Mango Shrimp Salad

This mango shrimp salad is topped with sweet fruit, crunchy cashews, and creamy Green Goddess dressing. It’s an easy, healthy dinner recipe!

Are you a shrimp lover? Here’s one of the tastiest ways to make it into an easy, healthy dinner recipe: mango shrimp salad! Imagine: There’s charred, smoky tender grilled shrimp served over greens. It’s drizzled with creamy, savory Green Goddess dressing and tossed with sweet cubes of mango and crunchy cashews. There’s so much flavor going on it doesn’t taste healthy at all: just fresh and delicious! Alex and I served this to some friends and it was a huge hit. That’s when we knew we had to share it here!

Why make this mango shrimp salad?

This mango shrimp salad is one of our favorite shrimp recipes! Why to make it:

• Over the top delicious. The sweet mango, creamy Green Goddess dressing, salty cashews, and savory shrimp work together beautifully.
• Easy & healthy dinner recipe. It’s a healthy main dish with so many flavor components you could slide it past resistant healthy eaters.
• Works for many diets. It’s versatile enough for a crowd of various diets. It’s already gluten-free and low carb. For dairy free, use Creamy Cilantro Sauce. If you have a few vegetarians or vegans in the crowd, have them load up on cashews or make our Marinated Tofu for the protein.

Alex and I made this mango shrimp salad as an easy meal with my best friend, her husband, and their baby girl on a recent trip to Minnesota. It does take a bit of chopping, but with the ladies chopping and the guys manning the grill, it came together in a flash. We all loved it, and it fit into both their post-baby diet and our real food / flexitarian diet.

How to grill shrimp: the basic steps!

Grilling shrimp for this mango shrimp salad is very easy: it takes just a few minutes to cook! We have a whole separate post on How to Grill Shrimp if you’d like more detail. This recipe has some different spices, so here’s the basic idea:

1. Preheat a grill to medium high heat.
2. Defrost the shrimp (if frozen). If you’d like, you can peel before grilling: either way works. But because it’s easier to eat a salad with peeled, we peeled but left the tails on.
3. Thread the shrimp onto skewers and sprinkle it lightly with kosher salt, cumin and paprika.
4. Grill for 2 to 4 minutes per side, until bright pink and cooked through.

How to thaw frozen shrimp

A myth about fish is that “fresh is best.” But frozen is okay too! Freezing suspends the decomposing process, so a fish frozen right after it’s caught could be fresher than a fresh fish that takes a week to get to your plate. How to thaw frozen shrimp? Here are a few options:

1. Place the frozen shrimp in the refrigerator overnight.
2. If you’re using them the day of, place the frozen shrimp into a large bowl with very cold water. Stir the bowl every 5 minutes to break up clumps of shrimp that freeze together. The shrimp should be defrosted in about 15 minutes.

How to cut a mango

The hardest part about making this mango shrimp salad recipe is cutting the mango! To learn how to cut a mango, here’s a video we together showing exactly how to cut it.

This mango shrimp recipe is…

Pescatarian and gluten-free.

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Looking for main dish salad recipes?

Looking for main dish salad recipes? Aside from this grilled shrimp salad, here are a few of our favorites:

• Chickpea Couscous Bowls with Lemon Tahini Sauce
• Broiled Salmon with Bourbon Glaze
• Seared Salmon Poke Bowl
• Vegetarian Cobb Salad
• Green Goddess Salad Bowls
• Thai Salad with Peanut Sauce
• Superfood Salad
• Baked Falafel Salad Bowl
• Green Goddess Tortilla Bowl Salad
• Go Green Bowls with Lemon Yogurt Sauce
• Vegetarian Quinoa Bibimbap Bowls
• Chickpea Fattoush Bowls
• Stress Reducing Avocado and Quinoa Bowl
• Related: 10 Brain Food Recipes | Best Shrimp Dinner Ideas

Looking for more mango recipes?

Here are a few other delicious mango recipes from A Couple Cooks!

• Mango Black Bean Chili
• Grilled Teriyaki Mango Skewers
• Tropical Mango Bowls with Citrus Drizzle
• Grilled Mango Tacos with Dream Sauce
• Easy Mango Salsa Recipe
• 27 Mango Recipes that Bring the Tropics to You

Last updated: January 2020