What to serve with shrimp salad? Whether planning a light meal at home for friends or family or simply craving an ocean-fresh meal, you may wonder what side dishes would perfect your meal. Let’s look at several great ideas to complement your fishy meal.
Shrimp salad can be served with fruits and vegetables such as citrus, tomatoes, cucumbers, asparagus, zucchini, and avocado. Carbohydrates such as starchy rice, pasta, potatoes, bread, rolls, and crackers can also be used as side dishes for a nutritious and balanced shrimp salad.
There are quite a few options to consider when deciding what to serve with shrimp salad. Your choices may be based on personal food preferences, dietary needs, or favorite food items to excite your tastebuds and satisfy your seafood yearnings. Let’s explore some options.
What Can You Serve With Shrimp Salad?
Side dishes should always aim to balance or complement the taste and texture of the main dish. Look at it as the perfect balance contrast. Certain fruits and vegetables work better than others, and several starch choices complete even the simplest fish dishes.
Let’s look at several great sides that you could serve with shrimp salad.
Serve Vegetables And Fruits With Your Shrimp Salad
You could keep it plain and simple by slicing tomatoes and cucumber and seasoning them with salt and pepper before serving them with your shrimp salad. Tomatoes complement shrimp well, and you could spoon shrimp salad onto cucumber slices for an easy party snack.
Also, consider hollowing out a tomato and filling it with shrimp salad.
Asparagus is also a great vegetable to try adding to your shrimp salad. Sprinkle the asparagus with a bit of lemon pepper before cooking. One can also do the same with zucchini. Slice the zucchini lengthwise and grill in a lemon garlic sauce.
Let’s not forget the popular food choice that pairs with any good meal. An avocado! Most people feel that avocado makes any meal taste just that much better as it is a great choice and a simple way to upgrade a meal and create a lovely creamy texture.
Another great idea would be to spoon your shrimp salad into an avocado half or to scoop your salad into a butter lettuce cup. Try using romaine lettuce or iceberg lettuce and using it to make a shrimp salad wrap.
Crisp or grilled Haricot Verts (green beans) and corn on the cob are also wonderfully nourishing side dishes.
You can also serve shrimp salad with freshly sliced pineapple, mango or peach slices. Sweet mango slices with a spicy kick are superb with shrimp. It is sure to get you salivating and a real taste bud awakening! Citrus flavors of any kind usually go well with shrimp salad.
Serve Carbohydrates With Shrimp Salad
Let’s explore what type of carbohydrates and starches to serve with shrimp salad.
Rice As A Side Dish For Shrimp Salad
Rice or orzo, cold or hot, works well with a shrimp salad. Keep it plain to balance the rice’s creaminess with the shrimp salad’s tanginess. Portuguese-style mint rice is a nice alternative, too, or cheesy tex-mex rice.
Rice is always a great side dish, with wide varieties of rice to choose from. Wild rice, Spanish rice, rice pilaf, and so on. Consider making and using traditional risotto or quinoa as a side dish.
Bulgur, a coarse wheat grain, is quickly prepared and makes an ideal side dish for shrimp salad. It has a nutty texture and is full of flavor and goodness.
You could make fried rice with onions, peppers, and garlic or serve the rice plain with a sauce. Ideally, the sauce the shrimp was cooked in.
Other variations of rice that could also work are rice noodles (yam), with a hint of curry and an oil-based sauce. Don’t forget the garlic, as shrimp goes so well with garlic! Provided you are fond of garlic, of course!
If you’d like to consider a healthier or banting-friendly meal, select a rice substitute such as cauliflower rice. The cauliflower adds a nice texture to the shrimp salad.
Pasta As A Shrimp Salad Side Dish
Pasta is also a great choice of carbs to serve with a shrimp salad, either hot or cold. One could use warm linguine with either simple olive oil and garlic or a light lemon pepper spice. You could also cook fettuccine or short pasta, cool it, and add it to the shrimp salad.
Bread And Pastry Side Dishes With Shrimp Salad
Bread lovers will be pleased to know that many types of bread pair beautifully with seafood. Garlic bread is an excellent choice to pair with a shrimp salad. Toasted whole wheat bread or even rye bread would be equally as good.
To make the shrimp salad meal light, you could serve it on a plain bun or croissant. Soft brioche buns are also suitable, as would pita bread. Slice the pita bread in half and fill the inside up with your shrimp salad.
Baguettes are also a tasty option. Lace the baguettes with garlic and lightly toast them. Also, try serving your shrimp salad with fresh sourdough rolls, corn fritters, or garlic bread sticks.
Try out your baking skills and have a go at baking a cornbread. Serving your shrimp salad with a side of buttery or saltine crackers would be just as delicious. Keep it plain and simple by adding your seafood to a toasted buttered roll with some crispy green lettuce.
Try filling up cooked puff pastry shells with your shrimp salad for a slightly different and interesting twist. Not only would this taste great, but they will also be sure to look rather impressive too.
Shrimp Salad With Potatoes As A Side Dish
You can never go wrong with warm roasted garlicky potatoes or a cold mayonnaise potato salad. If you prefer something sweeter, sweet potatoes add sweetness to your tangy shrimp salad. This contrast between sweet and savory could taste delicious.
Plain-boiled potatoes could also serve as a base for the shrimp salad. It could be a bland choice but good for those who prefer not to eat anything garlicky or too rich.
What Drinks To Serve With Shrimp Salad?
One can opt to drink anything that tickles your fancy, but perhaps you may wonder which alcoholic beverages would go down well with shrimp salad.
A light-bodied fine white wine would work well as it has a high acidity, a dry taste, and a lovely citrus flavor. A Sauvignon Blanc, Prosecco, or champagne pairs superbly with shrimp salad.
You could also spice it up by serving Screwdrivers or Mimosas with seafood dishes.
Conclusion
Shrimp salad is a nutritious meal full of wholesome goodness and flavor. By serving your shrimp salad with an array of fruits, vegetables, starchy carbohydrates, and a glass of light fruity wine, one could quickly upgrade your light shrimp salad into a hearty and generous meal.
References
- https://www.quora.com/What-would-you-serve-with-shrimp-salad
- https://www.purewow.com/food/what-goes-with-shrimp
- https://www.dinneratthezoo.com/seafood-salad/
- https://www.simplystacie.net/shrimp-salad/
- https://www.quora.com/What-are-the-best-dishes-served-alongside-shrimp
