Oven Baked Breaded Butterfly Shrimp

Name: Oven Baked Breaded Butterfly Shrimp
Prep time: 25 min
Cook time: 12 min
Total time: 37 min
Ingredients: 1 pound 16-20 size shrimp (peeled, deveined and butterflied); 1 cup all purpose flour; 2 lg. eggs; 1 tbsp milk; 1 cup panko bread crumbs (crushed or put in a food processor to reduce the crumb size, skillet toasted if desired); 2 tsp Old Bay seasoning; 1 tsp garlic powder; 1 tsp sweet paprika; 1/2 tsp salt; 1/2 tsp pepper; cooking spray (vegetable oil or olive oil)

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Breaded butterfly shrimp that’s oven baked makes for lots fewer calories than fried and has a nice crunch. Have the shrimp with your favorite cocktail sauce or drizzled with fresh lemon juice. It’s a wonderful appetizer or a main dish.

Coastal Seafoods in Minneapolis has 20% off shrimp on Monday’s. No better time to have breaded butterfly shrimp. Mary Jo and I drove over to the store on this rainy day and picked up a pound of 16 to 20 size shrimp, peeled and deveined.

To butterfly shrimp, you need pretty big shrimp. We’re talking the 16 to 20 shrimp per pound size. Since these were peeled and deveined, all I had to do was cut down the vein line with a sharp paring knife just enough to separate the two sides of the shrimp and press down to create a flattened, butterflied shrimp fillet, as in this 25 second YouTube video.

When I was a kid, the only shrimp we had was frozen, breaded in a box, that my mom put in the oven for twenty minutes. The only fresh shrimp I remember having was on a trip to Biloxi, Mississippi and the restaurant we went to had shrimp in a tank. They would catch, bread, and fry the shrimp while you waited. I have never, ever had shrimp that was so good. Honest!

Making Oven Baked Butterfly Shrimp

So let me explain what’s in these pictures. This post is a kind of before and after thing…first day then second day.

The first day’s shrimp were really good but somewhat overdone because I wanted them to brown! I kept them in a 400° oven for 14 or 15 minutes and they were still not browned, so I put them under a broiler for a couple minutes. Still not very browned as seen in the large picture above. Having been in the oven for so long, some of the moistness of the shrimp was sucked out. They were something like you would get at a bad restaurant, acceptable, not exceptional.

Day two. I knew I had to redeem this recipe and present to you a superior product. Off to the store for a few more shrimp.

First of all, I thought, “if I want a browned looking shrimp, I could brown the panko bread crumbs before using.” This actually worked better than I had imagined. Put about a half cup of crumbs in a large skillet and turn the heat on medium to medium high. Keep a good eye on the crumbs and toss every now and then. Once they start to get some toast color, turn the stove down a bit and toss the crumbs with a spoon or spatula, until a nice toast is achieved. Immediately pour the crumbs into a bowl since they will continue to toast in the hot skillet. This only takes 3 or 4 minutes.

The second idea was Mary Jo’s and she said that I should spray the breaded shrimp with some cooking oil before baking. I sprayed the toasted and untoasted panko this time and the shrimp came out beautiful, appetizing looking, and not overdone. I kept them in a 400° oven for 12 minutes, and although the untreated panko didn’t brown a lot, it was golden, sweet and moist. The way shrimp should be.

So follow along with the recipe directions and you decide…Toasted….Not Toasted panko bread crumbs on your breaded butterfly shrimp. Either way they are tasty, moist and sweet.