15-minute shrimp and zucchini in garlic tomato sauce

This simple shrimp and zucchini in garlic tomato sauce is a fast and simple healthy dinner idea with minimal clean-up. It’s seriously the most satisfying fast one-pan shrimp recipe that you can make with simple ingredients. For a full healthy meal, serve with some salad and bread on the side. Or with rice, quinoa or pasta. It is a satisfying, healthy, naturally high-protein and low-carb meal that you can prep in 15 minutes!

You’ll Love This Simple Shrimp Recipe

We had some frozen shrimp and half a zucchini from the day before, so we just decided to put these together and make a fast dinner a few nights ago. It was so good that we made it again the next day. And this is what you’re seeing.

This dish is so tasty, healthy, and made with simple ingredients. It’s naturally protein-packed, low-carb, paleo, gluten free and dairy-free and you will love it!

Ingredients

• shrimp
• zucchini
• garlic and chili powder
• tomatoes and tomato paste
• green olives
• parsley and basil

How it comes together

There’s not much to do, you chop chop the zucchini, tomatoes, the parsley and basil, then you mince some garlic and you’re ready to get that pan out.

Add a little bit of olive oil, some salt and let the tomatoes saute like this until they release all they’ve got. Their sauces, their flavor, all of it. It took about 3 minutes. If your tomatoes are like ours, you’d need to add a bit of tomato paste, to make the sauce thicker.

Also, did we tell you how our sister planted like 20 tomato plants next to each other? But we couldn’t water them and were still getting yellow cherry tomatoes all summer long? Sounds like we ran out of water or pee. No, we just went away…but the tomatoes were still growing when we came back! It was a miracle and such a blessing. Those yellow tomatoes were sweet and satisfying. Highly recommend you plant some yellow cherry tomatoes if you’re not one who remembers to water plants.

We remembered because we used some of the Kumato cherry tomatoes from that same harvest for this garlic shrimp dish. And if you’re wondering how we're eating sweet and juicy non-pesticide cherry tomatoes in April? It’s the magic of freezing tomatoes. Yes, you can do it! Especially cherry tomatoes when they’re in season. Wash them, pat dry, put them in a freezer bag and freeze! It’s great. Highly recommend.

Now, before you add the shrimp, make sure to thaw it, if you use frozen shrimp as we did. We don’t know what others do, but we just leave it out in warm water for about 10 minutes and it’s good. The shrimp gets a nice warm bath and we get to defrost it. Win win.

When the sauce looks good, throw the shrimp in there and add the chili powder for some heat. Stir well.

In about 2 more minutes, add the chopped zucchini and garlic. Now we’re talking. Zucchini – the king of the vegetables. We're kidding, we're thankful zucchini exists, but garlic…That aphrodisiac has had our heart since we were 2. Garlic and we are like that and no acid reflux can seem to change that, we’re inseparable.

After the garlic, wait about 2 more minutes and turn the heat off. Sprinkle the basil and parsley all over, add some olives and salt and pepper if needed, and serve immediately.

What To Serve With

This shrimp recipe is good on its own, but you will probably need some bread, pasta or rice to soak up that satisfying tomato garlic sauce. Go for whatever variety of those things you like! We served ours with some black bean avocado salad on the side and a piece of GF oatmeal bread that we made myself because we're dedicated. And intelligent. And because gluten-free bread costs like a million bucks and doesn’t taste good. We'd like to blame inflation for it, but it’s been this way since gluten free bread exists.

Way to spit all over gluten free bread, good job.

Btw, have we told you how our nephew asked us to pull his finger? We were ready for that fart, we know they can improve our immune system, so we were there for it. But what came next truly surprised us: he spit on us ahahahahaha. Little children are a reliable. The spit will probably upgrade our immune system too, so we're good with that version of pull our finger as well.

Also, forgot to mention, last time we made this we also added some feta cheese to the skillet and it was, dare we say, even better. We ate it with a spoon for a low-carb version.

here with some feta cheese mixed in

We hope you enjoy the garlic shrimp recipe!

• Yield: 2
• Prep: 5 minutes
• Cook: 10 minutes
• Total: 15 minutes

Ingredients

• 300g/10oz shrimp, peeled and deveined
• 1 1/2 cup zucchini, chopped in cubes
• 2 garlic cloves, minced
• 1 cup cherry tomatoes, halved
• 1 tbsp tomato paste
• 1 tbsp chopped green olives
• 1/2 tsp chili powder
• 1 tbsp capers (optional)
• 1 tbsp parsley (or other fresh herbs), thinly chopped
• 1 tbsp fresh basil, thinly chopped
• 1 tbsp olive oil

Method

1. Add the chopped cherry tomatoes to a pan with olive oil and saute for 2-3 min at medium-high.*
2. Press the tomatoes with a cooking spatula to release the tomato juice and stir in the tomato paste.
3. Add in the shrimp and chili powder. Cook for 2-3 minutes, then add the chopped zucchini and garlic.
4. After 3 more minutes, turn the heat off and stir in the olives and capers (if using), sprinkle basil and parsley on top.
5. Enjoy with some salad on the side and bread (or rice/pasta). For a low-carb version, we just had it with a spoon.

Notes

*Last time we used fresh tomato sauce (basically blended fresh tomatoes) and let it cook to thicken before adding the shrimp. Did not add tomato paste. We also added some capers and in the last minute, to some of the servings some feta cheese (because it was open for a while). It was good, one of our favorite dinners during summer!