Shrimp Louie - The Best Shrimp Avocado Salad Recipe

This fresh and vibrant Shrimp Louie Salad consists of a bed of lettuce topped with avocado, hard boiled egg, tomato, cucumber, and seared shrimp. Topped with the signature Shrimp Louie dressing this salad makes a delicious lunch meal. All tossed up, it could also be a great summer BBQ side dish.

Until very recently I had never heard of Shrimp Louie and until further research I didn't even realize that the name referred to a salad recipe.

What is Shrimp Louie? 

Shrimp Louie was super popular at the beginning of the last century (1930's-50's) - a little before my time, so no wonder I had never heard of it.

It's a classic seafood salad whose origins get assigned to either San Francisco or Seattle. Other versions include Crab Louie or Crab and Shrimp Louie Salad.

While looking up Shrimp Louie salad recipes, I found a few ingredients that they all had in common. So I would consider them Louie classics.

There always is a bed of greens (usually lettuce) with avocado, hard boiled egg (find the perfect egg recipe here), tomato, and shrimp as topping, and finally, a signature Shrimp Louie dressing to drizzle on top.

Other toppings included cucumber, olives, or canned asparagus. I am not a fan of the latter two, that's why I didn't include them when coming up with my own best Shrimp Louie salad recipe.

Apparently, there also is a Shrimp Louie sandwich which uses the same ingredients and layers them inside of a bun or between two sliced of bread. I have to say, that sounds like an amazing lunch idea to me.

How To make Shrimp Louie Dressing

In my research I found that every Shrimp Louie dressing recipe called for mayonnaise and chili sauce of some sort - which makes it similar to Thousand Island dressing.

In an attempt to make this Shrimp Louie recipe healthier and clean eating, I experimented with Greek yogurt as a replacement for the mayo. I've had great success with this substitution in other salad dressings but whichever way I tried it, I didn't like the results in this case.

So I reverted back to mayonnaise, but made it myself with healthy avocado oil (not the GMO soybean oil you'll find in most commercial mayonnaise). So it still is clean eating.

If you don't want to make homemade mayo, Chosen Foods also makes avocado oil mayonnaise. I have even seen at Costco (at least in Canada) or otherwise there is always Amazon.

Now, some of the Shrimp Louie salad dressing recipes I found specified the chili sauce to use while others left it wide open. The ones that were specific usually used Heinz chili sauce, which really is more like ketchup than anything else.

I wanted my Shrimp Louie sauce to actually have some chili kick to it, so I experimented with different chili sauces. First, I used a fiery hot Habanero sauce and only used 1 tablespoon of it.

The next time I used a smoky Chipotle chili sauce, that was a lot milder and almost sweet in taste. So I upped the amount to 3 tablespoons.

For this reason, I am giving a range instead of a specific amount for the chili sauce in the recipe for Shrimp Louie below. Depending on your heat tolerance and how hot your sauce is, you may have to adjust.

I wrote out the recipe to serve 4 people. I prefer to showcase the awesome ingredients of this salad by arranging individual salad bowls with rows of avocado, egg, tomato, and shrimp on top.

However, you could also turn this into a salad for a crowd to serve say at a summer BBQ. In that case tossing everything up in a large bowl works as well, it will just look a little less pretty.

Recipe

Shrimp Louie - The Best Shrimp Avocado Salad Recipe

5 from 5 votes

Leelalicious

This fresh and vibrant Shrimp Louie Salad consists of a bed of lettuce topped with avocado, hard boiled egg, tomato, cucumber, and seared shrimp. Topped with the signature Shrimp Louie dressing this salad makes a delicious lunch meal. All tossed up, it could also be a great summer BBQ side dish.

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Prep Time 10 minutes mins

Cook Time 5 minutes mins

Total Time 15 minutes mins

Course lunch, Salad

Cuisine American

Servings 4

Calories 340 kcal

Ingredients

  

½1x2x3x

• 1 pound shrimp peeled, deveined and tails removed
• 2 tablespoons butter
• salt + pepper
• 1 head shredded lettuce butter or romaine lettuce
• 4 hard-boiled eggs peeled and sliced
• ¼ English cucumber sliced
• 1 avocado sliced
• 16-20 cherry tomatoes about ½ pint, halved
• lime wedges

Louie Dressing:

• ¼ mayonnaise
• 1-3 tablespoons hot chili sauce *see Notes
• 1 tablespoon Dijon mustard
• juice of half a lime or to taste
• salt + pepper
• water if and as needed **see Notes

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Instructions

 

• Start by preparing the Shrimp Louie salad dressing. Stir together mayonnaise, chilli sauce (adjust amount to desired heat level), Dijon mustard, lime juice, salt, and pepper. Add a little water, if needed to make the dressing pourable. Set aside.
• Heat a skillet to medium-high heat, then add the butter to melt it. Prepare the shrimp by seasoning them with salt and pepper from both sides. Place them in the hot skillet and sear for 2-3 minutes from each side until pink and curled into a C. Remove seared shrimp from pan and set aside.
• Assemble the Shrimp Louie salad. You can toss all ingredients in a large bowl, but I prefer assembling individual salad bowls. Place the shredded lettuce into the bowls first, then arrange sliced egg, cucumber, avocado, cherry tomatoes and shrimp on rows on top.
• Add a lime wedge to each bowl and drizzle with the prepared Shrimp Louie sauce.

Notes

* Adjust amount of chili sauce to the heat level you can handle. Sometimes I use a Chipotle chili sauce which gives the dressing a great smokiness, but it is not too spicy so I use 3 tablespoons. Other times I have used a Habanero chili sauce that is quite hot, so I used only 1 tablespoon of it.
** Depending how thick the chili sauce is that you use (and how much)

Nutrition

Nutrition Facts

Shrimp Louie - The Best Shrimp Avocado Salad Recipe

Serving Size

 

1

Amount per Serving

Calories

340

% Daily Value*

Fat

 

19.7

g

30

%

Sodium

 

524

mg

22

%

Carbohydrates

 

11.1

g

4

%

Fiber

 

5.6

g

22

%

Sugar

 

4.6

g

5

%

Protein

 

32.3

g

65

%

* Percent Daily Values are based on a 2000 calorie diet.

Keyword Shrimp Louie Salad

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