Shrimp Salad with Grapefruit and Avocado

Summers are perfect for salads. You don’t have to heat up your kitchen to make them. You can throw them together quickly. You can customize them for each person eating them. More of this, less of that, dressing on the side…

My watermelon cucumber salad is actually my most viewed and most pinned recipe to date. That was a good one and will be hard to top. This week I was feeling lazy and didn’t want to cook one night. Or actually I didn’t want to stand in the rain in the rain forest humidity while grilling, so I threw together another salad with what I had to work with.

I think the entire process took about 10 minutes total from fridge to table. I love these kinds of recipes. If you are planning to have leftovers, don’t toss the lettuce with the dressing until ready to serve. We had 2 servings for dinner and then I packed the shrimp, avocado, grapefruit and dressing separately for lunches later.

Shrimp Salad with Grapefruit and Avocado

• 1 lb shrimp, shells and tails removed
• Salt and pepper, to taste
• 1 grapefruit
• 1 Tbsp olive oil
• 1 Tbsp fresh tarragon, minced
• 2 tsp brown sugar
• 1 tsp green onions, green and white parts minced
• 8 cups romaine lettuce
• 1 medium avocado, sliced (approx 4 oz after removing skin and pit)

Peel and section the grapefruit over a bowl to catch the juice. Combine the grapefruit juice, olive oil, tarragon, brown sugar and green onions and whisk to combine. Toss the grapefruit dressing with the 8 cups of lettuce and divide evenly on 4 plates.

Spray a skillet with non-stick spray and heat over medium high heat. Salt and pepper shrimp if desired and add to pan. Saute shrimp until heated while stirring frequently. NOTE: I used precooked and thawed shrimp to make this step go faster. If you are using uncooked shrimp, make sure to cook them thoroughly. Remove from heat and divide over lettuce.

Top each salad with a quarter of the grapefruit sections and a quarter of the avocado slices. Makes 4 servings at approximately 245 calories each – 24g protein, 16g carbs, and 10g fat.

You can also do this with an orange for a sweeter salad and use different lettuce if you don’t like romaine. An orange spring mix lettuce version with chicken would be pretty tasty.

Have fun not heating up your kitchen and let me know what combo you come up with. 🙂