Al ajillo
Cooked fast in olive oil with sliced garlic and dried chilli. The default treatment for prawns, mushrooms and clams in a Spanish kitchen.
Al ajillo is one of the simplest and most common preparations in Spain: olive oil, sliced garlic, dried guindilla chilli, sometimes a splash of dry sherry or white wine, and whatever you're cooking. The pan gets hot, the garlic perfumes the oil, and the protein (prawns, mushrooms, chicken, clams, baby squid) goes in for a fast sear. The sauce ends up loose, oily and garlic-forward, and the whole point is to sop it up with bread. It's the workhorse tapa: cheap, fast, hard to mess up, on every menu in every region.
How it's served
Sizzling hot in a small earthenware casserole, with toasted bread on the side for sopping. Often arrives still bubbling from the kitchen.
Regional variation
The base technique is uniform across Spain; the protein varies. Andalusian bars lean on gambas al ajillo (prawns); Catalan and Galician versions push mushrooms and clams; almost every region applies it to chicken wings, snails or rabbit at some point.
- Origin
- Spain
- Etymology
- From the Spanish ajo ('garlic'). 'Al ajillo' = 'with little garlic,' the diminutive being affectionate rather than dosage advice.
Where to try it in Barcelona
One restaurant on Guidavera mentions al ajillo in their kitchen description.
Frequently asked
What does 'al ajillo' mean?
Cooked in olive oil with sliced garlic and dried chilli. The classic Spanish tapas-bar preparation, applied to prawns, mushrooms, chicken, clams or baby squid. The dish always comes with bread for sopping up the garlicky oil left in the pan.
What's the most popular 'al ajillo' dish?
Gambas al ajillo: peeled prawns flash-cooked in olive oil with garlic and guindilla pepper, served sizzling in a clay casserole. On almost every tapas menu in Spain. Champiñones al ajillo (mushrooms) and pollo al ajillo (chicken) are the close runners-up.
What's a guindilla pepper?
A small dried red chilli, mildly spicy and slightly fruity, that goes into almost every 'al ajillo' dish. Different from a piparra (the green pickled Basque pepper) and from a pimiento de Padrón. The guindilla is the workhorse heat source in Spanish kitchens.