Photo courtesy of BBRSDA (Bristol Bay Regional Seafood Development Association)
Hot weather got your appetite down? We’ve got just the cure for you with this roundup of chilled seafood dinner ideas that will revive your interest in food, with wild-caught seafood as the star of the meal.
Most of these chilled seafood dinner recipes are prepared with gentle cooking methods or are cooked outdoors on the grill, and all of them require relatively little active cook time — fish and shellfish cook up quickly, even when poached over low heat. This is just to say that the heat in the kitchen is going to be minimal, sparing you a sweaty cooking sesh in favor of something a little breezier.
Here are 8 chilled seafood dinners that will help to cool you down, on even the warmest nights of the year:
Poached Salmon and Pickled Sugar Snaps Salad with Green Goddess Dressing
Chilled, poached salmon is always a lovely addition to a salad. It’s bold enough in flavor to work with any range of salad components, including delicate vinaigrettes, robust vegetable and greens choices, and heavier sauce-like dressings. This recipe from Southern Living builds a hearty, dinner-worthy salad with boiled potatoes, pickled sugar snap peas, and a substantial green goddess dressing. Everything can be prepared ahead of time and stashed in the fridge until you’re ready to plate things up.
Pernod-Poached Halibut on Heirloom Tomato and Herb Salad
Barton Seaver’s recipe for a poached fish salad takes a more nuanced approach, as it features halibut, a considerably milder catch. The salad matches up the meaty, succulent texture of poached halibut with the meatiness of ripe heirloom tomatoes, dressing everything with a reduction of Pernod-infused poaching liquid and fresh herbs. Needless to say, this chilled halibut salad is the epitome of elegance and is an easy one to bust one when the markets are bursting with sweet, juicy tomatoes.
Cold Korean Noodle Soup with Sablefish and Spot Prawns
For those especially hot nights, try making an icy bowl of naengmyun, a chilled Korean noodle soup that quenches your thirst as much as it satiates your appetite. While the classic version of naengmyun is made with beef broth, you’ll notice in the recipe notes that Jeongwon Chi’s recipe uses seafood stock as its base — and we think this makes it the perfect backdrop for a fillet of sablefish and spot prawns. Try integrating spot prawn stock into your soup for a full-on Alaskan adaptation of the dish.
Spot Prawn Ceviche with Prawn-Infused Leche de Tigre
When it’s so hot out that all you can imagine eating is a big bowl of ceviche, try our recipe for a Peruvian-style spot prawn ceviche. It’s marinated in a leche de tigre made from spot prawn shells, so it’s intensely prawny, down to the last drop. Technically, it’s not a ceviche, as the prawns are gently poached rather than “cooked” in the acidity of citrus juices; one benefit of this is that it’s a bit easier and faster to prepare, and you’re still getting all the delicious flavor of spot prawns.
Thai-Marinated Spot Prawns and Cantaloupe with Cucumber Yogurt Sauce
Food & Wine’s recipe for a chilled seafood meal is sweet, savory, and spiced, a heavenly combo of spot prawns, juicy melon, and a cool cucumber yogurt sauce. The spot prawns are marinated in a Thai-inflected mixture of lemongrass, ginger, and kaffir lime leaves, and once they’re grilled, they can either be served hot off the fire or at your leisure; after all, the charred flavor of the grill will linger on the prawns, even if it’s been chilling in the fridge for a few hours.
Ready-to-Eat Salmon Pasta Salad with Lemon-Dill Dressing
This easy pasta salad recipe from Cooking Light is a great blueprint for any chilled salmon and pasta meal. While it was written to be made with canned salmon, you can use any “ready-to-eat” salmon you have in your kitchen: flaked leftovers, hot-smoked salmon, or even little flecks of cold-smoked salmon. The only ingredient in this recipe that requires cooking, then, is the pasta — which means you won’t need to break a sweat in the kitchen to make this meal.
Oil Poached Cod for Le Grand Aioli Platter
Daniel Boulud suggests enjoying his recipe for oil-poached cod as part of le grand aioli, which is essentially a French-style mezze platter that you can have as a meal, wonderful on a steamy eve. Le grand aioli is basically your ideal summer dinner deconstructed, and made fancy. Because the platter is pared down to the essentials, don’t make any compromises: Make your own aioli, and choose the finest components you can to build your version of le grand aioli. For some grand aioli inspo, take your cues from this recipe from The Guardian and consider adding some poached spot prawns to the spread, too.
Fennel and Herb Salad with Chilled, Grilled Shellfish
Got a freezer full of shellfish? Use it to make this chilled seafood recipe from Serious Eats, an adaptation of Yotam Ottolenghi’s fennel bulb and seafood salad. Crunchy fennel bulb is marinated in a refreshing lime dressing, turning it into a flavorful slaw that perfectly complements grilled morsels of seafood. The beauty of this salad is that it can be made with whatever shellfish you have: Dungeness and king crab, spot prawns, scallops, or even a mix of all of these.
