A seafood pasta salad made from crab, crawfish and shrimp, dressed with a Cajun seasoned buttermilk mayonnaise blend.
Seafood Pasta Salad
This is a great coastal Deep South seafood pasta salad that is pretty common down here, and I love it, although it's more often known as Imitation Crab Salad.
I know, I know... imitation crab seems to scare some folks as if it's some kind of weird, alien substance, pretending to be food, when really, it is generally just a basic mix of Alaskan Pollock, King Crab meat and other seafood, and... it actually works great for salads like this. Personally?
I really love it in this pasta salad as well as my crab salad.
Fresh crab may be used of course, though unless you are doing your own crabbing and picking, it's certainly much pricier. Personally, I prefer to save fresh crab for things like a po'boy, West Indies salad, crabmeat au gratin, gumbo, crab cakes or stuffed crab.
Frozen Louisiana crawfish tails have also gotten a little bit high dollar per pound, even down here, so when crawfish are in season and we bring them home by the sackfuls, I always peel some to set aside in the freezer for recipes like this. The salad is plenty good even without them though.
I also usually have raw, headless shrimp in the shell put up in the freezer, so I use a smaller variation of my regular shrimp boil recipe to cook the shrimp and then use the water to boil the pasta shells. It gives the salad great flavor and a nice, fiery kick, so if you also do that, remember, do not add any salt, pepper, Old Bay or Cajun seasoning to the salad or to the dressing, without first tasting it.
Here's what you'll need to make my Seafood Pasta Salad:
For the Dressing:
- 1 cup mayonnaise
- 1/2 cup buttermilk, sour cream or Greek yogurt
- 1 tablespoon lemon juice or apple cider vinegar
- 1/2 teaspoon granulated sugar
- 1 teaspoon Creole mustard
- 1/4 teaspoon garlic powder
- 1/4 teaspoon onion powder
- 1/4 teaspoon dill weed
- 1 tablespoon fresh parsley, chopped
For the Salad:
- 2 cups dry medium pasta shells, cooked and drained
- 1 pound package small (51/60 count) cooked shrimp
- 1 cup cooked, peeled crawfish tails
- 1 cup fresh crab or 1 (8 ounce) package of imitation crab
- 1/2 teaspoon Cajun or Creole seasoning
- 1/2 teaspoon Old Bay seasoning
- 2 green onions, sliced
- 1/4 cup chopped sweet bell pepper
- 1/4 cup chopped celery
- 1 tablespoon chopped pickled jalapeno
- Salt and freshly cracked black pepper, only as needed, to taste
Prepare the pasta, drain and let cool.
If using raw shrimp, boil, then cool down in an ice bath. You can find my small batch shrimp boil right here on the website.
Drain crawfish and set aside.
Place pasta in the bowl and top with all of the seafood. and sprinkle lightly with the Cajun seasoning and Old Bay.
Add green onion, bell pepper, celery and jalapeno. Toss, taste and adjust seasonings, adding salt and pepper only if needed. If you're using already boiled but unseasoned shrimp you'll obviously need to make adjustments in the seasonings.
Give everything a toss.
Taste and add the Cajun seasoning and Old Bay as needed.
If you didn't already, whisk together the dressing ingredients.
If you didn't add the dressing to the bottom of the bowl, add it now and give it a toss to coat everything well.
While you can serve this immediately it tastes even better if you refrigerate to further develop the flavors. If refrigerated, toss with a few splashes of milk to freshen before serving.
For more of my favorite pasta salads, check out the collection on my Pinterest page!
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