Nicholas Gavin is the Culinary Creative Director of ChefSteps, where he develops recipes and is responsible for making all the food look beautiful. Nick has worked at ChefSteps for over a decade; he and ChefSteps co-founder Grant Crilly worked together at Modernist Cuisine. Nick has worked in professional kitchens both in the United States and abroad, most notably at Mugaritz in San Sebastian, Spain.

Nicholas Gavin

Shrimp scampi is an easy dish to upgrade: It’s already delicious, so why not just take the broken sauce of garlic, butter, white wine, lemon juice, and parsley the shrimp usually swim in, and fix it. That means creating a silky-smooth butter sauce—a <a href="https://www.chefsteps.com/activities/bulletproof-beurre-monte">beurre monte</a>, essentially—with deep shellfish flavor by building the emulsion with a shrimp stock made from the heads and shells. Thanks to a little xanthan gum, the sauce is super stable across a wide temperature range so you can use it to gently poach the shrimp and then jack up the heat right before serving, so it’s ripping hot and ready for dipping some crusty bread or tossing with pasta.

Perfect Shrimp Scampi