Shrimp Fra Diavolo
Italian-American chile-garlic tomato sauce with shrimp poached right in it, tossed with penne and finished with starchy pasta water until glossy. One portion, weighed.
Ingredients
1 serving- 100g penne rigate, dry (bronze-die if you can find it)
- 200g raw shrimp, peeled, weighed after thawing (Argentine reds)
- 15g olive oil
- 3 garlic cloves, sliced paper-thin
- 1-2 dried arbol chiles
- 15g tomato paste
- 200g passata
- 50g chicken stock, or pasta water
- 10g Pecorino Romano, finely grated (optional)
- 1500g water + 10g kosher salt, for the pasta
- salt, to taste
Method
- 1Thaw the shrimp
Thaw in a sealed bag in a bowl of cold water or under cold running water, about 15 minutes. Don't thaw them loose in water; Argentine reds are soft and go mushy. Pat very dry and weigh after thawing, since the frozen weight includes the ice glaze. Put the pasta water on to heat.
- 2Garlic and chile in cold oil
Put the oil, garlic, and arbol in the pan together, then bring it up over medium-low for 3-4 minutes until the garlic is pale gold at the edges. Don't let it brown; past pale gold it turns bitter fast.
- 3Fry the paste
Add the tomato paste and stir it through the oil for 1-2 minutes, until it darkens from bright red to brick. This is where the depth comes from and what takes away the tinny canned taste.
- 4Simmer the sauce
Add the passata and stock and hold at a low simmer about 15 minutes (10-20 is fine). Start a timer when the passata goes in. It's done when it has deepened in color, a spoon dragged across the pan leaves a trail that closes slowly, and oil beads at the edges. The garlic will be fully soft. If it gets too thick before the pasta is ready, add a splash of pasta water and drop the heat to its lowest.
- 5Cook the pasta
At about 5 minutes on the sauce timer, drop the penne. Pull it 1-2 minutes before the package time, and save about 100g of the pasta water.
- 6Poach the shrimp
Just before the pasta comes out, salt the shrimp lightly and drop them into the simmering sauce for about 2 minutes. Argentine reds cook fast. Pull them when they're opaque and curled into a C; a tight O means overcooked. If the shrimp are pre-cooked, just warm them through at the end.
- 7Bring it together
Add the penne and pasta water in two or three splashes, 30-50g total, and toss over the heat for about a minute until the sauce turns glossy and clings. If it goes too loose, keep tossing 30-60 seconds to cook it off, or rest it off heat for a minute. Fish out the arbol pods.
- 8Finish
Off the heat, add the pecorino if using.
Notes
DRAFT - passata version untested. First cooked 2026-09-21 with 200g canned crushed tomatoes blended smooth in the Vitamix instead of passata (plus 175g shrimp and 19g pecorino). It came out well and the pasta water emulsion visibly went glossy. Passata should be a straight upgrade: already smooth, so no blending step, and brighter-tasting. It may run a little thinner, so expect a slightly longer simmer and possibly less pasta water. Confirm after the first passata cook. Nutrition is per serving, excluding the optional pecorino (add about 40 kcal / 2.5P / 3F per 10g). Shrimp uses USDA raw shrimp values; replace with the label once the Argentine reds are pinned. On the classic: fra diavolo means "Brother Devil," for the heat. It's Italian-American rather than Italian, and early New York versions were usually made with lobster. The closest Roman relative is arrabbiata, which is essentially this sauce without the seafood, served on penne. Traditional fra diavolo differs from this in a few ways: the seafood is seared first, pulled, and returned at the end; the tomatoes are hand-crushed and chunkier; it's finished with parsley and served on linguine; and there's no cheese. Poaching trades the sear for no risk of rubbery shrimp in a nonstick pan. Upgrades to try: linguine instead of penne (the seafood default: a thin even coat, and it twirls with the shrimp); Calabrian chili paste stirred into the oil in place of or alongside the arbol for a more authentic heat; parsley to finish. Batch and storage: a 750g carton of passata (Pomi) makes about 4 portions of sauce. Scale everything about 3.75x (roughly 55g oil, 55g paste, 185g stock, 10-12 garlic cloves), but start with 3-4 arbol, not 7, and taste before adding more. Use the Dutch oven and simmer 20-30 minutes; more volume takes longer to thicken. Pull the arbol pods before storing or the heat keeps building. Keeps 4-5 days in the fridge and freezes well in single portions. Store the sauce only, never tossed pasta or cooked shrimp: reheat a portion, cook the protein in it fresh, toss with fresh pasta. Weigh the finished pot and log it as a batch, then draw each portion by weight. Rough per-portion sauce macros (a quarter of the batch, estimated): about 220 kcal / 4P / 14F / 18C. Other proteins in the same sauce: Cod - Thaw the fillet, pat dry, salt lightly. Nestle it into the simmering sauce, cover, and cook on low 6-8 minutes depending on thickness, until opaque and it flakes (145F). Cod falls apart, so spoon it over pasta or pearl couscous rather than tossing hard; letting some of it flake into the sauce is fine. One 170g H-E-B fillet is about 120 kcal / 28P. Eggs (uova in purgatorio) - Heat a portion of sauce in a small pan, make wells, crack the eggs in, cover, and cook on the lowest heat 5-7 minutes until the whites set and the yolks are still runny. Cheese on this one is traditional, so pecorino fits. Serve with crusty bread to mop, or over pasta. Three large eggs are about 215 kcal / 19P / 14F, lighter on protein than shrimp or cod, so it suits a day when protein is already covered; go to four eggs otherwise.