Easy Crab and Avocado Salad
Easy Crab and Avocado Salad: This salad is so light and delicious. It's a perfect appetizer for summer and super easy to toss together. Enjoy!
Easy Crab and Avocado Salad
Jump to RecipeI should actually call this my award winning Easy Crab and Avocado Salad.
Let me explain. Every year Betsy and I haul off to North Carolina to spend a week with her family on the beach. It’s always a great time and one thing we do when we are there is eat really well. There aren’t a lot of restaurants in the area so we make big family dinners and feed 20-30 people each night. There are many excellent cooks in Betsy’s family so it’s always good eats.
The last night of the trip we have a “leftovers” night where everyone pulls out stuff from fridges and comes together to eat whatever is left from the week of good dinners. This could be everything from spaghetti and meatballs, to ceviche, to braised pork tacos.
This year we ordered crabs for lunch one day and I was a bit out of practice with my crab picking. So I took a few of the leftover crabs and worked on my picking skills. I made a really simple salad out of the leftover crab (this very salad) and it somehow became the most talked about dish of the week and was casually awarded best dish of the week by a few of the foodies in the group.
One person described it as Disturbingly Delicious… I think because something this good shouldn’t be this easy to make.
Of course, the salad isn’t quite as good with packaged crab, but it’s still a great light salad. Perfect for summer!
Crab & Avocado Salad
- Serves:
- Serves 4-6
- Prep Time:
- Total Time:
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This salad is so light and delicious. It’s a perfect appetizer for summer and super easy to toss together. Enjoy!
Ingredients
Instructions
- In a medium bowl, stir together diced onion, tomatoes, cucumber, lime, and cilantro. Season with lime and salt.
- Stir in ripe avocados.
- Finally, stir in flaked crab (lump crab works best but any is fine). Season to taste with old bay and salt.
- Serve immediately or chill and serve within the same day.
Crab and Avocado Salad
The first time I made this salad I literally just made it based on stuff I had in our fridge. It was simple flavors which is good because crab is a light flavor and you can easily overpower it.
This salad is all about balance so try to keep the ingredients in proportion. If you add too much onion, it’ll have too much bite. Too much acid from the lime will wash out the flavors.
Maybe most importantly, add the ingredients to your bowl in order of delicateness. So the crab should be the very last thing and the avocado should be the second-to-last thing. If you overmix those things in, you’ll end up with some kind of strange crab guacamole.
Just barely fold in the crab at the end. Lump crab meat works best but anything will do. I don’t personally recommend imitation crab for this dish because the flavor is too strong. Real crab has a much lighter flavor.
Season it simply with salt and maybe a pinch of Old Bay if that’s your thing. It doesn’t need it though in my opinion.
You could serve this on flatbreads to make it more of a meal, but honestly it’s just great as a light appetizer or side dish.
Try this award winning Crab and Avocado salad ASAP!
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Read MoreHello! My name is Nick Evans and I write and manage Macheesmo. I started Macheesmo 11 years ago when I was just learning my way around the kitchen. I love to cook and love everything food-related, but I have no formal training. These days I focus on fast, accessible recipes with the occasional “reach” recipe!
I’ve posted almost 2,000 recipes on Macheesmo. For each one, I do my best to give full explanations of what I did and tips on what I’d do differently next time. I’ll bring up the tricky parts and the easy parts.
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I was off to Whole Foods today anyway for cilantro, but you’ve just convinced me to get some crabmeat while I’m there. By sheer good luck, I’ve got the rest. Cheers!
Ha! Awesome Jean. Hope you like it!
Can I use any other herb? Cilantro is not a favorite
Chives would be good!
Oh my gosh. I love crab and don’t see enough good recipes with it. I am trying this recipe ASAP.
I’ve never cooked with real crab before (!) so I think it’s time I finally gave it a try. This recipe is so fresh that I feel like fake crab is not acceptable! Looking forward to trying this over the weekend!
I used imitation crab and it was delicious! I can’t imagine how good it’d be with real crab Will definitely try it in the future.
Yummy & dish was delicious.
Just made this – it’s excellent. I was looking for a seafood salad that I could “mold” in an oval form for the sake of presentation, and this not really that — but it’s very good – light and healthy.