These delicious cilantro lime shrimp with garlic butter sauce are ready in less than 20 minutes. You can serve them as an appetizer, with rice or pasta, or in tortillas. They’ve become one of my family’s favorite shrimp recipes!
This cilantro lime shrimp is one of my favorite shrimp recipes. I love classic shrimp scampi with lemon, garlic, and butter, but lately, I’ve fallen for this shrimp with a butter sauce made with fresh cilantro and lime.
This recipe is quick and simple, so you can absolutely make it tonight. It takes less than 20 minutes and requires only a handful of ingredients.
Key Ingredients
- Shrimp: Use fresh, high-quality jumbo or large shrimp. You can keep the tails on or remove them, whichever you prefer.
- Butter: I use butter in two ways in this cilantro lime shrimp recipe. First, I cook the shrimp in it, and then, as it finishes cooking, I swirl in more for a creamy sauce. I do the same when making these seared scallops.
- Garlic: I use 6 garlic cloves for this recipe and love it!Lime: I use the juice and zest of 1 lime for this recipe.
- Cilantro: I use a lot of cilantro! I know not everyone loves it, and if that’s you, don’t worry. You can swap the cilantro for any tender fresh herb like parsley or basil.
- Coriander: It’s optional, but it adds a delicious citrusy flavor to the shrimp. Coriander seeds are the seeds of cilantro.
- Green Onion: It’s also optional, but I love the extra green and flavor it adds.
What to Serve with Cilantro Lime Shrimp
These cilantro lime shrimp are perfect served family-style. The shrimp are a bit messy, but that’s a good thing in this case. Serve these by themselves, with pasta (hello garlic cilantro shrimp pasta), over cilantro lime rice, coconut rice, Mexican rice, on top of homemade grits, or wrapped in homemade tortillas. I also love them next to this avocado and cucumber salad.
Recipe Variations
Our recipe is flexible. Although we use garlic, cilantro, and lime in our photos to make the sauce, you don’t need to. You can always take our method and swap the flavors around a bit. Swap lime for lemon and cilantro for parsley. This lemon parsley version is similar to more traditional garlic butter shrimp. Or try fresh basil, dill, and tarragon. I also highly recommend our cajun butter shrimp!
Cilantro Lime Butter Shrimp
- PREP
- COOK
- TOTAL
I love this garlic shrimp cooked in a creamy cilantro lime butter sauce. Serve this as an appetizer, with pasta, over rice, or in tortillas for tacos. The recipe is easy to adapt. Swap lime for lemon and try other tender herbs like parsley, dill, basil, or tarragon instead of cilantro.
You Will Need
1 pound (450g) extra large shrimp, peeled with tails left on and deveined
1 lime plus a few extra wedges for serving
3 tablespoons unsalted butter, divided
2 tablespoons minced garlic, about 6 cloves
1/2 teaspoon ground coriander, optional
2 scallions, chopped
1/2 cup fresh cilantro leaves and tender stems, chopped
Salt and fresh ground black pepper
Directions
- Cook Shrimp
1Pat the shrimp dry, then season it with 1/4 teaspoon of salt and fresh ground black pepper.
2Zest the lime using a microplane and set aside. Cut the zested lime in half, ready for the sauce later in the recipe.
3Add one tablespoon of the butter to a wide skillet. Save the remaining two tablespoons for later.
4Place the skillet with butter over medium heat, then add the garlic and coriander. Stir the garlic around the pan until the butter melts and bubbles for about 1 minute.
5Add the shrimp, nestling them into the pan so they are in one layer. A few shrimp stacked on top of each other is okay. Cook until the shrimp starts turning opaque, about 1 minute.
6Stir in the scallions and lime zest. Continue to cook, stirring, until the shrimp are firm and opaque, another 1 to 2 minutes. Slide the skillet off the heat.
7Add the cilantro, lime juice, and the remaining two tablespoons of butter. Stir the butter around the pan to melt into the lime juice, making the creamy butter sauce.
8Taste, then season as needed with salt and pepper. Serve with extra lime wedges on the side.
Adam and Joanne's Tips
- Lemon garlic butter shrimp: Swap lime for lemon and cilantro for parsley, then follow the recipe as written above. Add a splash of dry white wine at the end for extra flavor.
- How to make spicy cilantro lime shrimp: Add 1/2 to 3/4 teaspoons of crushed red pepper flakes to the pan while adding the garlic.
- Olive oil instead of butter: While the sauce is not creamy, you can substitute olive oil for the butter. You will need one tablespoon to cook the Shrimp and only a light drizzle at the end (about half a tablespoon).
- The nutrition facts provided below are estimates.
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I love this type of dish! Quick and easy, but oh so delicious. Since I have also done a similar dish with lemon/garlic butter, I am thinking of making a variation of this recipe next time.I saw another review that mentioned doing the same. I’d like to add some wine and also freshly grated Parmigiano & Pecorino Romano and serve with linguini.I will definitely make it to this recipe again too!
Great recipe – super easy. Served them on tortillas with slices of avocado and they were amazing shrimp tacos.
Fantastic!! My kitchen smelled amazing when preparing and it tasted sooo good! I served it over homemade coconut rice. Wish I could post my picture! Thanks for a great recipe!!
My go-to recipe for shrimp. Easy and delicious! Thanks for the great recipe.
Great! We added a little cayenne. We will definitely make again. Thanks for sharing.
Made this tonight following the recipe exactly and it was a big hit! I try to make a new recipe every night for my wife & daughter, and they both said this was one of the best ones in a long while.
This recipe has been in my family for many years. We add 1/2 cup or so of white wine and include shredded Parmesan cheese to help thicken the sauce. Delicious with rice and slices of avocado.
Completely exceeded my expectations. I thought since it was such a simple recipe it would be simple in taste, however I plan to make this recipe a staple for tacos, over pasta, with rice etc.
This was delicious! Next time will use more butter & more garlic. Served over brown rice.
Thanks for your Shrimp recipes. My 4 year old has developed a taste for Shrimp, so I’m souring some good recipes. I’ll surely try some of these. I’ve quesion about the ingredients of this recipe. You say you use cilantro and chopped coriander in it. Aren’t cilantro and coriander the very same ingredient?
Kids went shrimping last week, so we thawed and cooked the shrimp using this recipe. We like to cook with shells on, so we did and then removed shell as we ate. We threw them in corn tortillas, with cabbage, avocado, cilantro, bit of lime, sprinkled with some queso panels, a bit of red chili garlic sauce, because I add that to everything, and Voilà! A perfect meal!