Shrimp Pasta Salad with Miso Dressing

This shrimp pasta salad has bits of shrimp, crunchy celery, and creamy green peas all surrounded by a tangy, tart, miso dressing. It’s perfect for lunch or dinner and it’s still yummy leftover.

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About this recipe

I have been making this shrimp pasta salad for a long time, and I usually make it with orecchiette pasta. When I made it that way for this blog post, I wasn’t happy with how the final pictures turned out. (The pasta got lost in the white bowl that I used.) I headed out to one store after another, but I couldn’t find orecchiette pasta anywhere. It’s special; I get that, but I was a bit disappointed. However, I’m flexible so I used shell pasta and it worked out fine. If you can find orecchiette pasta, I would go with that because I just love the way that pasta cradles the peas in that delectable miso dressing. See the closeup below.

But shell pasta is tasty, and it holds the peas and shrimp bits almost as well. So, you might notice that the ingredient pictures and the steps show orecchiette pasta, but the final serving pictures have shell pasta. Sometimes the life of a food blogger isn’t perfect.

Ingredients

• Shell pasta or orecchiette pasta – makes little cups to capture the peas and shrimp. And it tastes good too.
• Shrimp – use pre-cooked salad shrimp to make things easy.
• Peas – provides the sweet, taste of peas and beautiful green color.
• Celery – adds a nice crunch.
• Miso Dressing – tangy and tart dressing with the umami flavor of miso.
• Fresh parsley – an optional, but tasty and attractive addition.

More about the Miso Dressing

Miso adds a salty, umami flavor to the dressing. The mayonnaise, lime juice, and Dijon mustard combine with the miso paste to create a delightful dressing that works perfectly with this shrimp pasta salad. The final amount of dressing is more than you will need, but it’s nice to have some extra in case someone wants more on their salad. It keeps in the fridge for days and it’s good on other salads too.

Making this Shrimp Pasta Salad

1. Cook the pasta

• Follow the package instructions to cook the pasta.
• Drain and rinse the pasta when it has finished cooking.

2. Prepare the shrimp and veggies

• Thaw the shrimp and peas in separate bowls.
• Cut the celery into small pieces.
• Chop the shrimp into small pieces.

3.: Make the miso dressing

• Combine the dressing ingredients.
• Blend thoroughly in a small blender or whisk by hand.

4. Combine the ingredients

• Add the cooked pasta, the chopped celery and shrimp, and the peas to a mixing bowl.

• Add about half of the dressing and mix the ingredients.

• Transfer the shrimp pasta salad to a serving bowl.
• Snip some fresh parsley on top for garnish.

Serving Shrimp Pasta Salad with Miso Dressing

Put out a big bowl of shrimp pasta salad and let everyone dig in.

Or, scoop it right out of the serving bowl and into salad bowls. Make sure the extra miso dressing is available so everyone can add extra dressing if they want some.

Here’s some of the same shrimp pasta salad that I made with orecchiette pasta. It’s shown here alongside some flatbread. That’s useful when you need to get the last of that great miso dressing out of the bowl.

Tips for Making Shrimp Pasta Salad with Miso Dressing

• Use pre-cooked salad shrimp. All you’ll need to do is thaw it out. You can dice it if you want, or leave it whole.
• When making the dressing, use a blender if you have one. The miso paste has a tendency to clump and the blender mixes it thoroughly.
• Fresh parsley is a pretty garnish, but if you don’t have any, this salad is fine without it.
• If you store leftovers in the fridge, you’ll definitely need to add more dressing before eating the leftovers.
• Leftovers should be eaten by the next day.