By Kalyn Denny from Kalyn’s Kitchen

Summer Seafood has such a nice ring to it, but there are other reasons to eat seafood when temperatures start to climb. For one thing, many types of fish or seafood taste great served cold, which may be why seafood salads are so popular. If you do want to cook, fish and seafood taste great broiled or grilled, two cooking methods that won’t heat up the entire house. Finally, fish cooks quickly, definitely a plus when it’s hot and you want to get out of the kitchen!

Shrimp is always popular if you’re looking for a salad ingredient that tastes good cold. Cooking with Amy has a winner with Arugula Shrimp Salad, which also has avocado, another hot-weather favorite. Simply Recipes has a classic version of Shrimp and Avocado Salad, where the shrimp is served inside avocado halves. In my own family, Shrimp and Macaroni Salad is an absolute must at every summer barbecue. You can also eat your shrimp salad inside a roll if you prefer, like the Shrimp Salad Rolls with Tarragon Dressing created by Sher from What Did You Eat.

Salads with salmon can also make a great summer meal. Kevin from Closet Cooking broils the salmon he uses for his Teriyaki Salmon and Asparagus Spinach Salad. Fig and Cherry has a Poached Salmon Salmon with Creamy Pesto Dressing that looks divine. Daily Unadventures in Cooking makes Salmon and Caper Salad, which sounds like a great combination to me. I love to make salad with leftover salmon I’ve cooked on the grill, and Leftover Salmon Salad with Yogurt and Dill is one my favorite recipes of the summer so far.

For quick-cooking that really keeps the house cool, grilling is a perfect way to cook seafood. Iron Stef has Grilled Salmon with White Bean Salsa; she served it with grits but you could substitute something cooler for a summer meal. I drooled over the photo of Salmon Teriyaki Skewers with Pineapple from Simply Recipes, which Elise says can be cooked on a grill or under a broiler. If you’ve never thought of cooking Grilled Swordfish, Helen at Beyond Salmon has a recipe with tomatillo salsa that looks great.

Even if you don’t have a grill, you can make fantastic seafood dishes in minutes using a gas or electric broiler. The Blog That Ate Manhattan has a fabulously simple but delicious-sounding Asian-Marinated Salmon that cooks under the broiler in about ten minutes. Just a few minutes of broiling will give you the amazing looking Broiled Halibut with Green Olive Relish from Well Fed. Finally, the amazing-looking Bacon-Wrapped Sea Scallops with Blackberry Port Sauce from Peabody at Northwest Noshings only requires a few minutes of broiling, plus a tiny bit of oven time for the bacon.

If it’s summer where you are and seafood for dinner sounds good, you can find even more seafood recipes at the FoodieView Recipe Search.

Passionate cook, blogger, and free-lance food writer Kalyn Denny shares recipes on her award-winning foog blog Kalyn’s Kitchen.

This entry was posted on Monday, July 7th, 2008 at 9:03 am and is filed under Recipe Roundup. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.