This is a recipe for when you're craving pasta and want to impress your guests without spending hours in the kitchen. We all prefer sipping on a glass of wine rather than slaving over a hot stove, right? This pasta dish is refreshingly simple to make and has super fresh flavors and best of all it tastes delicious. Hope you try it! Let us know what you add to the sauce.
Roasted Garlic is great with Scallops
One of the great flavors with the scallops is the addition of Roasted Garlic. We usually make several heads of roasted garlic at a time. It takes 5 minutes to prepare the garlic and then toss them in the oven for an hour. Then we save it in the fridge and use it over a couple of weeks. The house always smells so good and it adds so much flavor to any dish. Well, maybe not for an apple pie, but it works for everything else! Haha 😉
A great variation of this recipe is to substitute the scallops with shrimp or Italian sausage. It also makes a delicious pasta dish on its own. If you're anything like us, you'll want to enjoy it repeatedly
TIPS:
- For a perfect sear on scallops, ensure that the olive oil is heated before adding them to the pan.
- Incorporating lemon zest in the marinade will enhance the taste significantly.
- To reduce calories, measure the amount of pasta before cooking.
- Measure the oil quantity to avoid excess use.
- While sautéing scallops, garlic may stick to the pan, but it will mix with tomatoes once added.
Seared Scallops with Pasta and Cherry Tomato Sauce
Ingredients
Pasta
- 4 Ounces Pasta Like Angel Hair or Bucatini
- 2 Tablespoons Salt
Scallops
- ½ Pound Scallops
- 1 Lemon
- Lemon Zest
- 1 ½ Tablespoons Roasted Garlic Optional-Can substitute with 2 Cloves of Fresh chopped Garlic
- 2 Tablespoons Olive Oil
Sauce
- 2 Cups Cherry Tomatoes
- ½ Cup Basil
- 1 teaspoon Sea Salt
Additional Ingredients
- 1 Ounce Parmesan cheese Grated
Instructions
Scallops and Pasta
- Bring a pot of water to a boil. After the water is boiling add the salt and the pasta. Cook the pasta according to the instructions on the package. It's important to avoid overcooking the pasta, so we usually prefer it to be al dente
- Zest and juice the Lemon
- To marinate the scallops, mix lemon zest, the juice of one lemon, and roasted garlic together. Let the scallops sit in the mixture for 15 minutes.
- Heat the olive oil
- Add the scallops to hot oil
- Cook the scallops for 2 to 3 minutes until they get an even brown color on the bottom.
- Flip the Scallops and brown the other side
- Remove the Scallops and set aside
Sauce
- In the same pan used for cooking the scallops, add whole cherry tomatoes. Sauté the mixture until the tomatoes start to wilt and burst open. Stir in some fresh chopped basil.
- Once the pasta is cooked, remember to save half a cup of the pasta water. Then, add the pasta and the reserved water to the tomato mixture. Mix the pasta together with the sauce, knowing that the pasta will continue to cook in the mixture. Stir the pasta until it is coated with the sauce, and cook until the sauce has reached your desired thickness.
- Take the pan off the heat and put in the Scallops. Carefully mix them with the pasta.
- If you'd like, you can add Parmesan cheese to the pasta for extra flavor. Enjoy!
Nutrition
Other fun recipes using lemon and or pasta are Pasta in garlic lemon sauce, Lemon ricotta pasta with shrimp and spinach, Lemon chicken, Lemon ricotta sauce with shrimp, Creamy Lemon pasta with shrimp, Pesto pasta with garlic and lemon, Herb crusted lamb, Fettuccine with Sausage, Fresh Tomato Pasta, Seared Scallop with Pasta, and of course, a dessert Blueberry lemon cheesecake
Please let us know what you think