Shrimp Salad With Spinach and Orange-Ginger Dressing

Nutrition Snapshot

• About 33 grams of protein in one plate, from shrimp and edamame, with the tart cherries, spinach, orange, and ginger that research links to less soreness.
• Spinach, edamame, quinoa, and cherries bring about 8 grams of fiber, and the orange’s vitamin C helps the body use the iron in the spinach and shrimp.
• The trade-off: dried tart cherries carry natural sugar, and soy sauce carries salt. The card shows the figures, and the notes show how to lower both.

A pound of frozen shrimp, thawed under cold water and seared hot for three minutes with a cup of edamame, over a big bed of baby spinach and cooled quinoa. Orange segments and a handful of dried tart cherries go on top, and the dressing is fresh orange juice, grated ginger, rice vinegar, sesame oil, and a spoon of soy sauce.

It is a warm-and-cold salad, four plates, on the table in twenty minutes on the evening after a hard workout.

Why This Salad Is Great for the Day After a Hard Session

Muscle soreness a day or two after hard training comes from small tears in the muscle fibers and the inflammation that follows as they repair. It is normal, and it is also what makes the next session worse.

Research on food and soreness keeps landing on the same group: tart cherries, fatty fish, and other foods rich in polyphenols, the plant compounds that give fruit and vegetables their color and bitterness.

In trials, athletes who ate or drank tart cherry before and after hard sessions reported less soreness and recovered strength faster than those who did not. Similar results have been seen with other dark fruits and with the omega-3 fats in fish.

The Same Foods, From a Plate

The effect is modest and real, and it comes from food as well as from capsules. This salad puts several of those foods on one plate: dried tart cherries, spinach, orange, and ginger, all rich in polyphenols. Under them is a full recovery dose of protein, about 33 grams from shrimp and edamame. The quinoa supplies the carbohydrate that refills what the session used.

How much protein and carbohydrate a recovery meal should carry, and how long after training it still counts, is in The Recovery Meal: Protein Dose, Carbohydrate, and How Long the Window Lasts.

What a Salad Can and Cannot Do for Soreness

The tart cherry studies are small and mostly short, and most used concentrated juice or extract in amounts larger than a handful of dried cherries. A salad like this one is a reasonable way to eat the same foods every day, and the effect on any one morning will be modest.

What the studies do support is that a pattern of colorful, polyphenol-rich food, fatty fish, and enough protein around training leaves people less sore than a pattern without them.

Whether a concentrated tart cherry supplement adds anything on top of that, and for whom, is a question for the supplement side of this site.

Frozen Shrimp, Ten Minutes

A bag of frozen shrimp is the fastest protein in the freezer. Thawed in a bowl of cold water for ten minutes and seared in a hot pan for a minute and a half a side, shrimp go from frozen to plate faster than pasta boils.

Buy them raw and peeled; cooked frozen shrimp turn rubbery when reheated. Edamame goes into the same pan straight from the bag and is hot in two minutes.

Shrimp Salad With Spinach and Orange-Ginger Dressing

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Frozen shrimp thawed and seared with edamame, served over baby spinach and cooled quinoa with orange segments and dried tart cherries, dressed with orange juice, ginger, rice vinegar, sesame oil, and soy sauce. Four plates in 20 minutes, about 33 grams of protein each.

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Prep Time 15 minutes mins

Cook Time 6 minutes mins

Total Time 21 minutes mins

Servings: 4 plate

Course: dinner, lunch, Salad

Cuisine: Asian-American

Calories: 400

Ingredients Equipment Method Nutrition Notes

Ingredients

  

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Salad

• 1 pound frozen raw shrimp peeled and deveined, thawed in cold water 10 minutes and patted dry
• 1 tablespoon avocado oil or canola oil
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 1 cup frozen shelled edamame
• 5 ounces baby spinach (about 5 cups)
• 2 cups cooked quinoa cooked ahead and chilled
• 2 oranges one juiced for the dressing and one peeled and cut in segments
• 1/4 cup dried tart cherries unsweetened if available
• 2 scallions sliced

Orange-ginger dressing

• 1/4 cup fresh orange juice (from the juiced orange)
• 1 tablespoon rice vinegar
• 1 tablespoon toasted sesame oil
• 1 tablespoon low-sodium soy sauce
• 1 tablespoon grated fresh ginger
• 1 teaspoon Dijon mustard

Equipment

• Large skillet
• Jar with a lid for the dressing
• Citrus juicer or reamer

Method

 

1. Shake the dressing ingredients together in a jar.
2. Heat the oil in a large skillet over high heat until it shimmers. Add the shrimp in a single layer with the salt and cook without moving them for 90 seconds, then turn and cook until pink and curled, about 90 seconds more. Add the edamame for the last minute to heat through. Move to a plate.
3. Toss the spinach and quinoa with half the dressing in a large bowl and divide among 4 plates.
4. Top each with a quarter of the shrimp and edamame, orange segments, dried cherries, and scallions. Spoon the rest of the dressing over.

Nutrition

Calories: 400kcalCarbohydrates: 43gProtein: 33gFat: 12gSaturated Fat: 1.6gSodium: 417mgPotassium: 1046mgFiber: 7.8gSugar: 17gCalcium: 168mgIron: 3.5mgMagnesium: 143mgPhosphorus: 483mgCholine: 57mg

Notes

Lower-sugar version: use 2 tablespoons of cherries and add a handful of frozen dark sweet cherries, thawed, which cuts the sugar by about a third. Lower-sodium version: skip the salt on the shrimp and use 2 teaspoons soy sauce. Buy raw frozen shrimp; precooked shrimp turn rubbery in the pan. Firm tofu, pressed and cubed, works in place of shrimp for a vegan version with about 6 grams less protein. The quinoa is cooked ahead and cooled on purpose; cooled grains form resistant starch, which is gentler on blood sugar. Packed for lunch, keep the dressing separate and the shrimp cold.

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Gluten Free

Regular soy sauce is brewed with wheat, so this salad needs one swap to be gluten-free: tamari labeled gluten-free, or Bragg’s liquid aminos, in the same amount. Shrimp, edamame, spinach, quinoa, orange, cherries, ginger, rice vinegar, and sesame oil are naturally free of gluten. For people with celiac disease, also check the quinoa for a gluten-free label and the dried cherries for added ingredients.

People who avoid gluten by preference can use the low-sodium soy sauce as written.

Go deeper

• The Recovery Meal: Protein Dose, Carbohydrate, and How Long the Window Lasts (food.nutriscape.net)
• Sports & Athletics (nutriscape.net)
• Protein & Amino Acids (supplement-sciences)