This Mediterranean-inspired pesto shrimp and arugula salad is not only super simple to prepare ahead of time for lunch, but because you can meal prep it straight from your pantry and freezer, it’s incredibly easy to make on the fly, too.
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“This was amazing! Great for a Sunday lazy dinner, or a quick weeknight meal. The flavors married perfectly with enough crunch and texture to satisfy.” -Janet, FoodieCrush reader
This recipe is brought to you by Kroger
This Protein-Packed Salad Is Perfect for a Quick Lunch
Breakfast. It’s the most important meal of the day.
Dinner. That’s when families come together.
But lunch? Ugh. Who has time to actually make and enjoy lunch?
Preparing a healthier, real good, real food lunch instead of grabbing your mid-day meal at the drive-thru or the food court — or worse, skipping it all together — is probably one of the biggest hurdles of completing our goals of a healthier day.
Enter: this bright and fresh pesto shrimp salad that takes just 30 minutes to pull together. You can totally make it with meal prepped ingredients that simply need to be combined together for an incredibly easy lunch at home or at work. But it’s also one that feels hearty enough for dinner too.
The ingredients are ones that will last a few days longer than some, even when prepped or made ahead, and most of them can be pulled straight from my pantry and freezer.
Enjoy!
Real Food Ingredients
A big part of my product choices are those that are part of my real good, real food eating plans. Whole foods with minimal or no processing, no added antibiotics, and great, fresh, quality is key. But only at a price point I feel good about.
That’s why I find myself ALWAYS reaching reaching for the Kroger family of brands at my Smiths Marketplace first. The variety and selection is truly impressive, like:
- Simple Truth: All products are free from 101+ artificial preservatives and ingredients, with a lot of organics added in. The fresh salad mixes (I LOVE the baby arugula), veggies, and herbs are always on my shopping list and I always buy the value 4-packs of Simple Truth canned beans. There’s a huge variety!
- Kroger Private Selection: This is Kroger’s line of unique gourmet ingredients that elevates cooking on every level. The quality of these ingredients is top-tier.
- Hemisphares: Authentic ingredients sourced from the countries they come from. I love the olive oil, pastas, and jarred pesto.
- Kroger products: These are the every day ingredients that make up the back bone of my pantry. Quality that doesn’t kill the budget.
What’s in This Recipe?
The full recipe, with amounts, can be found in the recipe card below.
- Frozen shrimp — Shrimp defrosts fast so it’s a quick lunch, dinner, or appetizer solution. For this salad I used Simple Truth jumbo shrimp that have already been peeled and deveined.
- Pesto — From arugula pesto to tomato pesto to regular basil pesto, I love having homemade pesto stocked in my fridge, but when time is at a premium, you’ll find me reaching in my pantry instead. For this recipe, I grabbed a jar of my favorite Hemisphares pesto to reduce the prep time.
- White beans — Canned white beans are so incredibly easy to use and add a solid bite with variety to the salad. I used Simple Truth cannellini beans to keep this somewhat Mediterranean flavor thing going but Great Northern or chickpeas would work too. You can also cook your own cannellini beans, too.
- Cherry tomatoes — I add the tomatoes to the pan while the second batch of shrimp cooks, just to soften a bit and add a touch of caramelization. Be careful not to overcook them or you’ll be using them as a sauce instead.
- Wedge of Parmesan cheese — This is one cheese that I can keep in the fridge for what seems like eons. It’s hard. It’s salty. And it rarely spoils. Instead of using it fine, I use a vegetable peeler to get big shavings of it for a bigger Parm taste with each bite.
- Marcona almonds — The softer and creamier version in the almond nut family, most often farmed in Spain, but now in California too.
- Fresh lemon juice and olive oil — There’s no need for making a dressing when just a squeeze of bright lemon juice and fresh olive oil will do.
How to Make This Pesto Shrimp and Arugula Salad (+Tips)
- Thaw the shrimp. My hack for thawing frozen shrimp quickly is submerging it in cool tap water for a few minutes. Do NOT use warm or hot tap water, which will partially cook the shrimp and make it rubbery.
- Marinate the shrimp. Just 20 minutes in a mixture of olive oil, garlic, and seasonings infuses the shrimp with tons of flavor.
- Cook the shrimp in batches. Even using my largest skillet, I had to cook the shrimp in two batches. Use kitchen tongs if you’ve got them for easy and fast flipping. Large shrimp cook in about 4 minutes, so stay near the skillet!
- Cook the tomatoes and garlic. Stir them frequently so the garlic doesn’t burn. You’re looking for the tomatoes to soften and begin to just burst.
- Assemble your salad. I always toss the arugula with a little lemon and olive oil using my hands to get it evenly coated, then I pile on all the toppings.
If you make this recipe, please let me know! Leave a ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ rating on this recipe below and leave a comment, take a photo and tag me on Instagram with #foodiecrusheats.
Pesto Shrimp and Arugula Salad Recipe
PrintIngredients
- ½ pound Simple Truth raw jumbo shrimp , peeled and deveined
- 4 tablespoons olive oil , divided
- 2 cloves garlic , pressed or minded
- ¼ teaspoon kosher salt
- ¼ teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
- Pinch of red pepper flakes
- 2 cups Private Selection cherry tomatoes
- ¼ cup Hemisphares pesto
- 8 cups Simple Truth baby arugula
- ½ lemon
- ⅛ cup freshly shaved Parmesan cheese
- ½ cup canned Simple Truth cannellni beans , rinsed and drained (or other white bean)
Instructions
- If frozen, thaw the shrimp. You can either thaw the shrimp in the refrigerator overnight, or place in a strainer set in a bowl and run room temperature water (not hot water!) over them for a few minutes to break apart and thaw. Then drain and pat well with paper towels.
- Marinate the shrimp. Drizzle the shrimp with the olive oil and toss with the garlic, kosher salt, black pepper, and red pepper flakes. Set aside for the flavors to meld for 20-30 minutes.
- Cook the shrimp in batches. Heat a non-stick skillet over medium-high heat. Drizzle the pan with 1 tablespoon of the olive oil and add the shrimp one at a time, careful not to overcrowd the pan, cooking in two batches. Cook for 2 minutes on one side, then flip the shrimp and cook just until opaque, then transfer to a bowl. Toss the cooked shrimp with the pesto and set aside.
- Cook the garlic and tomatoes. Reduce the heat slightly and add the oil and garlic from the original shrimp bowl along with the tomatoes to the skillet. Cook for 4-5 minutes, turning the tomatoes and garlic so the garlic doesn’t burn and get bitter. Take the skillet off the heat and set aside.
- Assemble your salad. Add the arugula to a bowl, drizzle with the remaining olive oil, a generous squeeze of lemon juice, and toss with your fingers to coat. Shave the Parmesan over the arugula, top with the beans and the tomatoes with all of the garlicky bits from the skillet. Add the shrimp. Season with more kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste and eat it up.
Nutrition
More Easy Salads with Arugula
- Simplest Arugula Side Salad with Shaved Parmesan
- Arugula and Apple Salad
- Sun-Dried Tomato and Arugula Salad
- Strawberry Arugula Salad
More Salad Recipes with Shrimp
- Citrus Shrimp and Avocado Salad (a long-time reader favorite!)
- Classic Shrimp Salad
- Shrimp Macaroni Salad
- Mediterranean Shrimp Salad
- Kale Quinoa Shrimp Salad
- Seafood Cobb Salad
This post is in partnership with Kroger. As always, thank you for reading and supporting companies I partner with, which allows me to create more unique content and recipes for you. All opinions are always my own.
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Stephanie L
I loved the end result of this recipe. I used all of the ingredients, but I think the recipe needs revamping, not for ingredients but for process. It calls for 4 Tbs. Olive oil divided. In step 1, you say “drizzle” with olive oil. In step 2, you say use 1 Tbs. olive oil. In step 3, you say drizzle with remaining olive oil… How much olive oil is in step 1 and 3 to equal the 4 Tbs. Then you say cook the shrimp in 2 batches, which makes sense. They cook very quickly. You say with the remaining (second batch of) shrimp, cook with tomatoes 4-5 minutes. That’s way too much time to cook the shrimp. You should remove the second batch when they are cooked and toss them with the pesto, then add the tomatoes and rest of the oil and garlic from the marinating shrimp and cook them 4-5 minutes. If you cook the shrimp with the tomatoes, they will be like rubber when you are done. After the tomatoes were done, I mixed everything together to complete the dish. It was absolutely delicious, but to me the recipe instructions need tweaking. Also, you have sliced olives in the photo, but not in the recipe. The olives would have been a great addition. So in the end, I loved the final results and will make it again with the changes I noted above, and I will definitely add olives!
Jessica R Neubauer
It’s a cool idea, but I can’t get past the fact that all you do to the beans is drain them and put them on top of the salad. I decided to season mine, I decided having one completely unseasoned element and a canned one at that, didn’t make sense for me.
Hayley
Awesome, we hope you enjoyed it Jessica!