Gambas al ajillo is about as fast as Spanish cooking gets, and it's deceptively easy to get wrong. The whole dish lives or dies on the garlic — cooked just long enough to turn fragrant, never long enough to brown hard or burn.
Serve it the way it's served all over Spain: straight from the pan, with bread for the oil, eaten with your hands, no plates required.
Ingredients
- 500g raw king prawns, peeled, tails on
- 100ml olive oil
- 6 garlic cloves, thinly sliced
- 1 dried chilli (guindilla or similar), sliced, or 1/2 tsp chilli flakes
- 2 tbsp brandy or dry sherry (optional but traditional)
- 1 tbsp finely chopped parsley
- Sea salt, to taste
- Crusty bread, to serve
Method
- Pat the prawns dry and season lightly with salt.
- Heat the olive oil in a wide frying pan (a Spanish cazuela if you have one) over medium-low heat. Add the garlic and chilli and cook gently for 1–2 minutes, until the garlic is just turning golden — do not let it burn, or the whole dish turns bitter.
- Turn the heat up to medium-high and add the prawns in a single layer. Cook for about 1 minute per side, until just pink and curled — they cook fast, so don't walk away.
- Off the heat, add the brandy or sherry if using and swirl the pan (it may flame briefly near a gas burner — stand back).
- Scatter with parsley and a touch more salt if needed. Serve immediately, straight in the pan, with crusty bread for mopping up the garlicky oil — that oil is the best part.
Low heat for the garlic, high heat for the prawns — those are two different stages and trying to rush the garlic stage is the most common way this dish goes from fragrant to bitter.
This is the home version
This version is sized for a home stove. At an actual event, it's the same method in a 90cm pan, cooked where your guests can watch — and we handle every dish afterward, not you.
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