The traditional side dish served at a luau is lomi lomi salmon, but here, I'm replacing the salmon with cooked shrimp for a more refreshing "crunchier" bite. Plus shrimp is much easier to find in grocery stores than salted salmon.
The side dish is quite simple with only a handful of ingredients: shrimp, tomatoes, onions, salt and lime juice. But be prepared for a bit of a hand workout!
Lomi lomi in Hawaiian means to massage. And let me tell you, there is a lot of massaging for this dish. You massage the raw shrimp with salt to give it a firm and "crunchy" texture as I had explained previously in my shrimp and broccoli post. And you have to massage the diced onions with salt to reduce the raw onion bite.
After that, the rest is really just tossing everything together and letting the dish hang out in the fridge for a couple of hours (while you treat yourself a massage!) to let the flavors meld together.
Easy peasy.
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| Massage the raw shrimp with salt. Rinse and drain |
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| Boil shrimp |
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| Massage the onions with salt |
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| Juice the limes. Dice the tomatoes |
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| Add lime juice and green onions to massaged onions. Mix. Add to shrimp and diced tomatoes and toss to combine. Chill in fridge for a few hours for the flavors to meld. |
Yields 9 servings
Ingredients:
- 2 lbs shrimp, deveined and cleaned
- 1 yellow onion, diced
- 2 green onion stalks, diced
- 3 limes
- 2 lbs tomatoes, diced
- 1 ½ t salt plus more for shrimp massage
Procedures:
- Defrost, clean and devein shrimp. Then add in 1 T salt and massage the shrimp for a few minutes until you start to see foam. Thoroughly rinse off the foam and salt. Set aside. [NOTE: Defrost shrimp by soaking the frozen shrimp in a large bowl of cold water for 30 minutes to 1 hour. (This will also help to remove most of the sodium triphosphate if you were unfortunate enough to accidentally not read the ingredients carefully and buy frozen shrimp that has the additive.)]
- Bring a large pot of water to a boil. Add massaged shrimp and allow to cook until the shrimp turns orange and opaque. Takes only about 2 -3 minutes. Do not over cook. Drain shrimp and rinse with cold water. Transfer to a bowl and set aside. (Sometimes, I add a few ice cubes and mix and drain to cool the shrimp down faster.)
- Dice the onion. Add to a separate bowl with 1 ½ t salt and massage for 5 min. Then add diced green onions and the juice of 3 limes. Mix and set aside.
- Chop tomatoes and add to bowl with shrimp. Now add in the massaged onions, green onions and lime juice mixture to the shrimp bowl. Toss and refrigerate for several hours before serving.