Seafood Pasta Salad is creamy and delicious like classic pasta salad, but with flavorful crabmeat and colorful peas topping the macaroni.
If you’ve tried our Easy Macaroni Salad and our Crab Salad, this easy Side Dish is like a combination of the two. It’s easy to make and full of tangy, savory, and sweet tastes.
Sabrina’s Seafood Pasta Salad
This delicious dish takes pasta salad and gives it an extra seafood kick. This is the perfect dish to make for the next summer holiday or cookout. Serve it as a refreshing side along with classic comfort food like Pork Chops, BBQ Chicken, or Sloppy Joes. It’s also an easy recipe to whip up for a potluck, family get-together, or baby shower.
Recipe Card
Ingredients
- 2 cups mayonnaise
- 1/3 cup sour cream
- 1/4 cup white vinegar
- 3 tablespoons sugar
- 1 teaspoon salt
- 1/4 teaspoon coarse ground black pepper
- 16 ounces elbow pasta , cooked and drained
- 1 pound imitation crab meat chunks
- 1 cup green peas , frozen
- 4 stalks celery , trimmed and minced
Instructions
- In a large bowl whisk together mayonnaise, sour cream, white vinegar, sugar, salt, and pepper.
- Reserve 1 cup of the dressing in a covered container.
- Add pasta, crabmeat, peas, and celery and fold until well coated.
- Refrigerate for 2 hours (at least) then stir in the remaining dressing right before serving (this makes it extra creamy).
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Nutrition
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Table of Contents
Chef’s Note
The imitation crab in this recipe gives the wonderful taste of fresh crab but is lower in fat and cholesterol. The crab is also full of important nutrition like B vitamins and minerals like phosphorous. If you want to make this into a low carb salad, you can omit the pasta and add in some other seafood like jumbo size shrimp or tuna to make the dish more filling.
While it makes a great side dish, the cooked pasta and crab meat are also filling enough to make a whole meal. You can always make a large bowl of Seafood Pasta Salad for a cookout, then enjoy any leftovers for lunch the next day.
How to Store
- Serve: Don’t leave this creamy Pasta Salad at room temperature for more than 2 hours.
- Store: If you cover the salad bowl or put the salad in another airtight container and put it back in the fridge, it will stay good for up to 3 days.
- Freeze: Unfortunately the mayo and sour cream in the dressing ingredients won’t freeze well. So freezing this salad won’t do well.
Frequently Asked Questions
Along with the crabmeat, you could add different kinds of seafood to this Pasta Salad. Try using canned tuna, lobster meat, crawfish tails, or shrimp. If you have freshly cooked shrimp you can use that, or you can use canned shrimp. Try making this salad the day after cooking up Shrimp Scampi for dinner and use the leftover cooked shrimp in the recipe. You could also use lump crab meat or crab legs instead of imitation crabmeat.
Instead of macaroni, try using rotini, penne, farfalle, radiatore noodles, or small shells. Most kinds of short pasta will work so they’re still bite-sized. You can also try using whole grain pasta or lentil pasta for a healthier salad.
If you want to lighten up your salad try using Greek yogurt in place of the mayonnaise. It will still make a wonderful creamy sauce, but Greek yogurt is much healthier.
Variations
- Add-ins: For some more filling add-ins, try mixing in some hard-boiled creamy eggs for more protein. You could also add different vegetables to go with the frozen peas like chopped bell pepper, green beans, Vidalia onion, broccoli florets, or grape tomatoes.
- Flavorings: There are also plenty of flavor additions you can make to the salad dressing. Try whisking in some lemon juice, apple cider vinegar, blackberry vinaigrette, pickle relish, or an extra few pinches of white sugar. Mix in some Italian vinaigrette and parmesan cheese for an Italian Salad.
- Seasonings: There are so many different seasonings you can add along with the salt and pepper. Try sprinkling in some Old Bay Seasoning, fresh parsley, celery salt, chives salt, onion powder, garlic powder, or cajun seasoning.
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Hi:
Loved your pasta salads I have tried so far. If I am watching sugar intake, could I omit sugar? Thanks, Jennifer
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This is a delicious & simple salad to make. The only changes I made was using ACV as that’s all I had instead of white vinegar. I also added a 1/4 cup of finely minced onion. The salad is delicious with or without onion!
Nicks the vinager,lemon and use 2-3 Tbls balsamic vinager or until it taste right about 2-3 packets of stevia and a little lemon juice.
Do I mix in the peas while they are still frozen?
I did, though I like the crunch of using frozen. If you want them softer, you can rinse them prior to adding to the salad. I hope you enjoy it!