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Garlicky shrimp, tart grapefruit, and creamy avocado served with greens and a tangy citrus vinaigrette come together in my aptly named Garlic Shrimp, Grapefruit and Avocado Salad. A light, satisfying, quick-to-prepare main dish salad that’s great for dinner, lunch, or a weekend brunch.
Garlic Shrimp, Grapefruit and Avocado Salad: Any Day can be a Salad Day
Out here, salad for supper is a common summertime meal choice. When it’s hot outside, I just don’t feel like eating a heavy meal. Nor do I feel like cooking one!
However, I also enjoy serving salad as a main dish during the cooler months. Salad is easy to prepare on busy days. It’s also a good option when I’m trying to stick to healthy eating – or to help balance the scales on days when I kicked healthy choices to the curb. (I’m sure I’m not the only one who does that, right?)
The only problem with main dish salads is that they can sometimes leave me feeling less than satisfied. No matter how easy to make or healthy they might be, having salad for dinner is kind of pointless if your stomach is rumbling and you dive face first into a cheesecake a couple of hours later.
However, this Garlic Shrimp, Grapefruit, and Avocado Salad is not only healthy and tasty, but satisfying and filling.
And that’s just the beginning of what I love about this delicious main dish salad!
Quick, Satisfying, and Simple: Garlic Shrimp, Grapefruit and Avocado Salad
Of course, you can use fresh shrimp to make my garlic shrimp, grapefruit, and avocado salad. But frozen shrimp works just as well. And that means you can make this yummy salad all year round!
There’s a reason I always keep a bag of deveined shrimp in the freezer. It’s my go-to protein when I’m in a hurry, or accidentally forget to take the meat of out of the freezer.
Unlike poultry, meat, or fish fillets, frozen shrimp thaws really quickly. Put the shrimp in a colander or mesh sieve, and run cold water over it. Within minutes, it’ll be completely thawed. Just remove the tails and shells and you’re good to go.
And shrimp doesn’t just thaw quickly, it cooks quickly, too!
Making the Garlic Shrimp
Making garlic shrimp is just a matter of melting a little butter in a pan, adding shrimp, garlic, salt, pepper, and a little lemon, and cooking over medium heat until the garlic is fragrant and the shrimp turns pink. The whole process takes about five minutes. In fact, any more than that and you’ll overcook the shrimp.
Cooked garlic shrimp taste fantastic! They’re terrific on their own and a wonderful addition to pasta or surf and turf dinners, and, of course, to salads.
Making the garlic shrimp is the most complicated part of this recipe which, as you can tell, isn’t complicated at all. Once that’s done, you just toss the shrimp in a bowl with lettuce, grapefruit supremes, and chunks of avocado, and then pour on the tart and tasty citrus vinaigrette, toss and serve.
My Garlic Shrimp, Grapefruit, and Avocado Salad is a scrumptious, healthy, satisfying, easy-to-make meal that you can enjoy all year round. Give it a try this week!
PrintGarlic Shrimp, Grapefruit and Avocado Salad
- Yield: 2 servings 1x
Ingredients
For the Salad:
- 12 oz medium to large shelled and deveined shrimp (thawed if using frozen)
- 1 T butter
- 2 cloves garlic, minced
- 2 tsp lemon juice
- 1 large grapefruit, surpremed (grapefruit sections with peel, pith and membranes removed)
- 1 small ripe avocado, peeled, seeded, and cut into chunks
- 6–8 cups red or green leaf lettuce, washed and torn into bite sized pieces
- Salt and pepper
For the Citrus Vinaigrette:
- Juice of one medium orange (or 3 T prepared orange juice)
- 3 T rice vinegar
- 1.5 T honey
- ½ cup good olive oil
- Salt and pepper to taste
Instructions
- Melt butter on stove over medium heat. Add shrimp, garlic, and pinch salt and pepper to butter. Cook for 2-3 minutes. Turn shrimp over and cook for an additional 203 minutes garlic is fragrant and shrimp is pink on both sides. Add lemon juice to the pan, stir briefly, and remove pan from the stove. Set aside.
- In a small bowl, whisk together all the ingredients for citrus vinaigrette. Taste and adjust seasonings as necessary. (Recipe makes more vinaigrette than you will. Reserve extra for another use.)
- Place lettuce, grapefruit, avocado, and shrimp in a large salad bowl. Pour on the desired amount of vinaigrette on the salad and toss to coat. Divide salad equally onto two plates and serve immediately.
