Crab Pasta Salad Recipe

This Crab Pasta Salad recipe is perfect for your next potluck, cookout, or just a dinner side salad with great flavor. It is so quick to put together and will fill up the entire family. Give our Crab Pasta Salad Recipe a try today!

🦀 What makes this recipe special?

This easy-to-throw-together recipe has only about 15 minutes of active time and is midwest comfort dining perfection. It is a great recipe for your next cookout or potluck and can be served for any meal where you might serve a coleslaw or a macaroni salad, but want a seafood twist. 

While I have given a great easy coleslaw recipe before and this delicious Rancharoni Macaroni recipe is an awesome grill-out pasta salad, I wanted to do something with crab. Well, imitation crab… this is a midwest recipe and we are not exactly known for our seafood. 

This is a great side dish for grilled pork chops or if you would be great with these Grilled Chicken Legs with Yogurt Mint Marinade. If you want to double down on seafood, maybe serve it as a side for this Grilled Bacon Wrapped Shrimp Recipe. 

🍜 Ingredients

This is a fairly typical pasta recipe with a few twists. 

• Medium shells pasta
• Imitation flake crab meat, precooked
• Frozen peas or fresh peas
• Red onion
• Green pepper
• Celery
• Mayonaise
• Sugar
• Dill
• Lemon juice
• Salt
• Pepper
• Tony Chachere creole seasoning

We use imitation crab in this recipe, but you could use the real stuff. This is meant to be a midwest comfort food. Don’t come at me about the imitation crab… if you know, you know.

Another unique aspect to this recipe is that we use Tony Chachere creole seasoning. I love this stuff and always have it on hand.

See the recipe card for ingredient quantities.

🍲 Instructions

This recipe is as simple as mixing all of the ingredients together. Then, put it in the fridge and let it sit for a few hours. The pasta takes about 10 minutes to cook in preparation.

While the water is heating and the pasta cooks, I chop up the veggies and get everything measured. 

Once the pasta is done and I run it under some cool water to cool it down, I just mix it together and put it in the fridge until I am ready to serve.

🤷 Substitutions and variations

You can make plenty of substitutions and variations with this versatile recipe.

• Imitation Crab – Of course, you can use cooked fresh crab! Imitation crab is the recipe as I remember it, and it is a bit lighter on the pocketbook. 
• Mayo – The recipe calls for regular mayo, but a great way to cut the calories down is to use light mayo. 
• Pasta – I chose shell pasta. It seemed right to use shell pasta with a crab salad. Use any pasta that you see fit. 
• Peas – I use frozen peas. You can also use fresh peas. I would not recommend using canned peas. They tend to be a bit mushy.

📦 Storage

Cover this salad and keep it in the fridge for up to 3 days. Do not allow the salad to sit at room temperature for more than a few hours when serving this. 

Because this has mayo and seafood in it, it should not be left out at room temperature for lengths of time. I also would not recommend freezing this recipe.

🎓 History tidbit

Imitation crab is made from sumuri, a seafood paste made from white fish, artificial and natural flavors, starch, sugar, and sodium according to Healthline. It started being sold in the 1970s in Japan and offered an affordable substitute for crab.

Is it perfect? nah. That said, it has made its way into Americana.

📝  Tips and tricks

• Make the day before or morning of your event and it will be ready to eat by your event.
• I use Tony Chachere creole seasoning, but Old Bay is great, as well.
• While my instructions have this mixed in order, it really is just mixing all the things together.
• A great way to reduce calories on this recipe is to use low-calorie mayo. It cuts the mayonnaise calories by about ⅔.
• This makes 6 servings. Have a big party? Double it!

🛠 Products used in this recipe

• Tony Chachere creole seasoning
• Large bowl

😋 Did you make this recipe?

Thank you so much for giving this Crab Pasta Salad recipe a try! Could you do me a favor by leaving a review in the comments area below? This helps me know how I am doing and helps others decide if this is their recipe. Most of all, thanks for visiting Ramshackle Pantry!