizzle about a tablespoon of EVOO down over the bulb and add a generous pinch of salt and pepper to the top.  Next, wrap the garlic bulb in foil and place it on a cookie sheet in your preheated oven.  Allow your garlic to roast about one hour.

After an hour, remove the garlic from the oven and unwrap it from the foil.  Take a fork and pull out the garlic cloves from inside.  They will pull out easily and be super soft.  Place these on your cutting board and kind of mash them up with your knife.  They’re be so soft that this will be simple!  Set this aside.

Now, in a large pot over medium-high heat, add your chopped onion in along with a generous drizzle of EVOO and a big pinch of salt and pepper.  Saute until tender (about 5 to 7 minutes) and then stir in your mashed roasted garlic.  After that, stir in your enchilada sauce, tomato paste and Rotel tomatoes.  Reduce heat to low and allow to simmer.

In a second large pot, bring water up to a boil for your pasta.  Once boiling, drop your pasta and cook to al dente (5 to 7 minutes).  Once the pasta is cooked, drain the water and reserve hot pasta.

At this point, return to your tomato sauce and stir in your shrimp.  Simmer shrimp in the sauce about five minutes and then stir in your spaghetti noodles.  Toss everything together and then serve with a bit of grated Parmesan cheese and chopped parsley.

So good, so quick, so full of flavor!