Heart-Healthy Shrimp, Corn, and Farro Salad

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This salad is for you if you love the classic corn and lime combination… if you enjoy shrimp… if you prefer a salad that’s not all lettuce… and one with substance… something that can be a complete meal.

And this salad is for you if you have heart concerns but still want to eat well (that’s what I mean by “sweet spot.”) I’ll explain below why even shrimp and corn deserve a spot in your heart-healthy kitchen.

Let’s take a look…

What’s in it?

As the author of the 30-Minute Heart Healthy Cookbook* and a working mom living with cancer, I really (try to) keep things simple! 🙃 The salad itself has just six ingredients:

• Farro (whole wheat kernels that cook up like rice, but with more fibre and flavour)
• Shrimp
• Corn
• Cherry Tomatoes
• Red Onion
• Avocado

* Not an affiliate link. Read the reviews on Amazon, order from and support a local bookstore. 📚❤️

The dressing is simply:

• Extra virgin olive oil
• Lime zest and juice
• Fresh basil
• Black pepper

Selecting and substituting ingredients

Farro

Farro is a whole wheat kernel with a nutty flavour and a satisfying, hearty, chewy texture.

A staple of traditional Mediterranean cooking, farro has three times as much fibre as brown rice! It has a medium glycemic index. Like other whole grains, it’s a good source of vitamins, minerals, and antioxidants.

Farro is found in some grocery stores, near the rice. If your regular store doesn’t carry it you can try an Italian market or order it from Amazon.

You might find pearled, semi-pearled or whole farro. All good! The pearled products cook fastest, while the whole ones have a bit more nutrition. Even with pearled farro, this salad has 9g fibre per serving (32% of the daily value or DV).

The product I’ve seen most widely, from Bob’s Red Mill, cooks in 30 minutes. If you go to the trouble of doing that, you might want to cook extra and freeze it in meal-sized containers. It will thaw nicely after a minute or two in the microwave.

If you can’t find farro, you can substitute a cup of cooked barley, brown rice, or black beans.

Shrimp

Sodium

Frozen shrimp is often high in sodium, so check that on the label. (Shrimp has a small amount of sodium naturally, but solutions used in freezing add quite a bit more.) I used this President’s Choice product, which has 420mg of sodium per 100g (3.5 oz) serving. Try to find one with no more than that. If you can get fresh shrimp (lucky you!), it should be much lower.

Cholesterol

Shrimp, like eggs, is higher in cholesterol than other animal protein foods. (Plant foods have no cholesterol.) Do you need to limit these and other cholesterol-rich foods? As you’re probably aware, experts have debated this for years.

If you’re interested in the state of the science, you can read my post about eggs, for people with heart concerns.

The bottom line? Cholesterol in foods shouldn’t be a big concern for most people. Instead, focus on an overall heart-healthy eating pattern with lots of vegetables, fruits, and other plant foods, like whole grains, legumes, nuts and seeds. Less meat, more plants will solve cholesterol.

As for eggs and shrimp? The American Heart Association says that if you’re “healthy,” an egg a day is fine, or up to seven a week. Vegetarians have room for more.

But if you have type 2 diabetes and/or cholesterol concerns, they suggest that you might want to eat less than an egg a day. This is where the science isn’t clear, but some people like to err on the side of caution.

Think of a large serving of this salad (1/4 the recipe) as equivalent to about two eggs, in terms of cholesterol.

The upside of that shrimp? It’s a very lean protein source that can help you get vitamin B12 and selenium, an antioxidant mineral.

Sustainability

The other important consideration with choosing shrimp is to find a sustainably sourced product. Look on the package for the MSC, BAP, or ASC certification.

The Monterey Bay Aquarium’s Seafood Watch program has a more extensive guide to finding environmentally friendly shrimp.

Shrimp substitutions

If you’re concerned about the cost or the cholesterol in shrimp, the salad is still delicious with half as much. You can add a handful of black beans to replace the protein. Or switch it all to black beans for a colourful vegetarian salad!

Corn

Are you worried about corn being too high in sugar? No need. While there is a small amount of natural sugar in corn, we don’t worry about that because, like with fruit, the sugar comes packaged with fibre and other nutrients. Yes, even corn has nutrition, including potassium and magnesium, two minerals we value for heart health.

Plus it’s delicious! I wouldn’t substitute the corn in this recipe. It’s kind of central.

If you have the time and inclination, using fresh corn would be divine, but if you’re too busy for that, it’s still delicious with frozen corn.

Cherry tomatoes

While cherry tomatoes are sweeter, you can substitute grape tomatoes if you like. I even made this last week by chopping up two vine-ripened tomatoes we had. Salads are flexible.

Red Onion

Red onion will give you a sharp, sweet kick and beautiful colour, but if you don’t have one, the best substitute is a shallot, similarly mild and sweet. You could also use a sweet (Vidalia or Walla Walla) onion. Just don’t use a white or yellow onion – too pungent when raw.

You could also leave the onion out, but when we’re trying to limit sodium, ideally we have as much flavour from vegetables (as well as herbs and spices) as possible.

Avocado

Your heart loves avocado, thanks to its healthy (mostly monounsaturated) fats, abundant fibre, vitamins, minerals, and other nutrients.

Avocado has been shown in several studies to help improve cholesterol levels. People who eat it two or more times a week have a lower risk of cardiovascular disease. (Although that last one is a cohort study, which can’t prove cause and effect. There may be other explanations for the link between avocados and lower CVD.)

If you don’t happen to have a fresh avocado on hand, no worries — just leave it out. Don’t use frozen avocado. It’s usually too mushy for salads.

Extra virgin olive oil

EVOO, as it’s fondly known, is well-known for reducing risk of cardiovascular disease (as well as diabetes), but if you don’t happen to have any, or you don’t like the flavour in a salad like this, you can substitute any liquid plant-based oil, including avocado, grapeseed, or canola (yes canola).

Lime zest and juice

Lime zest is simply the grated outer layer of a lime.

(You probably know this, but at one time I didn’t, and I asked in a grocery store where to find the lime zest. The young clerk didn’t know either, so another shopper who overheard us explained it with a laugh. 😂 We were all novice cooks at one point.)

So in case this is new… how to zest a lime:

1. Wash it! (And dry it.)
2. Use a zester (pictured above) or the small holes on a box grater. If you have neither you can remove the peel with a sharp knife and chop finely.
3. Grate only the bright green outer layer. The white inner layer, called the pith, can be bitter.

In the ideal world you’d pick up a couple of limes for this, zest one of them, and squeeze the juice from both. (You can zest both if you’re a lime lover, but I find one is enough flavour and enough work!)

In the real world you might just have a bottle of lime juice in your fridge. That’ll do just fine. You won’t get as much lime flavour as with the zest, so taste and add a bit more if needed.

No salt?

Most recipes with lime juice call for salt, but I left it out because the sodium is already high enough due to the shrimp. (429mg per serving.)

If you’re used to salting your food, it can take a while for your taste buds to adjust to not having it. If you try the salad and feel it needs something, add a little more olive oil and/or lime juice.

If that doesn’t do it, you can add a little salt. Start with 1/8 teaspoon, mix it in and taste. Add another 1/8 teaspoon if needed, for a total of 1/4 teaspoon. That adds just about 150mg of sodium (6% DV) to each serving. It doesn’t take much.

How to make it

This salad is simple to prepare. The only thing to plan ahead is thawing the shrimp. When you start cooking, get the farro going first. While it’s bubbling away you can prepare the other salad ingredients and dressing, which shouldn’t take more than 20-25 minutes.

How to store it

The USDA says that cooked shrimp can stay in the fridge for 3-4 days. I’d stick to the low end of that.

What to serve with it

A large serving of this can be a complete meal. Each serving has 26 grams of protein. If you’d like more, a glass of milk or yogurt would do it and give you calcium.

Here’s the recipe:

Love this salad?

Yay! Please take a moment to share it with a friend or on social media! I believe that more people with heart concerns deserve to eat in the sweet spot: “Nutritious, delicious, and right for you” (them).

Join the conversation

Join us in my free Facebook group, the Sweet Spot Heart-Healthy Cooking Club, and find out what others are saying about this dish. Many of our members are savvy heart-healthy cooks sharing great ideas!

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As always, this post is not sponsored! Any mention of specific products are to help you, not for financial gain.