Cajun Grilled Shrimp

These Spicy Grilled Cajun Shrimp are loaded with flavor! Covered in a homemade spice mix, they are quick and easy to grill.

Here’s a quick, easy, and flavorful BBQ dinner idea: Grilled Cajun Shrimp! If you like Cajun spices and a bit of heat, you’ll love these tender, smoky shrimp – and they take less than 5 minutes to grill. Serve it with roasted peppers and it’s a fantastic summer dish. And if you can’t eat spicy: We also have a mild version for you! It all depends on the homemade spice blend you choose. Here’s how!

Would you like a hob variant? Try the Easy Cajun Shrimp!

The shrimp you need for grilled Cajun shrimp

Cajun Grilled Shrimp requires only a few ingredients: and most of the ingredients are seasonings! But the most important are of course the shrimp! Here are some pointers to the type of shrimp to look for:

• Medium to large shrimp: We used 26-30 per book size
• tail or peeled: We think the tail looks the prettiest, but you may want to pull it off completely for ease of use
• deveined: this is preferable to save a deveining step
• Fresh or frozen: You can use both! Frozen food can be as valuable as fresh if it is frozen as soon as it is caught
• tomboy: Wild fish caught in your country is generally a sustainable choice. There are also quality options at well-regulated farms; see Seafood Watch consumer guide.

Use Cajun seasoning or blackened seasoning

Besides the shrimp, the other key ingredient in this Spicy Grilled Cajun Shrimp recipe is the seasoning! We recommend making the homemade spice mix to get the right flavor. But you can use store-bought ones in no time! Here are the two spices to try depending on how hot you want them to be:

• Cajun seasoning (spicy!): This homemade Cajun seasoning is spicy and contains paprika, garlic powder, onion powder, thyme, fennel seed (optional), cumin, cayenne, salt and pepper.
• Blackened Spices (mild!): This blackened spice has similar flavors but is less pungent! It contains paprika, onion powder, garlic powder, oregano, celery seed, allspice, cloves, cayenne pepper, salt and pepper.

You can also opt for blackened shrimp if you prefer a milder version of this recipe.

How to Make Grilled Cajun Shrimp (Basic Steps)

Once you have the ingredients on hand, making this recipe is so easy. Shrimp cook so quickly that throwing them on the grill is one of our favorite things to do. Seriously, who needs to smoke for hours when you can have a taste like this in just minutes? Here are the basic steps (or jump straight to the recipe):

• Preheat grill to medium heat: it’s 375 to 450 degrees, the grilling temperature for most vegetables and seafood.
• Toss prawns with olive oil and spices. See notes above!
• Grill 1 to 2 minutes on each side, until opaque and tender. That’s it!

Add roasted peppers for an easy side dish

Here’s an easy side dish for Cajun Spicy Grilled Shrimp: Roasted Peppers! The multicolored peppers are beautiful: they are tender with a slightly sweet flavor. Here are some options for roasting peppers:

More grilled veggies to accompany the Cajun-style grilled shrimp

There are many more flavorful grilled vegetables to make a meal out of these Cajun Grilled Shrimp. The only thing you need to consider is the physical space on your grill. You may need to run them in batches! Here’s what we recommend for preparing a meal:

Craving more grilled seafood? Try our grilled scallops, grilled salmon, grilled tilapia, grilled cod or grilled ahi tuna.

Defrost shrimp

Frozen shrimp are incredibly convenient; You can load up your freezer for months of healthy dinners! The only difficult thing about frozen food is remembering to thaw it! Here are two methods for defrosting shrimp, depending on when you start:

• The previous day: If you plan ahead, simply place the frozen shrimp in the fridge overnight.
• day of: Place frozen shrimp in a large bowl of very cold water. Shake the bowl every 5 minutes to break up clumps of frozen shrimp. Shrimp should be defrosted in about 15 minutes.

This Spicy Grilled Cajun Shrimp Recipe is…

Pescetarian, dairy free and gluten free.

More Shrimp Recipes

Shrimp are a great choice for a healthy meal when eating seafood. Here are some of our favorite healthy shrimp recipes: