Seafood salad recipes are one of the best things about the summer. When you’re craving something light, fresh and tasty, a shrimp and avocado salad, mixed seafood salad or another kind of summer salad recipe is perfect.
Choose from many types of seafood, either fresh, canned or frozen, and feel free to add more ingredients to the mix. Get creative and let me know if you come up with a new favorite!
Mango, for example, has a wonderful affinity with summer seafood salads and you can’t go wrong with the nutty, creamy flavor and texture a fresh avocado adds to the mix.
Also bear in mind simple is good, so if you just want to combine, say, shrimp with avocado, orange slices, and a splash of your favorite dressing, that would be just as tasty as a more complex dish.
Avocado Seafood Salad Recipe with Prawns
I love this avocado seafood salad recipe. I'm a huge avocado fan and shrimp (or prawns) are a favorite as well. Prawns and shrimp are two names for the same creature, although shrimp are always known as prawns in the UK. The main different between them is that prawns tend to be a lot bigger than shrimp.
You can cook prawns in various ways including steaming, pan-frying, deep-frying and boiling. In the following seafood salad recipe the prawns are dropped into boiling salted water and cooked within a couple of minutes. A prawn is cooked when it is translucent and the flesh shrinks slightly back away from the shell.
This seafood salad recipe combines avocado with the prawns and these ingredients are wonderful together. Avocado is soft, creamy and slightly nutty and you know how succulent and juicy prawns are, so you can probably imagine the harmony in this dish.
Add some baby salad leaves, a few beansprouts, some crisp iceberg lettuce and a splash of balsamic vinegar and you have a gourmet seafood salad recipe.
The lemon dressing finishes this salad off in style and ties all the contrasting flavors together. If you are looking for a tasty seafood salad, you might enjoy this one.
Ingredients
- 1½ lbs (680g) large raw prawns (in their shells and heads on)
- 3 pints (1½ liters) water
- 1 tablespoon salt
- 4 small ripe avocados
- ½ diced red bell pepper
- Small handful beansprouts
- 3 oz (85g) baby salad leaves
- 2 oz (55g) shredded iceberg lettuce
- Balsamic vinegar, as needed
For the Lemon Dressing:
- 2 tablespoons white sugar
- 1½ tablespoons lemon juice
- 3 tablespoons vegetable oil
- 1 egg yolk
Method
- Bring the water to a boil, then add the salt.
- Add the prawns and cook for 3 or 4 minutes, or until they turn pink and float to the top.
- Put the prawns in ice water to cool them.
- Peel and chop all but 4 of them.
- Whisk the sugar and lemon juice together until most of the sugar has dissolved.
- Add the egg yolk and whisk until the sugar has dissolved completely.
- Add the oil a tablespoon at a time, whisking all the time until the dressing is creamy and thick.
- Cut each avocado in half.
- Divide the baby salad leaves between 4 chilled serving plates and drizzle some balsamic vinegar over them.
- Top each plate of leaves with a pair of avocado halves.
- Divide the beansprouts, diced bell pepper and shredded iceberg lettuce between the plates, then add the chopped prawns.
- Drizzle the lemon dressing over the top and garnish each salad with a whole, unpeeled prawn.
Notes
- This seafood salad recipe shows you how to combine prawns, avocados and a few other ingredients to make a lavish appetizer or flavorful lunch.
- If you can't serve this immediately, squeeze some lemon or lime juice over the avocado, else it will go brown at the edges.
- You can serve all the prawns whole with their shells on or peel and chop most, saving the best-looking for your garnish.
- Also, feel free to alter the ingredients, swapping the red bell pepper for pineapple chunks or the baby leaves for spinach or making any other substitutions you want.
Avocado and Shrimp Seafood Salad Recipe with Lime
Another favorite of mine is this avocado and shrimp seafood salad recipe. You might be noticing a theme here too! If refreshing summer seafood salads are what you are looking for, this recipe might be right up your street as well.
Featuring shrimp and avocado, as well as typical south of the border ingredients like chilies, lime juice and cilantro, this delicious and juicy seafood salad recipe is easy to make and suitable for any occasion.
The green chili pepper spices up this seafood salad recipe, as you would imagine, although if you prefer milder salads you can leave the chili out altogether or simply use half or a quarter of it. Not everyone likes to use chilies in their seafood salads after all.
You can use any kind of shrimp for this – tiny, small or medium. This is not a salad for the jumbo shrimp or prawns though, since everything is tossed together so smaller ones fit the bill the best.
If you do have some large shrimp to use up you could always chop them up after cooking them of course. Cook the shrimp by boiling them for a couple of minutes.
Peel the shrimp before or after cooking, if they have the shells on. Shrimp cook fast and as soon as they are pink and float to the top of the water in the pan they are ready to add to the salad. You could buy ready-cooked shrimp if you prefer.
If you want to serve this as a complete meal, rather than as an appetizer or side dish, you can boil some new potatoes and slice them up and toss them with the other ingredients.
Potatoes will suit the other textures and flavors in the dish and bulk it out a bit to make it more satisfying and hearty enough for an entree.
Want to make this low carb? Swap the sugar for your preferred keto-friendly sweetener.
Ingredients
- 1 tablespoon minced green chili pepper
- 1 tablespoon white sugar
- 6 thinly sliced green onions (spring onions)
- ½ chopped cucumber
- 1 lb (450g) ripe avocados
- 3 tablespoons fresh lime juice
- 12 halved cherry tomatoes
- 2 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
- 2/3 cup (12g) chopped cilantro (fresh coriander)
- 1 lb (450g) small peeled and cooked shrimp
- Large handful of shredded lettuce, to serve
Method
- Whisk the oil, lime juice and sugar together until the sugar dissolves.
- Dice the avocados into ¾-inch (2cm) cubes and mix the cubes in a bowl with the other ingredients except the lettuce, stirring gently.
- Serve immediately on a bed of lettuce, or cover the bowl and chill the seafood salad recipe for an hour before serving on the lettuce, to intensify the flavors.
Notes
- Leaving this seafood salad recipe in the refrigerator for an hour before serving so the flavors blend and intensify is a great idea. You will be able to taste the difference.
- Don't add the salad to the bed of lettuce until just before serving though, else the lettuce will go soggy and that is never what you want when making a seafood salad recipe or any kind of simple salad recipe for that matter.
- This salad is colorful and appealing, featuring green lettuce, pink juicy shrimp, bright red cherry tomatoes and more.
- It makes a great lunch or appetizer and it is full of south of the border flavors, making it super-refreshing and tasty.
Italian Seafood Salad Recipe Antipasto Style
This classic Italian seafood salad recipe antipasto style can be made with any kind of seafood you like. So feel free to adjust what you are using according to what seafood is available.
It goes without saying fresh seafood is best, although you can use thawed seafood if you drain it well before cooking it. Use fresh lemon juice rather than bottled, for the same reason.
The seafood is cooked individually in this seafood salad antipasto recipe and then everything is tossed together with the simple lemon and extra-virgin olive oil based dressing and the salad is left to chill, so the flavors can blend and combine nicely.
This would be a good seafood salad recipe for a party since it is supposed to be taken out of the refrigerator half an hour before serving. This means you can serve it as the first guests are arriving and it is fine to sit out for an hour.
Ingredients
- 3 cups (750ml) water
- 1 lb (450g) small or medium shrimp (or chopped large ones)
- 1 lb (450g) halved sea scallops
- ½ cup (50g) thinly sliced celery
- 8 black peppercorns
- 24 scrubbed live mussels
- 1½ lbs (675g) squid, in ¼-inch (1cm) rings
- 1/3 cup (80ml) extra-virgin olive oil
- ¼ cup (7g) chopped fresh parsley
- ½ sliced lemon
- 1/8 teaspoon black pepper
- ½ teaspoon salt
- ½ teaspoon grated lemon zest
- ½ teaspoon minced garlic
- 1/3 cup (80ml) lemon juice
- Lemon wedges, for garnish
Method
- Bring the water, peppercorns and lemon slices to a boil in a big pot and add the scallops.
- Cook over a moderate heat for 2 minutes, then remove the scallops with a slotted spoon and put them in a colander.
- Bring the water back to a boil and add the shrimp.
- Cook covered for 4 minutes, then transfer them to the colander to drain and cool.
- Bring the water back to a boil and add the squid. Cook for 1 minute or until opaque, then add the squid to the colander.
- Bring the water back to a boil and add half the mussels. Cook for 2 minutes or until they open, then add them to the colander.
- If the colander is full, you can transfer the drained seafood from the colander to a bowl, to make space for more seafood.
- Cover and cook the remaining mussels until they open. Discard any which do not open.
- Discard the cooking water, peppercorns and lemon slices.
- Peel and devein the shrimp unless they are ready-peeled.
- Remove the mussels from their shells.
- Toss all the cooled seafood together briefly.
- Combine the extra-virgin olive oil, lemon juice, lemon zest, garlic, salt and black pepper, to make a dressing.
- Toss the seafood with the dressing and celery.
- Cover and chill for 1 or 2 hours, or for up to 24 hours for a more intense flavor.
- Remove the seafood salad from the refrigerator 30 minutes before serving.
- Stir in the parsley just before serving and garnish with lemon wedges.
Notes
- This wonderful Italian insalata di mare recipe is a feast for the eyes as well as the stomach.
- Use any seafood you like in this dish – clams, shrimp, mussels, octopus, squid and scallops all work well.
- Different kinds of seafood are available in different areas though, of course, so just use what you have available.
- The garlic and lemon dressing is simple yet delicious, working in harmony with the seafood salad recipe without overpowering the delicate seafood flavors, and the parsley adds a refreshing note.
Gourmet Seafood Salad Stacks with Crab and Salmon
Seafood stacks are the recipe to turn to when you want to prepare something extra-fancy with seafood. When you're in the mood to make something easy yet impressive, you might find the following recipe to be fitting for the occasion.
Featuring crabmeat and smoked salmon, as well as fresh vegetables and a delectable lime ginger dressing, this seafood salad recipe looks and tastes amazing.
The ingredients are stacked on top of each other for a wonderful look. You can adapt the recipe if you want, using other ingredients if you prefer. The most important thing when making a stacked seafood salad recipe is to press down on each layer before adding the next.
It is crucial that the stacks are tightly packed, else they will just collapse when you remove the mold. Although the salad will taste the same, this will wreck the presentation, so press down hard after adding each layer.
Ingredients
- 2 tablespoons minced fresh ginger
- ¼ cup (60ml) water
- 1 tablespoon minced garlic
- 6 tablespoons lime juice
- 2 diced Roma tomatoes
- Small handful pea shoots
- 2 diced avocados
- ½ cup (70g) fresh or canned crabmeat
- 1 diced red onion
- ½ a thinly sliced cucumber
- 1 diced mango
- 1/3 raw carrot in wide thin slices
- 1 tablespoon white sugar
- 4 slices smoked salmon
For the Garnish:
- 4 tablespoons crème fraiche
- 4 teaspoons orange fish roe or caviar
- 4 candied or preserved lemon slices
- 4 langoustines (optional)
- 4 physalis or cape gooseberries (optional)
- 4 tablespoons chopped green onions (optional)
- Fresh parsley or cilantro (optional)
Method
- Whisk together the sugar, ginger, lime juice, water and garlic to make the dressing, and refrigerate it for a couple of hours so the flavors can blend.
- Get a cylinder mold or an empty aluminum can with the top and bottom removed, and use it to make your seafood salad stacks.
- Put the mold on a small plate and add a layer of pea shoots, a layer of tomatoes, a layer of sliced cucumber, a layer of mango and carrot and a layer of red onions.
- Make sure the ingredients are tightly layered together else the stacks will collapse.
- Push down on the layers as you add them and use 1/4 of the ingredients for each stack, since you are making 4 servings.
- Add a layer of avocado and crabmeat, then pushing down with one hand on the avocado and crabmeat layer, slowly slide the mold upwards and remove it.
- Repeat with the remaining ingredients to form a total of 4 seafood salad stacks.
- Drizzle the lime ginger dressing over the stacks.
- Add a slice of smoked salmon, a dollop of creme fraiche, some fish roe and a lemon slice on top of each stack, for garnish.
- You can also garnish the serving plates with physalis or cape gooseberry, green onion, langoustines and fresh herbs, but this is optional.
Notes
- This is a highly decorative seafood salad recipe, finished off with smoked salmon, fish roe or caviar, and other delicious ingredients.
- A lot of the presentation ideas are unnecessary, so feel free to leave off the green onion, physalis (the little orange fruit also known as a cape gooseberry), lemon slice and whatever else you don't want to use.
- The most important things are the seafood and the fresh, crisp vegetables. This salad does not need to be chilled in the refrigerator, unlike certain other seafood salad recipes, so just serve it as soon as it is ready.
Simple Crabmeat and Avocado Salad with a Citrus Honey Dressing
Crabmeat and avocado pair so harmoniously and feature in some of the most delicious seafood salad recipes.
The fishy crab flavor and smooth, creamy avocado are natural partners. This flavorful seafood recipe is ideal for seafood fans who especially like the taste of crab.
Combining the crabmeat with crunchy red onion, smooth avocado and juicy mango results in this wonderful salad.
It's a real feast for the senses with its vibrant colors and heavenly flavors, not to mention the lovely aroma this delicate and fragrant crab salad gives off.
The dressing is an unusual combination of citrus, honey and tangy lime juice and these flavors work very nicely with the savory crab and onion.
The chives make an attractive and flavorful garnish but you can use cilantro if you can't find chives because the flavor of cilantro will also work well here.
You might like to garnish the salad with fresh flowers or other colorful ingredients if you are making it for a dinner party or another occasion where the aim is to impress, or you can keep things simple and serve it with a couple of lemon wedges.
If you are making this for a picnic, gathering or boxed lunch, chop the avocado and toss it with the other ingredients, then it will be easier to transport, and keep it chilled until serving.
Ingredients
- 2 ripe avocado halves
- 8 oz (225g) chopped fresh ripe mango
- 1 teaspoon grated orange peel
- ½ finely chopped red onion
- 4 chopped fresh chives
- 3 tablespoons orange juice
- 1 tablespoon fresh lime juice
- 3 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
- 1 lb (450g) fresh lump crabmeat
- 1 tablespoon honey
- Lemon wedges, for garnish
- Salt and black pepper, to taste
Method
- Stir the orange peel, orange juice, honey and lime juice together and whisk in the oil.
- Season to taste and leave the dressing for 15 minutes so the flavors can blend.
- Pick the crabmeat over and separate it into chunks.
- Toss the mango, red onion and crabmeat together gently in a bowl and stir in the dressing.
- Put an avocado half on each serving plate and fill the cavity with the crab mixture.
- Sprinkle the chives on top and serve right away, garnished with the lemon wedges.
Notes
- Fresh flowers are perfect to garnish this delicious crab salad recipe. And many other seafood salad recipes. This is not a necessary ingredient and you might prefer not to use the flowers. Some kinds of flowers are edible and others are toxic so make sure you know what you're using!
- The lemon wedges make a good garnish and some people like to add extra acid, in the form of lemon juice, to a seafood salad recipe. The dressing on this one is honey, orange and lime-based so it might be too sweet for some palates.
- This wonderful fresh crabmeat salad makes a beautiful appetizer or you could make a complete lunch of it by serving some homemade potato salad on the side and perhaps adding a few lettuce leaves underneath the avocado halves.
Heavenly Lobster Salad Sandwiches with Tarragon
These hearty lobster salad sandwiches make a generous lunch for two people, especially when served with pickles and potato chips on the side.
Fans of lobster will love these rich lobster salad buns, especially with the crunchy green onions, crisp lettuce, aromatic tarragon and gently toasted bread.
Buy ready-cooked lobster meat if you are unfamiliar with cooking live lobsters. You can pick all the meat from the lobster carcass if you are using fresh ones though, and add it to the meat or freeze the carcass for making broth or soup at a later date.
If you don't have fresh tarragon, don't replace it with dried tarragon because it won't taste the same or do anything for the recipe. If this is the case, just leave it out altogether.
You could add a little finely chopped cilantro or parsley instead but that is your choice.
This lobster seafood salad recipe is wonderful served on toasted buns or sourdough bread or you could serve it on a pile of lettuce leaves instead, to make a simple salad rather than sandwiches.
Lobster isn't the cheapest type of seafood you can get but sometimes it is nice to spoil yourself by enjoying wonderful meals like this lobster salad sandwiches recipe.
Ingredients
- ½ lb (225g) cooked lobster meat or 2½ lbs (1.1kg) live lobster
- ½ tablespoon fresh tarragon
- ¼ cup mayonnaise
- ½ peeled, seeded, finely chopped cucumber
- 2 thinly sliced green onions
- 2 big, soft burger buns, brioche buns or 4 thick toasted sourdough slices
- 2 tablespoons softened butter
- 4 big lettuce leaves
- Salt and black pepper, to taste
- Lemon slices, for garnish
Method
- Boil or steam the lobsters, if you are using live ones, then let them cool at room temperature.
- Crack them open with a cleaver and remove the meat from the tails, knuckles and claws.
- Remove the intestines from the tails and the cartilage from the claws.
- Cut the lobster meat into ½-inch (1¼ cm) chunks.
- Put the cucumber in a colander and leave for 5 minutes so the excess water can drain away.
- Toss the lobster chunks with the cucumber, tarragon and mayonnaise.
- Add the green onions and season to taste with salt and pepper.
- Cover with plastic wrap and chill for about 45 minutes.
- Preheat a big skillet over a low to medium heat.
- Split the buns and butter both cut sides. Cook for 2 minutes in the dry skillet or until golden brown.
- Turn them over and toast the other side. You can use a broiler instead of a skillet if you prefer.
- Fill the buns with the chilled salad, adding a couple of lettuce leaves before you add the salad on top.
- Serve garnished with lemon slices.
Notes
- This is a very simple idea for a sandwich recipe if you think about it – seafood plus mayonnaise. But the end result of this amazing combination will reassure you that lobster doesn't need a lot of additions. Not all seafood salad recipes are tricky to put together.
- The pure taste of fresh lobster is usually enough on its own but adding some creamy mayonnaise, a little tarragon, and some salt and pepper makes a truly magnificent lobster salad recipe.
- Whether you choose to serve this lobster salad on toasted buns or bread or heap it on to a pile of crisp lettuce leaves is up to you. But if you are a fan of lobster salad you're sure to enjoy this flavorful alternative just as much as crab salads.
Seafood Salad Recipes for Everyone
As you can see, there are plenty of seafood salad recipes for every palate, occasion and budget. Although I don’t use fresh lobster or crab much (they aren’t so cheap here!) I use shrimp in seafood salad recipes all the time.
I also love to use frozen packs of mixed seafood because they’re really cost-effective. Even the humble crabstick or seafood stick can be paired with mayonnaise, spiced with salt, pepper and maybe Old Bay seasoning and used to make ‘crab’ sandwiches.
So choose one of the above seafood salad recipes and feel free to add your own twist. Anything from pecans, walnuts, apple, mango, or avocado can usually fit harmoniously into any seafood salad you are making.
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