Southwestern Shrimp Salad is a chopped romaine salad with corn, black beans, tomatoes, avocado, grilled chili lime shrimp, and a homemade cilantro dressing. It's great for meal prep or a light summertime dinner!
We've been on a salad kick in our house, and this just might be my favorite, yet! I love a good chopped salad and this Southwestern Shrimp Salad is no exception.
Romaine Lettuce - I buy romaine hearts and finely chop them up. I like them chopped into pretty small pieces, but you can chop it to your liking.
Tomatoes - I use cherubs, but cherry tomatoes and grape tomatoes would work well, too.
Corn - Frozen, fresh, or canned work.
Black Beans
Avocado
Cilantro
Plain Greek Yogurt
Garlic
Olive Oil
Honey
Garlic Powder
Jalapeno
Lime
Chili Powder
Cumin
Shrimp - I use tail-off, deveined and peeled shrimp. If you like tail-on shrimp, that works as well!
The first thing you'll do to make this salad, is marinate the shrimp. It doesn't need long, only 10-20 minutes, so you can get the shrimp marinating and then prep the rest of the salad. The shrimp is marinated in a combination of olive oil, chili powder, cumin, garlic, and salt. Easy!
Next, make the salad dressing. To a large food processor or a blender (I used a blender to get it super smooth), add the cilantro, Greek yogurt, jalapeño, lime juice, garlic, honey, olive oil, and salt. Blend or process until creamy. You can set this aside for now.
The next step is to prep all of the remaining salad ingredients. So this would be chopping the romaine, heating up the corn if using frozen, chopping the tomatoes, cutting up the avocado, and straining and rinsing the black beans.
If you are going to make this for meal prep salads, you can add the various ingredients to each tupperware/meal prep container. If you are making this as a large salad, add all of the salad components to a large bowl where you can toss it all up with the dressing.
At this point, you cook the shrimp. I grilled the shrimp, but you can also make it on the stove in a skillet. Cooking shrimp is so fast and easy. On the grill and skillet, they should take just a few minutes on each side. You know they are done when they are no longer translucent, are pink in color, and curled up.
Lastly, add the shrimp to the salad and toss with the dressing. Enjoy!
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