While Ina Garten can provide expert advice on how to cook many different foods, she favors shrimp in particular, and out of all her shrimp recipes, the one that stands out is her shrimp scampi. A demonstration of hers has almost 2 million views on YouTube, and she emphasizes the importance of two vital seasonings.

A typical shrimp scampi recipe uses garlic, salt, and pepper to season the shrimp, plus a little lemon juice or zest, herbs, and red pepper flakes. While Garten’s recipe follows much of this formula, she advises using more salt and pepper than you would normally use when cooking the shrimp to give it some extra flavor.

Garten’s recipe calls for one tablespoon of kosher salt, "plus one and a half teaspoons” to give that shrimp the flavor it needs to stand up to the pasta and sauce. You can achieve similar results by using more lemon juice, white wine, melted butter, or garlic, or choose more delicate angel hair or spaghetti over traditional linguine.