Looking for a quick, inexpensive, and delicious way to bring the flavors of Italy to your table? In this video, I’ll show you how to make Insalata di Mare, the iconic Italian seafood salad, using budget-friendly ingredients you can find in any grocery store.
This is the lazy recipe version – no fancy prep, no complicated steps. Just a simple seafood salad with shrimp, calamari, mussels, and a mix of crisp vegetables tossed in a refreshing lemon and olive oil dressing. Perfect for summer, holidays, or as a light appetizer that feels gourmet without breaking the bank.
✨ What you’ll learn:
How to make seafood salad at home in under 20 minutes
Tips for using frozen or canned seafood to save time and money
The easiest way to create a dish that tastes like it came straight from the Italian coast
Whether you’re a beginner in the kitchen or just want a lazy but authentic Italian recipe, this Insalata di Mare will become one of your favorites.
👉 Don’t forget to like, comment, and subscribe for more quick Italian recipes and easy seafood dishes!
#ItalianFood #SeafoodSalad #InsalataDiMare #LazyRecipes #QuickRecipes #EasyCooking #ItalianRecipes
Today we’re going to cook insalata diare. It’s Italian seafood salad and I like it very much. The problem is it cost quite a lot if you were to buy it in the store. So what we’re going to do, we’re going to make the recipe. We’re going to cook the recipe that is a super inexpensive and b super fast. So we’ll we’re going to make lazy version of insulata diare cutting a lot of corners but it will taste pretty much just as well because the standard recipe for insulata dimar assumes that you kind of get fresh clams and uh you boil the clams and then in the juice of clams you boil the calamari then you clean the calamari and anybody who cleaned calamari in their life knows that it’s no fun and then I mean kind of you need to get all of the recipes get them preferably fresh live and I’m kind of in the middle of Canada. I have no luxury of getting those ingredients. So everything that you we cook today will be quick, inexpensive and hopefully very tasty. So the ingredients for this salad are espous. So um this thing is called Italian parsley in my store. So it’s very fitting. And then we’ll have some carrots. Obviously not all of them. And um then we’ll have celery. Obviously not all of them either. Um well, you in theory can get those tiny I think they called medallion onions and you can clean any of them by hand, but I’m too lazy to do that because remember it’s a lazy recipe. So I got sweet pickled onions at the store, the can of them. They already kind of marinated and pickled. And um to put together the dressing, we’ll need um extra virgin olive oil. We’ll need a little bit of white vinegar. Um we’ll need a lot of um we’ll need quite a lot of um lemons. And most importantly, we need the seafood. Um, so our spir seafood in my grocery store, this thing is $4.99 Canadian dollars and it’s kind of seafood mix, which includes um squid, cooked muscles, octopus, shrimp, and um some recipes of salad also calls for um uh scallops. And I have a frozen scallops here, which we’ll add. And uh just to top it up, I also have a I don’t know $8 box of a pack of shrimp, which will also add to the salad. Okay, so let’s start with cooking the uh um dressing and cutting all the vegetables that go into the salad and then we’ll move to the seafood itself. Let’s start with the dressing. The dressing is made of almost equal parts lemon juice and virgin olive oil. My experience has been that it is not acidic enough still. So I’m usually adding some white vinegar as well. So u the sequence is pretty obvious and we just make the uh lemon juice. It’s a very exquisite recipe so everything has to be handmade. Lemon juice in a bottle will not will not work. Okay, just one sec. I need another tool. Um, presumably there are some people who can emulsify the oil by mixing it with other non oil substances very quickly. I am unable to do that. I’ll just mix the olive oil with lemon juice and hopefully it will at least work as a dressing. Okay, so this is not pouring very quickly, but that’s okay. Okay. So, um let’s see if we can turn it into a motion. Smells good. Smells like real Smells like real virgin olive oil. M m. This looks very good. A little bit more oil doesn’t hurt. You can use it as a dipping sauce for bread or anything. Nothing gets wasted. Um, and keep mixing. Maybe you know what? I I think I managed to to make a decent emotion out of it. It doesn’t seem to separate, which is a good result. M. Look at that. All right. So, smells so good. Okay. As I said, my previous experience has been that it’s not acidic enough. So, I’m going to add a little bit of white vinegar. Um, and well, supposed to be Italian salad and I have some Italian style dressing. So, I’m going to add a little bit of it or a lot of it as well. And um obviously salt, right? There’s Okay. And when you add salt, it’s important not to overdo. I mean, I Yeah, just like quite a lot, but not too much. Okay. Um mix it, mix it, mix it, mix it, mix it, mix it. Okay, our marinade is done. It looks It looks actually very good. I managed to create a good emotion and that is the first part of the recipe. Now, let’s work on the vegetable part. Now, let’s do the vegetables. Um, in some magical way, celery gives this salad a lot of taste. And, uh, if there’s one ingredient you should not skip on, I would say it’s definitely celery. And I I’m probably putting more vegetables vegetables more than the canonical recipe calls for, but um hey, we all want to eat healthy, right? And um why not? I mean, there’s no such thing as too many vegetables, right? Maybe. Um so, the whole idea is that the vegetables like carrots and celery, you put them in salad row. And don’t worry about them being a little bit too hard because you also need to let the salad marinate for a little bit and they become much softer with time. Like you you let the salad sit on your fridge for um for a few hours and your celery becomes much softer already. So um something like this. Just cut the celery into um small pieces. Very easy to do. kind of easy. Okay, I think I I was supposed to do it with a knife, but who cares? Okay, now the same with carrots. Um, I’ve washed them and cleaned them up a little bit. Um, I think it’s probably too many carrots for this, but it’s okay. Um, again, don’t worry about them being too hard and too crunchy. Once they stayed on the salad for a while, they will become much softer. I’m not sure. Should we put this one in as well? Uh, maybe not. Okay, it’s fine. And then um Italian parsley. If it’s Italian, it has to go in Okay. Um, okay. Let’s do it like a wheelch with the back of the knife. That’s what they told me. Um and then um I shown you the um the can of those tiny um pickled tiny onions. They they also go in. Okay. So that is the vegetable part of the salad. So now we have dressing. And I’m starting to think we don’t have enough dressing, but I can add to it later. We have vegetable part. And now the only thing that’s left is cook the seafood. So with the seafood, here’s what we’re going to do. We’re going to dump all the um the FDA recommends uh that the minimal required temperature to cook the seafood is around 150° Fahrenheit and it’s enough to cook them for 15 seconds only until they reach like internal temperature of 150 Fahrenheit. And the whole idea is we don’t want overcooked seafood. It will its proteins will coagulate, turn into rubber and they will just not be tasty. They’ll be like rubbery. So the whole idea is I’m going to preheat the water. I’m going to dump all my seafood into the water and then I’m going to very closely monitor the temperature assuming that once the water reaches that 150° Fahrenheit, my seafood is really tiny. It doesn’t take a lot of time for it to reach that internal temperature. So what I’m going to do, I’m going to dump all the seafood into hot water and then keep uh increasing the temperature until I reach 150 Fahrenheit. And at that temperature, I will keep it for probably no more than one minute. And then I’m going to strain it and I’m going to mix it all together. That’s the game plan. Okay. So, so to reiterate our game plan with seafood, here are those two packets of seafood medley or whatever it’s called. Plus, I added some scallops and I added some shrimps. Uh, so the idea is I have almost boiling temperature water there. So, what I’m going to do, I’m going to set it to lower heat. And immediately after I put all of my seafood in, the temperature will drop. So, right now, it’s um right now it’s obviously boiling, which is uh I’m not sure how many Fahrenheit is boiling, to be honest. Um, okay, let’s switch to Celsius. It’s very easy in Celsius. Supposed to be 100. This better work anyway. Close enough. So, it’s maybe 210° F. So, immediately after I um I put it on a lower heat. Immediately after I put all my seafood in, the temperature will drop and I will carefully wait until it reaches 150° Fahrenheit. And then I will let it boil. Not boil but cook for 1 minute. And then I’m going to strain strain the seafood. Okay. So I very carefully put it in without splattering myself. Okay. And let’s see what the temperature is now. Looks like it’s 120. Okay. So we keep warming it up until it reaches 150. If you remember, that’s the plan. That was the plan. I don’t know. Just count to 10 from this point. That should be enough. A little bit longer. Never overcook your seafood. All right. So, enough scientifically. It’s all sterilized. It’s free of any bacteria and pathogens. It’s perfectly okay to eat. And uh what are we doing not statistically scientifically it’s all safe to eat. And what are we doing now? We’re just basically training it. Hold on. Okay. I’ve dumped all my seafood into the uh into the salad bean. And because it’s pretty big chunks of um scallops, I’m just going to cut them in four pieces to make the most suitable for the salad. And u because I was added some shrimps and those shrimps are with tail on, I’m going to clean up um the shrimps. And uh again, it all depends on what you use. I mean, you can use more clams, you can use more shrimps, you can use scallops, not use scallops. It almost doesn’t matter what kind of seafood mix you use, but the canonical recipe probably has at least three ingredients. Calamari, squid, and shrimp. And sorry, four. Calamari, squid, and clams. I’m not sure I’m very happy about this clams, but it’s okay. That’s what you what we got. So, the next step is uh when we mix it all together. Okay. So the final step, we have our proteins prepared. Uh we have vegetables and we have the sauce. And all that is remaining is I guess mix it all together. [Music] Maybe it’s not enough sauce for such a big salad, but we’ll see. Okay, so we’ll mix it all together and we’ll let it uh marinate for I would say at least a couple of hours in the fridge, maybe a day. The the process of being marinated will uh smells so good. Um the process of being marinated will soften the vegetables and it will make a salad much more like insalada. Okay, so that was that was insara. Um, quick and hopefully inexpensive. Thank you for watching.
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