Camarones Enchilados

Saucy and a little bit spicy, camarones enchilados is a Cuban dish similar to a shrimp creole. Camarones enchilados translates roughly to spicy shrimp. It’s shrimp that’s cooked in a flavorful, and slightly spicy tomato sauce.

The tomato sauce comes together quickly, and you can make it as hot as you like, just add more or less hot sauce. This exotic dish is really easy to make, and will spice up your weeknight dinners.

Serve the shrimp with white rice or with bread for dipping in the delicious tomato sauce. For more popular Cuban recipes, try this carne con papas recipe or this ropa vieja. Enjoy!

Camarones enchilados ingredients

• 2 tablespoons Extra Virgin Olive Oil
• 1 Small Onion, finely diced
• 5-6 Garlic Cloves, minced
• 1 teaspoon Paprika
• ½ teaspoon Cajun Seasoning
• ¼ teaspoon Cumin
• ¼ cup White Wine (or use chicken broth)
• 2 cups Tomato Sauce
• ½ cup Water
• 1 teaspoon Worcestershire Sauce
• Dash Cayenne Pepper Based Hot Sauce (like Crystal or Frank’s Red Hot)
• 1 Bay Leaf
• 1½ pounds Large Shrimp, peeled and deveined
• Pinch of Kosher or Sea Salt
• ¼ teaspoon Black Pepper
• Finely Chopped Fresh Parsley for garnish
• Cooked White Rice or Bread for serving

Prep Work

If you plan on serving the camarones enchilados over white rice, start it right before you start cooking. The rice and this dish will take roughly the same amount of time to make.

Peel and clean the shrimp. Pat them dry with a paper towel. Season the shrimp with just a pinch of salt and black pepper. Go easy on the salt. The tomato sauce, hot sauce, Cajun seasoning and Worcestershire sauce all contain a good amount of salt already. You can adjust at the end if needed.

Things move quickly with this sauce, so there’s not a lot of time in between adding each ingredient. Make sure you have everything diced, minced and measured before you start.

Make the camarones enchilados sauce

• Heat the olive oil in a large, deep skillet over medium heat. Add the onions and cook for approximately 3 minutes until they start to soften, stirring frequently.
• Next, add the garlic, paprika, Cajun seasoning, and cumin to the skillet, stir to mix well. Cook for 1-2 minutes, stirring frequently.
• Add the white wine and cook for about 1-2 minutes while stirring and gently scraping any bits from the bottom of the skillet. Cook until most of the liquid has cooked away. If you don’t cook with wine, use chicken broth to deglaze the pan.
• Add the tomato sauce, water, Worcestershire sauce, hot sauce and the bay leaf to the skillet, stir. Bring the sauce to a simmer, lower the heat to medium-low to low, cover and cook at a gentle simmer for 25-30 minutes. Stir occasionally and if the sauce is simmering too vigorously, lower the heat a bit.

Cook the shrimp

Remove the bay leaf from the sauce and discard.

Raise the heat to medium-high, and bring the sauce to a boil. Add the shrimp to the sauce, stir and cook uncovered until the shrimp are cooked through; they’ll be pink, opaque and curled. This should only take about 5 minutes, depending on the size of the shrimp.

As soon as the shrimp are cooked through, remove the skillet from the heat. Avoid overcooking the shrimp as they’ll get rubbery and that would be a shame.

Taste the sauce and add salt and pepper to taste, if needed.

Garnish the camarones enchilados with the chopped parsley and serve over a bed of white rice or with bread for dipping.

You may also like these easy shrimp recipes:

• Shrimp and vegetable stir fry
• Garlic shrimp pasta
• Shrimp lo mein
• Camarones al ajillo