Seared scallops on linguine in a white-wine, lemon and garlic butter sauce, with asparagus cooked in the same pan.
My recipe. Why not tomato: scallops are sweet and delicate, and a tomato sauce covers that up. Acid, butter and garlic bring it forward. For a tomato-based seafood pasta, the fra diavolo uses shrimp and clams, which hold up to it.
At a glance
Sear hard, then sauce gently
10 minPrep
15 minCook
2Servings
1Skillet + pasta pot
–kcal / serving
–Protein
–Zinc
–B12
What makes it work
Bone-dry scallops in a ripping-hot pan, left alone for 90 seconds
Pull them a little underdone. They finish on the pasta.
Starchy pasta water plus butter makes the sauce glossy
6 ozlinguine (or brown rice pasta or zucchini noodles)
½ bunchasparagus, cut into 2-inch pieces
1 tbspghee or olive oil, for searing
4 tbspbutter, divided
4 clovesgarlic, thinly sliced
½ cupdry white wine
1lemon, zest and juice
pinchred pepper flakes
¼ cupparsley, chopped
to tastesalt and black pepper
optionalparmesan, finely grated
Method
Prep. Bring a pot of well-salted water to a boil. Pull the tough side muscle off each scallop, pat them very dry, and salt both sides. Cut the asparagus into 2-inch pieces.
If the scallops leave a wet puddle on the towel, they're probably "wet" (phosphate-treated). Dry them again right before they go in the pan.
Start the pasta and cook it 1 minute short of the package time. Save a cup of the pasta water before draining.
Sear the scallops. Heat the ghee in a large skillet over high heat until it shimmers. Add the scallops with space between them and leave them alone for 90 seconds, until deep golden. Flip, give them 30–45 seconds more, and move them to a plate. They should still be a little translucent in the middle.
Asparagus and garlic. Turn the heat to medium. Add 2 tbsp butter and the asparagus and cook 2–3 minutes until bright green. Add the garlic and pepper flakes and cook 1 minute, until fragrant but not brown.
Wine and lemon. Pour in the wine, scraping up the browned bits from the scallops, and let it reduce by half, about 2 minutes. Add the lemon zest.
Toss. Add the drained pasta, ½ cup of pasta water and the remaining 2 tbsp butter. Toss over medium heat for about a minute, until the sauce turns glossy and coats the noodles. Add more water if it tightens up. Off the heat, add lemon juice to taste, the parsley and black pepper.
Finish. Set the scallops on top, along with any juices from their plate. The heat of the pasta finishes them in about 30 seconds. Add parmesan if you like.
Nutrition per serving
This is calculated from the same USDA data as Build a Day. Change it here:
Scallops
Base
Parmesan
% of the daily target for men (the same targets as Build a Day). ~ = mostly estimated. Raw scallops lose about a quarter of their weight in cooking, so ¾ lb counts as about 9 oz cooked. Half the searing fat is assumed to stay in the pan. Salt absorbed from the pasta water and the alcohol that cooks off aren't counted.
Nutrition notes
Scallops: lean protein with zinc and B12
Scallops are almost pure protein, under 1 g of fat per 100 g. Here the fat comes from the butter, not the seafood. A serving also brings a solid share of the day's zinc and more than the day's B12, as the panel shows, plus selenium and phosphorus. Like the shrimp and clams in the fra diavolo, they're on the FDA's lowest-mercury list. Asparagus adds folate and vitamin K. (Strong: USDA composition and FDA/EPA monitoring data)
The sauce is 4 tablespoons of butter split two ways. That's where most of the calories come from, but it has very little omega-6, about 2% linoleic acid, against about 50% for soybean oil. Restaurant scampi is often made with a butter-and-oil blend, and that oil is usually soybean or canola. Searing in ghee keeps the whole dish low in linoleic acid. The Linoleic Acid paper explains why that matters. (Strong: USDA composition data)