Copycat Ruth’s Chris New Orleans BBQ Shrimp (The Famous Butter Sauce, Made at Home)
Prep time: 10 min Cook time: 15 min Servings: 4
Ruth’s Chris Steak House was founded in New Orleans in 1965 by Ruth Fertel, a single mother who mortgaged her house to buy a steak restaurant for $22,000. The “Chris” in the name came from the original owner, Chris Steak House, whose name she had to keep per the sale contract. When the original location burned down in 1976, she rebuilt a few blocks away — technically violating her contract by moving the restaurant — and added her own name in front. She kept going. Today Ruth’s Chris has more than 150 locations worldwide and is one of the most recognizable fine-dining steakhouse chains in the country.
The New Orleans BBQ Shrimp is not the restaurant’s most famous dish (that is the USDA Prime bone-in ribeye served on a 500°F cast-iron plate with clarified butter). But it is the most distinctive — because it has essentially nothing to do with barbecue. It is a New Orleans style dish: a rich, savory butter sauce with Worcestershire, rosemary, garlic, lemon, and a serious amount of black pepper, with large shrimp cooked directly in the sauce. It is messy, deeply flavored, and served with bread that you use to scoop up whatever remains in the skillet after the shrimp are gone.
At the restaurant: approximately $24 to $28 for the appetizer portion, depending on location.
At home: approximately $5 per person.
Where New Orleans BBQ Shrimp Actually Comes From
The dish was invented at Pascal’s Manale restaurant on Napoleon Avenue in the Uptown neighborhood of New Orleans. The founding story, told by the restaurant: in the early 1950s, a regular customer returned from a Chicago trip describing a shrimp dish he had eaten there. A cook at Pascal’s Manale improvised a version based on the verbal description — butter, Worcestershire, spices, shrimp cooked in the skillet. The result was different enough from what the customer remembered that it became its own dish. Pascal’s Manale put it on the menu, and it stayed.
The original Pascal’s Manale version uses head-on, unpeeled Gulf shrimp — the heads and shells dissolve into the sauce and add a depth that the peeled-shrimp version cannot fully match. The dish is meant to be messy; bibs are provided. Ruth’s Chris uses a cleaner version: peeled shrimp, a refined sauce, and presentation in a dish rather than a skillet. The flavor profile is similar; the experience is more controlled.
Both restaurants serve it with warm French bread. The bread is not a side dish — it is what happens after the shrimp are gone, when you press it against the bottom of the skillet and drag up the remaining sauce. At Pascal’s Manale, regulars order extra bread with the first round.
The BBQ Question, Answered
The name confuses almost everyone on first encounter: there is no grill, no BBQ sauce, and nothing remotely barbecue-adjacent. The term refers to the intensely savory, complex character of the sauce rather than any cooking method. New Orleans food historians generally trace the “BBQ” naming to the mid-20th century, when “barbecued” was sometimes used loosely in Southern cooking to mean a robust, strongly seasoned preparation — distinct from the backyard-grill definition that dominates American usage today.
The sauce is fundamentally a warm butter emulsion: Worcestershire (anchovy, tamarind, molasses, vinegar), butter, garlic, rosemary, lemon, and black pepper. A lot of black pepper — substantially more than most people expect. The pepper is structural here, not background: it cuts through the butter’s richness and gives the sauce its signature bite. Do not reduce it.
The Technique That Makes or Breaks It
This is a butter sauce, which means it can break — and breaking is the one thing home cooks get wrong most often.
A butter sauce is a warm emulsion: butter fat dispersed in the pan’s water-based liquid (wine, Worcestershire, lemon juice) in a suspension that holds together only within a specific temperature range. Too cool, and the fat congeals. Too hot (above about 180°F, a gentle simmer), and the emulsion breaks — the fat separates from the liquid and you end up with greasy, thin puddles rather than a glossy, creamy sauce.
The three rules:
1. Cold butter, added in pieces. Do not melt the butter before adding it. The cold center of each piece of butter cools the sauce as it incorporates, moderating the temperature. Adding butter too fast overwhelms the emulsion capacity of the pan liquid.
2. Constant motion. Keep the pan moving — swirl it, or use a whisk. This keeps the fat droplets dispersed as they melt. Stop for 15 seconds and the fat droplets begin to clump and separate.
3. Off heat, or lowest possible. The Ruth’s Chris technique removes the pan from the burner entirely before butter goes in. The residual heat in the cast iron melts the cold butter gradually. If your pan cools too much and the butter stops melting, return it to the lowest burner setting briefly, swirling constantly.
If you see the sauce beginning to look greasy or oily — keep the pan off heat and whisk in 1 to 2 tablespoons of heavy cream immediately. The cream’s fat and protein help reconstitute the suspension. Once the sauce has fully split, it cannot be recovered; make the sauce again with fresh butter.
Two-Stage Shrimp Cooking
Shrimp overcook in about 60 seconds — there is almost no margin. The technique here deliberately undercooks the shrimp in the first sear (pink outside, translucent center, roughly 70 percent done) and finishes them gently in the butter sauce.
This works for two reasons. First, the sauce temperature — medium-low, never boiling — is lower than the sear temperature, so the shrimp finish gently and it is nearly impossible to push them past done during that final minute. Second, letting the shrimp cook fully in the first sear almost guarantees overcooking by the time they spend 1 to 2 more minutes in the sauce.
The visual tells: pull the shrimp from the first sear at the 60-second mark per side — they should be pink on the outside but translucent at the thickest part of the center. When you return them to the sauce, you are looking for them to complete their color change from translucent pink to fully opaque white-pink throughout, and to form a loose “C” shape. A tightly coiled “O” shape means they are overcooked and have contracted.
Dry Shrimp, Hot Pan
Moisture is the enemy twice in this recipe. Wet shrimp do not sear — they steam, which means no browning, no fond, and thinner sauce. Pat the shrimp thoroughly dry before they go in. Thorough means 30 seconds per side with paper towels, pressing down.
The second moisture issue is the sauce itself: too much liquid in the pan before the butter goes in makes the emulsion weak and prone to breaking. The 2-minute reduction step between the wine addition and the butter mounting matters. You want the sauce slightly syrupy and reduced, not watery.
Ruth’s Chris vs. Homemade vs. Pascal’s Manale: The Comparison
| Ruth’s Chris | Pascal’s Manale | Homemade | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Shrimp | Peeled, 16-20 count | Head-on, unpeeled Gulf | Peeled, 16-20 count |
| Sauce depth | Very refined | More complex (shell/head) | Very close to Ruth’s Chris |
| Bread served | Yes, toasted | Yes, Leidenheimer’s | Yes, baguette |
| Price (appetizer) | ~$24–28 | ~$20–26 | ~$5/serving |
| Messiness | Low | High | Low |
The head-on version from Pascal’s Manale produces a genuinely more complex sauce — the shells and heads dissolve fat and gelatin into the butter, adding body and depth. If you can source head-on Gulf shrimp and are willing to eat messily, try it that way once. The experience is different enough to be worth it.
Serving and Timing
This dish does not hold. Butter sauces are unstable once off heat — within 10 to 15 minutes, the emulsion will break as the pan cools unevenly. Serve directly from the skillet into warm bowls, and eat immediately. Warm your bowls in the oven (200°F for 5 minutes) so the sauce does not hit a cold surface on the way to the table.
The French bread should be hot — a baguette split and warmed in the oven for 5 minutes, not microwaved (microwave softens the crust and it will fall apart in the sauce). You need the crust’s firmness to drag across the bottom of the skillet.
Plan to serve this as a starter before a main course you can hold. If this is the main course, increase the shrimp to 2 lb and the butter to 10 tablespoons.
Make It a Full New Orleans Meal
The shrimp is a starter at Ruth’s Chris. At home, it works as a main course if you scale up the shrimp quantity. Alongside:
- Creamy stone-ground grits (not quick-cook polenta — the texture is different)
- White rice, with the sauce poured over
- Crusty baguette as the primary vehicle (the traditional choice)
- Simple green salad dressed with lemon vinaigrette to cut through the butter
The sauce is rich enough that most people do not need more than 6 to 7 shrimp per person as a starter, but as a main course over grits, 8 to 10 shrimp per person is appropriate.
