A light, summery lobster salad recipe that doesn’t use mayo. This is a Mediterranean-style salad with cucumber, tomato and sweet peppers.

While I like New England lobster rolls, where the lobster is either served just in butter, or, less often, in a mayonnaise-based salad, this is not that. If you want that, I have a damn good recipe for crab rolls, which will get you close.

This is how I make a lobster salad in summertime.

Basically it’s as simple as a trip to your garden or farmer’s market, then to the fish market for some lobster. Or if you’re lucky, you go diving for spiny lobsters or throw traps for Maine lobsters.

That gets me to the core principal of this recipe: It is what you want it to be. I used spiny lobster tails and the bounty of my summer garden. You can use Maine lobster, any sort of shrimp, small scallops, crawfish tails, or even crabmeat here.

I like this combination in a lobster salad because it has a balance of textures, colors, tartness and richness.

Lobster Salad Variations

• The cucumbers are the kind where you can eat the skin — some varieties have a bitter skin, in which case peel them — and are young so the seeds are no biggie. If you have a more mature cuke, slice out the seeds.
• You’ll notice I halved the cherry tomatoes. This is to keep them from running all over your plate. Obviously, this is not an issue with larger tomatoes that are chunked up. If yours are watery, remove the seeds as best you can.
• Peppers add crunch, and you can go with just sweet ones, or add some heat in there, too. I added yellow bell peppers and a teaspoon of minced habanero for some zip.
• The onion, red in this case, is soaked in lime juice. You could use red wine vinegar or some other type.
• Herbs are a must: Parsley, basil, summer savory, lovage, cilantro or mint are all good options.
• Finally, the lobster tail is simply poached in butter. Use my recipe for butter poached fish as a guide. This method will work with all of the options above, although typically crawfish tails and crab is pre-cooked.

If you are using pre-cooked seafood, switch to a good olive oil. Lobster salad is a great use for the good stuff.

Other Tips

Lobster salad doesn’t keep well, so eat it within a day or two.

If you want to make a lobster feast, serve this as a first course to lobster fra diavolo, or alongside lobster tacos. If you do make the tacos, use lime juice as the acidity in the salad.

If you liked this recipe, please leave a ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ rating and a comment below; I’d love to hear how everything went. If you’re on Instagram, share a picture and tag me at huntgathercook.