Introducing another recipe for an original appetizer - shrimp salad with Chinese cabbage and crab sticks. Its light and interesting taste will come in handy for an evening dinner or a varied festive table. Decorate the dish with fresh herbs, pomegranate seeds or sunflower seeds and serve. And now we will get acquainted with the basic principles of cooking and reveal all their secrets.
Description
Shrimp, pomegranate and Peking cabbage salad is cooked quickly and easily. The primary processing of the ingredients is carried out - cleaning, rinsing, boiling (for shrimp) and slicing. Choose the cutting form according to your preferences - it can be thin straws or cubes.
Next, the products are combined in one bowl and mixed with sauce, salt and spices.
Or lay out in layers on a flat plate. At the same time, it is convenient to use the chef ring to form even edges. Take it at will of any form. You can choose something special for a holiday. For example, in the shape of a heart for a salad in honor of Valentine's Day - February 14. For this option, try decorating the salad on top with pomegranate kernels or almond petals, they are also great for salad ingredients.
Cooking principles
To prepare a delicious salad with shrimp and Beijing cabbage, observe the following principles of preparation:
- Use exclusively benign products.
- Since salad components are not cooked during cooking, pay attention to hygiene rules - cook only with clean hands and only in clean dishes.
- Dress the dish with sauce just before serving it: products mixed with mayonnaise or sour cream can be stored for no more than 10 hours.
- If you collect the salad in advance, do not mix it with the sauce; only store it in the refrigerator in a closed container on the top shelf.
Salad recipe
Which products to take:
- Beijing cabbage - a small head of cabbage;
- sweet bell pepper (yellow or red) - 1 pc.;
- shrimp - 0.5 kg (frozen);
- crab sticks - 150 g;
- young parsley - a small bunch;
- Mayonnaise sauce - 2 tbsp. l .;
- low-fat sour cream - 1 tbsp. l .;
- salt - a couple of pinches;
- ground pepper - a pinch;
- hard cheese - 40 g;
- pomegranate seeds - 1-2 tsp.
The shrimp and Beijing cabbage salad recipe is easy to use.
We start to cook a snack. The first thing we’ll do is crab sticks: put them on the table to thaw. Free from packaging and leave on a plate.
Thoroughly wash Beijing cabbage, peppers, herbs. For the latter, take a container of cold water, dip parsley into it. If the leaves are left with earth or sand, grains will fall to the bottom of the container. Then re-wash the greens under the tap. We remove the upper unsuitable leaves from the cabbage, and remove the core from the pepper.
In advance, we extract a few pomegranate seeds from the fruit and leave them to decorate the dish.
Boil the shrimp in boiling water for a quarter of an hour and let cool, then clean each one. Shrimp will turn out a little if small specimens are taken.
We cut the cabbage, sweet pepper and thawed crab sticks into strips. Fold in one bowl.
We chop the young leaves of parsley smaller, and chop the cheese on a grater or cut into thin strips with a knife on a cutting board. Send the greens and cheese to the remaining ingredients in a bowl.
For dressing, carefully mix the mayonnaise sauce with sour cream, salt and ground pepper. Be careful with salt, because the sauce is already salty and salted cheese is present in the salad.
Pour the food in the bowl with dressing and mix it with a spatula with movements from the bottom up: this way the straws of the cabbage will not break.
Put the appetizer on a plate or in a salad bowl. Sprinkle pomegranate seeds on top.
Serve a shrimp salad with Chinese cabbage and crab sticks to any hot dish of meat, vegetables or cereals.
Puff salad
If you decide to make the dish flaky, put the ingredients on a plate in a certain alternation. Grease each layer with sauce and smooth it with a spoon or a silicone spatula.
Layers can be like this:
- crab sticks;
- bell pepper;
- grated cheese;
- chopped parsley.
The last layers will go on a salad of Chinese cabbage, pomegranate and shrimp.
Salad like a cake
If you use the chef ring to shape the salad, then its edges will become flat. Gently grease them with the sauce using the same spatula and sprinkle with a choice:
- sesame seeds;
- chopped ground nuts;
- chopped fresh herbs;
- breadcrumbs.
If desired, also process the top of the dish. The finished salad will look like a cake, cut it into portions and lay out with a spatula for desserts. Guests will at least be surprised at this presentation.
How to diversify the snack?
Salad with shrimp, with Chinese cabbage and crab sticks can be modified and varied. So, in your notebook cookbook will be several recipes for quick snacks at once instead of one.
So, options for transforming the dish.
- Instead of Peking cabbage, take ordinary salad leaves, and if you make the appetizer warm and pour hot sauce on the basis of olive oil (instead of sour cream and Mayonnaise sauce), then take the Iceberg lettuce leaves better - these do not lose shape and color when they come into contact with hot .
- Cabbage can also be replaced with spinach to taste or arugula, watercress, vitlouf (a salad form of the chicory plant) or stewed asparagus.
- Instead of pomegranate seeds, take sesame seeds or sunflower seeds slightly fried to a golden color.
- For lovers, add a tip of chili pepper or a pinch of cayenne pepper to the salad more sharply - a pinpoint in taste will be provided.
- If desired, use not the pomegranate seeds themselves, but their juice - add a couple of teaspoons to the sour cream sauce.
- It is possible to take Korean carrots as an additional ingredient in the recipe for a classic dish (see "Salad Recipe"), it will add spice and originality to the dish.
- Use spices and seasonings to your taste (see "Sauce Supplements" below).
Another option to diversify the salad (shrimp, crab sticks, Chinese cabbage) is to replace seafood with poultry pulp. A boiled or smoked breast of chicken or turkey is suitable. Finely chop the meat and add to the remaining ingredients.
Sauce Supplements
If you are a lover of spices and seasonings, be sure to add a couple of pinchs of nutmeg, ground pink pepper, cardamom or chopped dried spicy greens to a sour cream-mayonnaise sauce: one type or mixture:
In addition to prepared independently, for dressing, you can use store sauces with creamy taste - "Sour cream", "Cheese", "Caesar". Avoid tomato sauces, they will be out of place here.
Now you know everything to create a delicious salad with shrimps, with Chinese cabbage and crab sticks or any other variant of this dish.