Simple and Light Pasta and Shrimp Salad with Lettuce
Shrimp Salad, Potato Salad, Tuna Salad Oh My!
I’m going to share my simple & light pasta and shrimp salad with lettuce recipe today. I am such a fan of chicken salad, potato salad, tuna salad, well basically anything with mayonnaise. Because I love mayo-based salads, I had to figure out a way to lighten them up if I was going to continue eating them.
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Light Pasta & Shrimp Salad
Ingredients
- 8 ounces uncooked salad pasta noodles Or other small pasta
- 12 oz peeled and deveined cooked small shrimp I buy already cooked
- 1 cup frozen peas, thawed
- 4 green onions, chopped
- 1/2 cup Olive Oil Mayonaisse
- 1/2 cup Whole Unflavored Greek Yogurt
- juice of one lemon
- 1 tsp dill weed
- 1/2 tsp salt
- 1/4 tsp pepper
- lettuce leaves
Instructions
Pasta
- Cook pasta according to package directions then drain. Cool down with some cold water and let drain.
Salad
- Coursely chop the shrimp
- In a large bowl add the pasta, shrimp, peas, green onions, mayo, yogurt, lemon juice and spices. Mix together well.
- Serve on a large piece of lettuce
I have been cutting the amount of mayo that is called for in my recipes by half. So if a recipe calls for 1 cup of mayo, I now use a 1/2 cup. I also cut that 1/2 up into 1/4 cup of olive oil mayo and 1/4 cup of whole unflavored Greek yogurt. I hope that makes sense. If you add lemon juice to the recipe it seems to make up for the lack of all mayo. It works every time.
Interestingly enough I haven’t found a recipe yet that wasn’t just as creamy by using this method.
Other Kinds of Salads
I love salads for lunch. I could eat them every day. Typically I just tear up some lettuce, add some veggies and a hard-boiled egg, and top with one of my homemade dressings. Sometimes I will make myself a Caesar Salad with Chicken. Probably my all-time favorite.
Pasta Tip
Do not overcook the pasta as it will fall apart when you’re mixing all your ingredients. Cook it al dente (one less minute than the package directions).
Stock up on the Salad Fixin’s
I always have the ingredients to make salads at home, especially when I have a busy week coming up. One trick that makes putting a salad together for lunch is cleaning and chopping all the veggies on Sunday. I also bake a protein like chicken breast or shrimp and store them all in the refrigerator.
I hope you enjoy my Simple & Light Pasta and Shrimp Salad with Lettuce. I’m also a big fan or chicken Caesar salad and always have the ingredients for that one hand too. You can find my recipes HERE and HERE.
Enjoy,
Meet Me
Created by Lynn Vogeler, Small House Kitchen is a celebration of the joy found in mostly from-scratch cooking and the magic that happens when great ingredients meet limitless imagination. In our small house, we turn simple ingredients into extraordinary meals with big flavors.
You can find out about all of my other passions; decorating, entertaining, organizing, and gardening over at livinglargeinasmallhouse.com
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This looks delicious, and I can’t wait to try it! Pasta and Shrimp are 2 of my favorite things!
It’s really good, better than the full mayo version, in my opinion.