Shrimp Chopped Salad with Citrus Cilantro Vinaigrette

This shrimp chopped salad is bursting with color and flavor thanks to lots of fresh produce and a citrus cilantro vinaigrette. Ingredients may be chopped ahead of time to make this salad a simple one to throw together for a light weeknight dinner or  delicious summertime cookout side dish! Thank you to Food Lion for teaming up with me for this recipe! 

Chopped salads are the best salads. I’ve been saying it for years and it’s a statement I’m pretty sure I’ll stand by forever and ever. There’s something about a fresh chopped salad I love and I’m pretty sure it centers around the fact that so many flavors burst in your mouth with every bite.

Now that the weather is warming up, soups and stews will often be replaced by salads and sandwiches and this shrimp chopped salad with a citrus cilantro vinaigrette simply screams summer. Sunshine and salads all day long!

I was recently invited to shop at a local Food Lion grocery store to check out their fresh produce. As former Floridians, we didn’t have a Food Lion nearby when Ryan and I lived in Ocala. Since I’m kind of a grocery store nerd and love checking out new-to-me stores, Chase and I hit up Food Lion to shop for our groceries earlier this week. I had no trouble filling my cart with fresh food for the week ahead, including lots of beautiful organic greens, fruit, whole grains and plenty of natural and organic food selections. Plus all of the ingredients I needed to make this chopped salad!

So many colors!

Food Lion recently launched a “How Refreshing” campaign centered around raising their standards without raising their prices. It includes expansion of their natural, organic and gluten-free product offerings. Food Lion also has a “fresh guarantee” and will give customers double their money back if they ever leave the store unsatisfied after purchasing any of the items from their produce, meat, deli, and bakery departments. Now for the salad! As the name implies, this salad does require a fair amount of chopping, but the extra effort is more than worth it because every single bite of this produce-packed salad is bursting with vibrant flavor.

And there’s something to be said for making your own salad dressing. I love knowing exactly what is in my salad dressing, especially since many of the commercial brands are filled with crazy ingredients, and this one is just about as simple as they come. And if you’re a cilantro lover like me, you must make this one soon! (Side note: It’s also fabulous as a marinade for chicken breasts!)

Shrimp Chopped Salad with Citrus Cilantro Vinaigrette

Makes four side salads

Ingredients

For the salad:

• 1 head romaine lettuce, chopped
• 1 celery stalk, diced
• 1 ear sweet corn, kernels removed from cob (raw kernels)
• 1/3 cup thinly sliced and chopped fennel
• 1/2 cup halved cherry tomatoes
• 1/2 English cucumber, chopped
• 1 dozen cooked shrimp, deveined with tails removed pound cooked shrimp
• 1 avocado, pitted and sliced
• salt and pepper to taste

For the vinaigrette:

• 1 cup fresh cilantro
• 3 tablespoons olive oil
• 1 medium orange
• 1 lime
• salt and pepper to taste

Directions

1. Combine all salad ingredients in a large bowl and toss.
2. To make the vinaigrette, place cilantro, olive oil and the juice of one orange and the juice of one lime in a small food processor or a high-powered blender. Blend until smooth. Some small flakes of cilantro may remain, but the vinaigrette should be smooth when poured onto the salad.
3. Pour vinaigrette onto salad and toss to coat everything in the vinaigrette. Divide salad into four salad bowls and enjoy!

This salad works well as a light summertime entrée, or serve it as a side dish at a family cookout! And if you’re not a shrimp or seafood lover, simply replace the shrimp with chicken or omit it altogether.

Enjoy! I really hope you enjoy this recipe as much as we did! For more great recipes visit the Food Lion Recipe Hub.

Food Lion Giveaway

What are your favorite foods to pair with fresh ingredients? Leave a comment for a chance to win a $100 Visa Gift Card! You can use this gift card to shop for delicious fresh ingredients at Food Lion!

Entry Instructions:

No duplicate comments.

You may receive (2) total entries by selecting from the following entry methods:

1.       Leave a comment in response to the sweepstakes prompt on this post

2.       Tweet (public message) about this promotion; including exactly the following unique term in your tweet message: “#SweepstakesEntry”; and leave the URL to that tweet in a comment on this post

3.       Blog about this promotion, including a disclosure that you are receiving a sweepstakes entry in exchange for writing the blog post, and leave the URL to that post in a comment on this post

4.       For those with no Twitter or blog, read the official rules to learn about an alternate form of entry. 

This giveaway is open to US Residents age 18 or older (or nineteen (19) years of age or older in Alabama and Nebraska). Winners will be selected via random draw, and will be notified by e-mail. The notification email will come directly from BlogHer via the sweeps@blogher email address. You will have 2 business days to respond; otherwise a new winner will be selected. 

The Official Rules are available here.

This sweepstakes runs from 04/18/16 – 05/31/16.

Be sure to visit the Food Lion Brand Page on Blogher where you can read other bloggers’ posts!