Vietnamese Shrimp Salad is crunchy and loaded with flavors that excite the senses. With all its texture and taste, this is a salad that will leave you feeling satisfied but somehow lighter. It’s summery, loaded with crisp vegetables, aromatic herbs and a bold lime and chili dressing.
The vegetables and peanuts provide the texture but it’s the salad dressing that’s the real star here. Its bold flavors ring out: salty, sweet and sour so typical of Vietnamese cooking. Known in Vietnam as nuoc mam, fish sauce is an essential ingredient in Vietnamese cuisine. Its pungent aroma may not seem palatable but trust me, it’s an integral part of the dressing and the whole salad. This dark, amber-hued liquid is made from the runoff of fermented anchovies which are layered with salt in large barrels. Fish sauce has an umami-rich, salty flavor which adds savoriness to salads. Together with lime juice and chilies, it’s very typical combination of a Vietnamese salad dressing. If you don’t like fish sauce and don’t add it, you’re not doing the salad justice at all so consider make something else. There’s no true substitute for fish sauce. Look for it in most supermarkets and Asian grocery stores.
As salads go, I think you’d be hard-pressed to find a more flavorful, textured and aromatic salad as this Vietnamese Shrimp Salad. I feel like that about Vietnamese cuisine as a whole: it’s exciting and you feel like it’s good for you as you eat it. By all means, you can buy cooked shrimp for the salad which saves you a step or two but I’ve found the cooked shrimp in North America to be waterlogged and quite tasteless. It’s freezing the shrimp already cooked that makes them bland and watery so I prefer to give them a quick dunk into some well-salted boiling water. I find keeping their shells on until after they’re cooked, retains some of their flavor. If you can’t find Thai basil, use cilantro.
VIETNAMESE SHRIMP SALAD
Ingredients
LIME DRESSING
- 1/4 cup fresh lime juice
- 3 tablespoons fish sauce
- 3 tablespoons grapeseed oil
- 2 tablespoons rice vinegar
- 1 1/2 tablespoons sugar or sugar substitute
- 1 tablespoon sambal oelk chili paste, more or less according to taste
- 1 garlic clove minced
SHRIMP SALAD
- Sea salt
- 18 raw jumbo shrimp, unpeeled
- 3 cups shredded iceberg lettuce or Napa cabbage Chinese cabbage
- 1 1/2 cups shredded red cabbage
- 1/2 red onion thinly sliced
- 1 red bell pepper deseeded and thinly sliced
- 2 to 3 Persian cucumbers halved lengthways, seeds scooped out, then thinly sliced into half moons
- 1 large carrot grated or cut into thin strips
- 1 to 2 small red chilies chopped
- 1 cup packed mint leaves roughly chopped, some left whole for garnish
- 1/2 cup Thai basil leaves roughly chopped, some left whole for garnish
- 1/2 cup toasted peanuts roughly chopped (or cashews)
Instructions
To make the dressing:
- Put all the ingredients into a jar with a tight-fitting lid. Shake well; set aside for 10 minutes to allow the flavors to develop.
To make the shrimp:
- Bring a large saucepan of water to a boil. Add a tablespoon or more of sea salt. Carefully add the shrimp to the saucepan. Cook, uncovered, for 2 minutes or until pink and cooked. Remove the shrimp to a bowl of water with ice. Let the shrimp sit in the water for 10 minutes to cool. Once cool, peel and devein the shrimp. You can leave their tails intact for aesthetic purposes or remove them to easier eating; set aside.
- Place the shrimp and remaining salad ingredients, except the peanuts, into a large bowl. Pour over half of the dressing and toss gently to combine. Either make a large, family-style salad or make salads in individual bowls. Arrange salad on a platter or serving plates, drizzle with the remaining dressing, sprinkle with peanuts and scatter herbs over the top. Serves 3 to 4 as a main. The salad is best eaten just after making.
