This shrimp avocado beet salad is going to make you rethink what a great salad is all about! Mixed with some hard cooked eggs, salty feta cheese, and drizzled with my sweet and tangy balsamic vinaigrette, this dish is hearty, satisfying, and so delicious! It is perfect as a meal all on its own, but is also great paired with soup or some bread.

A round plate containing chopped beets, eggs, shrimp, avocado, and edamame beans, the words shrimp avocado beet salad on the bottom.

I like a good salad, but I'm not always into the usual salads with leafy greens.

They're kind of flimsy, dressing can spray all over the place, the leaves can be hard to poke with a fork, and really, you need to top them with a lot of other ingredients to make them substantial or worth eating.

So that's why I love...LOVE chopped salads. You get a substantial mouthful with every bite, there's no flapping lettuce leaf spraying dressing over your face or the table, and it's good enough to be a meal if you've got the right mix of ingredients!

This shrimp avocado beet salad is one of my favorites and is an awesome mixture of flavors and textures that I think you're going to love, too!

Ingredient Preparation

For the beets, you can buy cooked beets from the grocery store, but I find roasting beets much cheaper and it's also really easy to do! If you've never roasted beets before, check out my post on How To Make Simple Roasted Beets.

For the shrimp, you can buy frozen cooked shrimp and simply defrost according the package instructions. I prefer to buy frozen raw shrimp, though, that have already been peeled and deveined, since they are often more affordable and are simple enough to cook.

To cook the frozen shrimp, I add them to water in a small pan or pot and bring it to a simmer. Once the shrimp is completely pink, I remove them from the water with a slotted spoon and let them cool completely.

Chopped beets, chopped shrimp, and chunks of avocado.

For the avocado, I have found Haas the easiest variety to find, but I think whatever variety you have available where you live will work. I find avocados ready to eat when they have a slight give when gently squeezed.

More Than Shrimp Avocado and Beets

While I love the shrimp, avocado and beet combination, I also like to add extra ingredients and take everything up a notch with more colors, flavors, textures, and nutrients.

Hard Cooked Eggs I always cook eggs in a batch and keep them in the fridge for a quick breakfast or to add to a salad like this one. If you're interested in learning how to make hard cooked eggs perfectly every time, take a look at How To Cook Eggs in a Rice Cooker!

Edamame Beans I buy them frozen in their shells. To prepare, I place the edamame beans in a heat-safe bowl, pour just-boiled kettle water over them, and let them sit for about 5 minutes to heat through. Then I squeeze the edamame beans out of the shells

Feta Cheese Crumbled feta cheese adds a layer of extra creaminess to the salad, as well as a tangy saltiness that compliments all the other flavors.

A white round dish containing edamame beans, chopped shrimp, chopped beets, chopped avocado, and chopped eggs.

Other Tasty Possibilities

Since this is a chopped salad, I think of chunky or "substantial" ingredients, like:

chopped cucumbers
chunks of cheese
chopped fruit like apples, pears, kiwi, pineapple
Mandarin orange wedges
cooked salmon
smoked salmon
chopped chicken

Assembling the Salad

If you want to have salad greens with this chopped salad, I would start by laying a bed of leaves in your dish first before topping it with the chopped ingredients. Keep in mind that colored juices from the beets will bleed into whatever they are next to, so if using a bowl, I often place them on the bottom of a bowl and pile everything on top.

A round dish containing shrimp avocado beet salad, a small dish containing fried onions, a small dish containing white crumbled cheese, a small pitcher of brown dressing.

To show off all the ingredients before devouring, I'll use a dish with a flatter base and lay the ingredients next to each other.

The Dressing and Garnishes

My favorite dressing to drizzle on this salad is my Sweet and Tangy Balsamic Vinaigrette Dressing. (A smaller portion is included in the recipe below). But other dressings that would go well with this salad is Orange Poppyseed Dressing or Orange Honey Mustard Dressing...or simply use your favorite!

Brown dressing being poured over shrimp avocado and beet salad.

Garnishes are optional, but I find that they can really complete a dish, and one of my favorites is a sprinkling of fried shallots for some crunch.

A spoon with fried onions over a dish containing chopped shrimp, avocado, beets, eggs, and edamame beans.

Other great possibilities are chopped green onions for some freshness and bite, toasted chopped nuts, toasted sesame seeds, furikake seasoning, chili peppers, everything seasoning, etc.

What Can You Serve With It?

This salad is substantial enough to satisfy as a meal, but it would go fabulously with some crusty bread or a small bowl of soup.

A round dish containing shrimp avocado and beet salad, topped with white cheese crumbles and fried onions.

If you're looking for gluten-free bread options to serve on the side, check out:

Want to pack this delicious salad for lunch?

Make it a layered salad in a jar! Start with the balsamic dressing on the bottom of the jar and then the beets. The juice from the beets bleed into whatever ingredients are next to it, so layering the shrimp on top of the beets makes a good color choice! Continue with layering on the avocado, eggs, edamame beans, etc., and carry your garnishes in a separate container.

Close-up of a forkful of chopped beets, avocado, shrimp, hard cooked egg, and edamame bean.

This recipe is really just a mix of ingredients that you may not have considered combining in the same dish. And the great thing is that you can customize it with the foods you like and adjust the quantities for each based on your taste. You can even serve this salad over a bed of leafy greens, if you want!

I enjoy this shrimp avocado beet salad quite often, and it while it seemed like such a simple dish, I felt it was worth sharing. I hope this recipe inspires you to come up with your own variation!

~ Lisa.