Save This Recipe
We'll email this post to you, so you can come back to it later!
This Slow Cooker garlic butter shrimp is the kind of weeknight recipe you keep in your back pocket for when you’re running on empty. Four ingredients, frozen shrimp straight from the bag, and about ninety minutes of hands-off time — and what comes out tastes like you actually planned dinner.
Why You’ll Love It
Only 4 ingredients — butter, garlic, salt, and Italian seasoning do all the work
Starts from frozen — no thawing, no planning ahead, just dump and go
Rich, buttery sauce — the kind that soaks into rice or mashed potatoes and makes the whole plate
Minimal cleanup — one Slow cooker insert and a mixing bowl, that’s it
Feels indulgent without the effort — tastes way more impressive than the prep time suggests
A Note on the Ingredients
Butter — I use salted, which I know some people disagree with and I don’t care. You can adjust salt at the end either way. Two sticks sounds like a lot and it is. That’s what makes it taste good.
Garlic — Fresh is always better in my opinion, but the jarred minced stuff works fine here. I usually do a little more than the recipe technically calls for because I can’t help it. Garlic is not an area where I’ve ever had regrets about going too far.
Shrimp — Frozen, peeled, deveined. Tail-on is fine, tail-off is fine, it genuinely doesn’t matter for this dish. I usually grab the 21–25 count bag because it’s what my store carries most reliably. If you’re using very large shrimp — like the really big ones — give yourself a little extra time.
Italian seasoning — This is the kind of thing that lives in the back of my spice cabinet and I never remember how old it is. I bought a new jar about a year ago and it made a noticeable difference, so if yours has been back there since the Obama administration, maybe replace it.
Ingredients
- 2 pounds raw frozen shrimp, peeled and deveined (tail on or off, your call)1 cup salted butter, melted — that’s 2 sticks
- 4 large garlic cloves, minced (or about 1½ tablespoons of the jarred stuff
- 1 teaspoon kosher salt
- 1 teaspoon dried Italian seasoning
Instructions
Pull out your Slow Cooker — mine is a 6-quart oval — and dump the frozen shrimp in the bottom. Don’t thaw them. I know it feels wrong. Do it anyway.
In a measuring cup or small bowl, melt your butter and then stir in the garlic, salt, and Italian seasoning. Give it a good stir so the garlic doesn’t just sit in one clump. Pour all of that over the shrimp and then take a spatula and kind of nudge things around so the butter gets under as many shrimp as it can. It won’t be perfect. That’s fine.
Put the lid on and cook on LOW — not warm, not high, LOW — for one to one and a half hours. Set a timer. This is not a leave-it-all-day situation. Shrimp cook fast and they will punish you for inattention by turning into something you’d use to re-sole a shoe.
Around the halfway point, take the lid off and give everything a gentle stir. This is mostly so the shrimp on top get some of that buttery garlic action instead of just sitting there steaming. Replace the lid quickly.
At the one-hour mark, start checking. You want shrimp that are opaque and pink, curled a little but not aggressively so. If they look done, they are done. Turn the Slow Cooker off. Do not let them keep cooking on warm for another hour while you finish a phone call or get distracted. I’ve made that mistake. I’m telling you so you don’t have to.
Before you serve, taste the sauce. If you want a little brightness — and sometimes I do — squeeze some lemon juice in there. A handful of fresh parsley if you have it. I usually don’t have it. The dish is good without it.
Variations
Cajun seasoning instead of Italian gives it a totally different personality. Skip the added salt if your Cajun blend is already salty, which most are. I tried it once and I liked it, though I think I still prefer the original.
If you want heat, red pepper flakes stirred into the butter before you pour it on is the move. Add them to individual bowls at the table if you’re serving people with different spice preferences.
There’s also a version where you do three-quarters butter and a quarter olive oil, which lightens it up slightly. I’ve made that on weeks when I felt like I should be making healthier choices. It’s still delicious. You’re not fooling anyone, including yourself, but it’s still good.
Storage
Leftovers go in the fridge within two hours — Seafood is not forgiving. I put them in whatever container is clean and closest. They keep two days, maybe three if they’re buried in the back and I forget about them, which does happen.
To reheat, I do it low and slow on the stovetop. A little extra butter if I’m feeling it. The microwave works but the shrimp can get rubbery again, so I try to avoid it. If I’m reheating just for myself at lunch I use the microwave anyway at about sixty percent power and it’s fine. Good enough.
I almost always serve this over rice because it absorbs all that garlic butter and it’s one of the simple pleasures of my life. Egg noodles are also good. Mashed potatoes, if you have them leftover from something else, are frankly spectacular — that’s not a combination I came up with on purpose, it just happened one night when I had leftover potatoes and shrimp and I ate it standing over the counter at about 9 p.m. and it was great.
Crusty bread is obvious but I’m going to say it anyway. You want something to mop with. Don’t skip the mop.
Slow Cooker 4-Ingredient Garlic Butter Shrimp
Ingredients
- 2 lb raw frozen shrimp peeled and deveined, tail on or off
- 1 cup salted butter melted
- 4 large cloves garlic minced, or about 1 1/2 tablespoons jarred minced garlic
- 1 tsp kosher salt
- 1 tsp dried Italian seasoning
- fresh lemon juice optional, for serving
- fresh parsley optional, for garnish
Instructions
- Place the frozen shrimp directly into a 6-quart slow cooker without thawing.
- In a small bowl or measuring cup, stir together the melted butter, minced garlic, kosher salt, and Italian seasoning.
- Pour the garlic butter mixture evenly over the shrimp.
- Gently stir or nudge the shrimp so the butter reaches the bottom of the slow cooker.
- Cover and cook on low for 1–1 1/2 hours.
- About halfway through cooking, gently stir the shrimp and replace the lid.
- Begin checking at 1 hour. The shrimp are done when they are pink, opaque, and just curled.
- Turn off the slow cooker as soon as the shrimp are cooked through.
- Taste the butter sauce and add a squeeze of fresh lemon juice if desired.
- Garnish with parsley if using and serve immediately.