I first encountered a crab mango salad at Fringale, the exquisite French-Basque restaurant on 4th St. in San Francisco. Recently at a restaurant in LA I had another delicious crab mango salad, this time with avocado and surrounded by peeled ruby red grapefruit sections. I’ve been dreaming about it ever since.
Crab Mango and Avocado Salad Recipe
Ingredients
For the sauce:
- 1 Tbsp extra virgin olive oil
- 1 ripe mango, peeled, pitted and diced
- 1/4 cup of water
- 1 teaspoon freshly squeezed lemon juice
- Salt and freshly ground pepper to taste
For the salad:
- 1 lb of fresh lump Dungeness crabmeat, picked through to remove the small pieces of shell or cartilage
- 1 1/2 Tbsp freshly squeezed lime juice
- 3 Tbsp extra virgin olive oil
- 1 Tbsp cilantro leaves, finely chopped
- 2 teaspoons mint leaves, finely chopped
- 1 Tbsp minced shallot or purple onion
- 1 medium sized mango, peeled, pitted, and diced (See How to Cut a Mango)
- 1 firm but ripe avocado, pitted, peeled, and diced
- Tabasco sauce
- Salt and freshly ground pepper to taste
Optional: ruby red grapefruit sections, peeled
Method
Sauce directions:
Heat the olive oil in a small pan over medium heat. Add the mango, season with salt and pepper. Cook, stirring, for about 3 minutes until the fruit is very tender. Add water, bring to a boil and remove from heat. Stir in lemon juice. Pour the mixture into a blender and purée until smooth. Chill.
Alternatively, if you are pressed for time, put all of the sauce ingredients into a blender and purée.
Crab salad directions:
1 In a bowl add the crab meat, 2 tsp of the cilantro, 1 tsp of the mint, the chopped shallot, a Tbsp of lime juice, 2 Tbsp of olive oil, 10 drops of Tabasco sauce, and salt and pepper to taste. Mix carefully with a fork, to avoid breaking up the larger lumps of crab meat. Set aside.
2 In a separate bowl add the mango, avocado, 1 Tbsp olive oil, 1/2 Tbsp of lime juice, the remaining cilantro and mint leaves, 10 drops of Tabasco, and salt and pepper to taste. Mix gently with a spoon, taking care not to mush the avocado pieces.
3 Spoon some mango avocado mixture on to a chilled plate, gently mound some crab mixture over it. Garnish with cilantro leaves. For a tasty added touch if you have them, arrange peeled sections of sweet ruby red grapefruit around the salads. The grapefruit provides a flavorful complement to the crab salad.
Alternatively you can use small tureens or desert bowls for individual molds, line the mold with plastic wrap, then layer the crab mixture and the mango avocado mixture. Chill in the refrigerator for 1 to 2 hours. When you are ready to serve, gently remove the salads from the molds onto individual plates. Serve the sauce on the side.
Serves 4.
The Crab Mango and Avocado Salad turned out great!
This recipe is great! I made it for guests and everyone loved it!
LOVED IT!!! when I have dinner parties I make sure to serve this salad. It looks so pretty & taste so YUMMY!!! Thanx. My guest are always impressed by this.
Very good, my boyfreind loved it too!!
I will try other recipes soon,
thanks from Holland
I had a similar recipe in Portland Oregon at a Peruvian restaurant. However, that one had shrimp, red onions, mango and it was served as a cocktail. Can anyone help me find it? I wrote the restaurant but they wouldn’t even acknowledge my email.
Hi Jose,
It sounds like a Shrimp Ceviche recipe with a little mango thrown in.
I love grapefruit, avocado and mango. This recipe sounds amazing! But I am allergic to crab and other seafood. Is there a fish you can recommend for me to substitute? Would fresh tuna work? Thank you!
This is specifically a recipe for crab, though I could see it working well with baby shrimp. You can try it with fresh tuna. No idea how it will turn out. ~Elise
This dish was absolutely superb. I will be making this all summer long! Thanks for the wonderful recipe.
I’m actually not so crazy about avocados, but this case, it worked so well with the mango, I just loved it. My bf loved as well. Thank you so much for the recipe.
For those of us who don’t like mangos, can anyone suggest a different fruit to substitute? Papaya? Peaches?