Chopped Shrimp Salad with Rice and Avocado

Refreshing and brightly flavored, Chopped Shrimp Salad with Rice and Avocado is a perfect dish for lunch or light dinner on a warm summer day. The base of this delectable cold rice salad is briny shrimp, creamy avocado, crunchy cashews, tangy chopped green apple, cooked rice and a bit of green onion. But the best part is the surprisingly simple, 3-ingredient dressing – mayo, sour cream (or Greek yogurt) and pungent, earthy curry powder. The resulting combination of all these ingredients is a cold salad with warm, peppy flavors that will make your taste buds dance!

this Recipe

Rice, Shrimp and Avocado Salad

This amazing shrimp salad recipe was a longtime favorite of my mom. In fact, it’s in our cookbook we wrote together A Well-Seasoned Kitchen®. She made it several times every year, on warm days from spring through fall. I’m not surprised, considering this shrimp salad with mayo is exactly her kind of recipe – easy to prepare ahead, full of amazing flavor and enticing looking. While it’s delicious simply as a salad, her favorite way to serve it was stuffed in pita pocket halves for tailgating before a Denver Broncos game (see directions below under “How to Serve”).

Rice and Avocado Chopped Shrimp Salad Ingredients

Here’s all you’ll need to make this impressive salad:

• Small to medium shrimp (41 to 60 per pound), cooked, shelled and deveined
• Cooked long grain white or brown rice (can also use basmati white or brown rice)
• Large green (Granny Smith) apples
• Salted cashews
• Green onion
• Mayonnaise
• Sour cream (can use Greek yogurt)
• Curry powder
• Kosher salt
• Fresh ground pepper
• Avocado

Type of Shrimp to Buy

I recommend purchasing small (51 to 60 per pound) or medium (41 to 50 per pound) size shrimp. You can leave the smallest ones intact, and coarsely chop the rest. And, purchasing cooked, shelled and deveined shrimp will save you lots of prep time!

Additions for this Shrimp Salad Recipe with Mayo

As with pretty much all the recipes I post on this site, you can vary the ingredients based on what you have on hand and/or your personal tastes. Here are a few ideas:

• Add herbs, like chopped dill, parsley or cilantro
• Add chopped cooked bacon
• Substitute chopped shallots or red onion for the green onion
• Substitute toasted chopped almonds or pistachios for the cashews

How to make Shrimp Salad with Rice and Avocado

Preparing this salad is super easy and only takes 15 minutes:

1. Prep ingredients.
   Coarsely chop cooked, shelled shrimp that aren’t bite-size. Cut apples in half; remove the cores and chop. Chop cashews and green onion (white, light green and some of the dark green portion). Cook and cool the rice (if you don’t already have cooked rice on hand.)
2. Toss together base ingredients.
   In a large mixing bowl, toss shrimp, rice, apple, cashews and green onion.
3. Prepare Curry Mayo Sauce.
   In a separate, small mixing bowl, whisk together mayonnaise, sour cream and curry powder.
4.   Add sauce to salad.
   Gently stir 1/2 mayo curry sauce into shrimp mixture until well mixed. Stir in additional sauce as needed, to taste. Season to taste with salt and pepper.
5. Chill.
   Cover salad and place in refrigerator for 3 to 12 hours.
6. Prep and add avocado; adjust seasonings and serve.
   Shortly before serving, peel avocado, remove pit and chop. Fold into salad. Taste and adjust seasonings (salt, pepper, curry powder) to taste.

How to Serve Shrimp Salad with Mayo

To serve, mound salad on a serving platter or in a pretty bowl. If desired, line the platter/bowl with lettuce leaves. You can also do what mom did, and make it into sandwiches: Cut 3 pita rounds in half. Carefully pry open. Gently spoon 1/6 of salad into each half, for a total of 6 sandwiches.

What to do with Leftover Curry Mayo Sauce

You will likely have leftover curry-mayonnaise sauce from this recipe. Cover and refrigerate; it will last for 4 days. Spread on a fresh fish filet (like halibut or swordfish) and grill fish over medium heat. Sprinkle cooked fish with chopped fresh herbs (whatever you have on hand – chives, tarragon, parsley, dill, etc.). Two dishes from one recipe!

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