Learn how to make incredibly delicious shrimp ceviche at home! My recipe combines lime juice, lemon juice, chile peppers, cilantro, and avocado. I love it served as an appetizer or as a light meal.
Ceviche is a dish popular throughout the coastal areas of Mexico, Central, and South America. It’s made with raw seafood “cooked” in citrus juices. This is our favorite shrimp ceviche recipe to make at home, which includes lime, cilantro, and avocado.
It’s incredibly fresh and delicious. I love it with homemade tortilla chips or plantain chips. If you love this recipe’s combination of lime, cilantro, and shrimp, you might also enjoy our pickled shrimp or cilantro lime shrimp.
Key Ingredients
- Shrimp: Fresh-caught shrimp is best for this recipe, but since they aren’t always accessible, we’ve adapted this recipe to gently poach them in very hot water before marinating them in citrus juice. Your ceviche will still be excellent, but we’ve added an extra layer of safety so you can use the shrimp you have available. If you have reputable, fresh-caught shrimp, that’s great! See the tips section below for our recipe for using raw shrimp.
- Citrus: I use freshly squeezed lemon and lime juice for this shrimp ceviche and love it!
- Red Onion: You can use any onion you have, but I love the color of red onion. If you are usually sensitive to raw onion, the lime and lemon juice will tone it down quite a bit.
- Cucumber: It adds a bit of crunch!
- Chile Peppers: These add a little heat. Use as much or as little as you like. I use a jalapeño and Fresno chili pepper in our photos. I remove the seeds and white membrane from inside the pepper before mincing and adding it to my ceviche.
- Cilantro: It adds color and fresh flavor. If you don’t enjoy cilantro, substitute it with parsley or leave it out.
- Avocado: This is optional, but I love shrimp ceviche with avocado.
How to Make Shrimp Ceviche
Shrimp ceviche is a happy food. Its fresh, bright flavors and light shrimp make it one of my favorite warm-weather dishes. It’s also super easy to make.
I talked a little about this, but I gently poach my shrimp in boiling water when making shrimp ceviche at home. Authentic shrimp ceviche usually relies on the acid in the limes or lemons to firm up the shrimp, but the shrimp used in this case would have likely been freshly caught.
Since most of our shrimp is probably bought from the grocery store, I incorporate a quick and simple safety step to ensure no bacteria are left on the shrimp before eating it. If you are lucky enough to have very fresh, well-sourced shrimp, you can skip my poaching step (tips for raw shrimp ceviche are below the recipe)!
To poach the shrimp, I bring a pot of water to a boil, add the shrimp, and then immediately remove the pot from the heat. I leave the shrimp in the poaching liquid until just cooked through, 2 to 3 minutes. You can tell when the shrimp is cooked when it’s firm and opaque throughout. This is almost exactly the same method I use for my poached shrimp recipe.
When the shrimp have finished poaching, I cut them into pieces and add them to a bowl with lime juice, lemon juice, red onion, cucumber, minced chile peppers, and cilantro. Then, I allow the shrimp to sit with the other ceviche ingredients in the fridge for about 30 minutes.
When ready to serve, I toss in my avocado and dig in! I like to serve shrimp ceviche like a salsa alongside plantain chips or homemade tortilla chips. You can also serve it over rice, on tostadas (a crunchy fried or toasted tortilla), with sliced and roasted sweet potatoes, or on salads.
Easy Shrimp Ceviche
- PREP
- COOK
- TOTAL
My favorite shrimp ceviche recipe combines lightly poached shrimp with lime juice, lemon juice, and avocado. It’s fresh, healthy, and delicious. Shrimp ceviche is best served the day you make it.
Watch Us Make the Recipe
You Will Need
1 pound (450g) large or extra large shrimp, peeled and deveined
3/4 cup (177ml) freshly squeezed lime juice, 6 to 7 limes
1/4 cup (60ml) freshly squeezed lemon juice, 1 to 2 lemons
1/4 medium red onion, finely minced
1 cup diced cucumber
2 chile peppers like Fresno, serrano, or jalapeño, deseeded and minced
2 tablespoons chopped cilantro
1 medium avocado, diced
Directions
1Fill a pot with 2 quarts (8 cups) of water and add 2 tablespoons salt. This makes our poaching liquid and helps to season the shrimp.
2Bring the water to a boil, add the shrimp, and then immediately remove the pot from the heat. Leave the shrimp in the poaching liquid until just cooked through, 2 to 3 minutes. You can tell when the shrimp is cooked when it’s firm and opaque throughout.
3If you have freshly caught shrimp, you can skip the poaching step; see our tips in the notes below and in the article above.
4Remove the shrimp from the poaching liquid and spread them out on a cutting board to cool. When the shrimp are cool enough to handle, remove the tails (if there are any) and chop them into bite-size pieces.
5Add the cucumber, onion, minced chile peppers, cilantro, and chopped shrimp to a non-reactive bowl (glass, stainless steel, and ceramic bowls are perfect).
6Pour over the citrus juices and a pinch of salt. Toss well, then press the shrimp down into the liquid as much as possible. Cover and refrigerate for at least 30 minutes and up to 4 hours.
7Just before serving, stir in the avocado. Taste and season with salt if necessary.
Adam and Joanne's Tips
- Using raw shrimp: If you have very fresh shrimp, you can skip the poaching step and allow the citrus juices to “cook” the shrimp. Cut the shrimp into small pieces (no larger than 1/2 inch) to make our recipe with raw shrimp. Cover the shrimp with the citrus juice. Use enough juice to cover the shrimp and allow it to float freely (this might require a bit more juice than what is called for in our recipe). If there is not enough juice, the shrimp will cook unevenly. Refrigerate for 30 minutes or until the shrimp is “cooked” through.
- Using pre-cooked shrimp: You can use pre-cooked shrimp if you prefer, but our method for poaching the shrimp is quick and ensures perfectly cooked and seasoned shrimp.
- Spicy ceviche: You can leave some or all of the pepper seeds or add a few dashes of your favorite hot sauce.
- The nutrition facts provided below are estimates.
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Thank you Joanne and Adam for this simple and delicious prawn ceviche recipe. Since I prefer to cook the prawns rather than leave them raw, my prefered way is to just wash and toss the prawns in a pan with a bit of salt and keep tossing them around till its own moisure comes out and they get gently cooked when they curl and turn pink.
So happy you found out recipe! Thank you for coming back.
The shrimp ceviche is just what I was looking for since I am not comfortable using raw fish. May I be a bit cheeky and tell you what I do with the shrimp. I clean it thoroughly and put it directly into a small pan and keep tossing it about till it curls and takes on the pink look to indicate that it is cooked. No over cooking as the shrimp will emanate some liquid. After cooling I use it in salads, after draining the excess liquid which can be used elsewhere. Thank you again for your easy, simple and delicious recipes.
OMG!! This was divine! My husband and I are eating Raw for 21 days and I was looking for more recipes when I came across your ceviche recipe. I already had frozen shrimp, so I was eager to try this. I made it last night and it was so delicious. My husband doesn’t eat shrimp so he did not eat any, but this was the best ceviche I’ve ever tasted. I added cucumbers and followed the recipe for the other items. I wanted tortilla chips so bad, but I resisted. Will be making again!
It sounds delicious I will be making it soon. I’m fortunate to live in the Pacific Northwest with fresh fish all the time! looking forward to more of your recipes!
Tasty! Delicious! Amazing! One of the best recipes I’ve ever made…and so easy! Thank You!!
Looking forward to making the ceviche.
Made this for a late summer dinner and it was so amazing, my family ate it before I could take a pic! Thank you for sharing your recipe!! We will be making it again!
Can you substitute store bought ‘cooked’ shrimp?? Thx…
Hi there, You can use cooked shrimp in this recipe, however, we do feel that starting with raw shrimp will produce a better result. I often find that store-bought shrimp lack flavor and tend to be overcooked. Starting with raw shrimp does not add too much additional time, but let’s be honest, we all need a short-cut from time to time! Happy cooking.
I made this recipe last night and everyone loved it. It was great only one thing I did not make enough.
This was so easy and DELICIOUS! It looked really pretty too. I served it with tortilla soup. Ole!
Loved the blue cheese dressing gonna try this soon
It doesn’t say how much red onion
Thank you for catching that. All fixed!