Impress your friends and family with this delicious shrimp miso avocado salad. It’s easy to make and it looks amazing. It’s quickly becoming our new favorite thing to eat.
With the onset of warmer weather, we’re eating more salads and quick meals. This is categorized as an appetizer, but it’s filling enough to serve as a light lunch on a hot weekend afternoon. It’s good on its own but it also goes well with toasted sourdough bread, rice cakes, or your favorite cracker or flatbread.
Ingredients
You’ll need the following things to make this shrimp miso avocado salad:
- Frozen salad shrimp – cuts down on prep time.
- Avocados – use fresh, ripe avocados.
- Celery – adds a pleasant crunch and fresh flavor.
- Dressing – made with white miso paste, mirin, and toasted sesame oil.
- Black sesame seeds – optional, but the color contrast adds visual interest to this recipe.
- Sprouts – I sprout my own, using Todd’s seeds.
Mirin and sesame oil should be easy to find, but you might have to look for the miso. In a big city, this should be an easy task. Your local store might have it; if not, try your local Asian market. Miso adds a great umami flavor to foods. If you’re not familiar with it, click here to read more about it. If you can’t find it in your local store, click here to buy some.
We sprout our own seeds. I use a mix of broccoli, radish, crimson clover, and alfalfa seeds. I like the added flavor of fresh sprouts, but they might be hard to find where you live. If you don’t sprout your own seeds or have access to fresh sprouts, this salad is still good without them. The black sesame seeds are mostly for show – little matte black sprinkles on top of the pink shrimp.
Making Shrimp Miso Avocado Salad
Step 1: Thaw out the shrimp
Thaw the salad shrimp according to package instructions.
Step 2: Make the dressing
Mix together the miso, mirin, and toasted sesame oil.
Step 3: Dice the shrimp and celery
Dice the celery and cut the shrimp into pieces. Cutting up the shrimp is optional. If you plan to put the salad on top of avocado halves, the salad will stay put more easily if the shrimp pieces are small. If you dice the avocado and mix it with the shrimp, celery, and dressing, you can leave the shrimp whole.
Step 4: Mix the ingredients
Add the dressing to the shrimp and celery, and stir this mixture. Now the salad is ready to put on top of the avocados or mix with diced avocado pieces.
Serving the Salad
The shrimp and celery mixture looks pretty on top of avocado halves topped with black sesame seeds and sprouts. You can serve it this way and let everyone dive into their own salad-topped avocado.
We all know how temperamental avocados can be. Sometimes they’re not perfect when we cut them open, but all is not lost. Cut up the good parts and mix those chunks into the shrimp and celery miso mix; then serve it on a plate with optional sprouts on top. If you’re not a fan of sprouts or you don’t have any available, put this salad on a bed of lettuce or other fresh greens.
Or try it on toasted sourdough bread. Yum! This versatile salad is good lots of ways. If you make it and try a different way to serve it, let me know in the comment section. I would love to hear from you.
Shrimp Miso Avocado Salad
Ingredients
Dressing Ingredients
- 1 T white miso paste
- 1/4 tsp toasted sesame oil
- 1 T mirin
Salad Ingredients
- 1 cup of thawed small salad shrimp
- 1/4 cup of chopped celery
- 2-3 avocados sliced open
- Optional Black sesame seeds
- Optional Fresh bean sprouts
Instructions
- In a small bowl whisk together the dressing ingredients.
- Dice the celery.
- Thaw the shrimp according to package instructions.
- Cut the thawed shrimp into pieces about 1/4 – 1/2 inch long. (If they’re small shrimp, just cut them in two pieces.)
- Put the chopped shrimp and celery into a bowl.
- Add the dressing and stir.
- Cut open the avocados and remove the seeds.
- Arrange the salad with the dressing on top of the avocados.
- (Optional) Top with black sesame seeds and fresh bean sprouts.
Alternate method:
- Complete steps 1 through 5 above.
- Cut the avocado into bite-sized chunks and mix it into the shrimp/celery mixture.
- Serve on a bed of lettuce or on top of sourdough toast.
- (Optional) Top with black sesame seeds and fresh bean sprouts.
Notes
- Toasted sesame oil can overpower a recipe. Try the recommended amount first and add more to taste if you want.
- Frozen shrimp takes up less volume than thawed shrimp. I found that 1.5 cups of frozen shrimp equals one cup of thawed shrimp. Frozen salad shrimp thaws out quickly in a bowl of water, so it’s easy to thaw out more if needed.
- The number of servings depends on the size of the avocados. The ones used in this recipe are small avocados.
Products used in this recipe
This is such a simple, yet flavorful recipe idea. I have all the ingredients and am going to do this as soon as my sprouts are ready. Yum!
I hope you enjoy it!