Easy Prawn Cocktail Starter For Christmas Dinner

A retro Prawn Cocktail Starter is the perfect way to start Christmas dinner and with our easy recipe you will have them ready in no time at all!

This is one Christmas recipe you can literally throw together in just minutes. There's no faff, no cooking and hardly any prep at all!

Classic prawn cocktail starter is a great option for Christmas dinner, especially when you're feeding a crowd and don't want too much work to do.

With our easy prawn starter recipe we use cooked prawns and jarred Marie Rose sauce for speed and to make things easier!

Christmas Prawn Cocktail Recipe

Serves – 4 

Prep Time – 10 minutes 

Total Time – around 10 minutes 

Equipment Needed

To make our prawn cocktail recipe appetizer you will need;

• Chopping board

• Vegetable knife

• Colander

• Mixing bowl

• Tablespoon

• Breadboard

• Butter knife

• Serving glasses or bowls - any small serving dishes or ramekins will be fine

Prawn Cocktail Starter Ingredients

You'll only need a handful of ingredients to make our delicious easy prawn cocktail salad

• Little Gem Lettuce - shredded (or you could use Iceberg lettuce instead)

• ½ cucumber - sliced into half moons

• 150g baby plum tomatoes - sliced into halves

• 4 radish - thinly sliced

• ½ green pepper

• 1 lemon - sliced

• 300g cooked prawns

• 3 tablespoon marie rose sauce - we just use Coleman's Seafood Sauce

• 4 slices wholemeal brown bread

• 4 teaspoon butter

• Black pepper to serve

Cooks Note! If you can't be bothered faffing about with salad, buy a pre-mixed salad bag ready to use lettuce leaves.

How To Make Prawn Cocktail Starter

It is super easy to make our prawn cocktail Christmas starter - you can prep the salad the day before and then just mix and top with prawns on the day!

Step One - wash and chop the salad

• Wash and dry all the salad. Then chop and arrange into the serving bowls or glasses.

Step Two - toss the prawns in seafood sauce

• Add the prawns to a mixing bowl, tip in the seafood sauce, adding more or less as you wish. Then give everything a mix together gently to coat all the prawns in the Marie Rose sauce.

Step Three - make up the prawn cocktail starter in the glasses

• Divide the prawns in Marie Rose sauce between the serving glasses on top of the salad.

• Sprinkle over some cracked black pepper.

• Then butter the wholemeal bread and slice into four triangles. Slide the bread on the plate with the prawn cocktail Christmas starter.

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Get more fish and seafood recipes here

Prawn Cocktail Starter Recipe Variations

We've given you a super easy, faff free Christmas dinner starter recipe, but there's lots of ways to mix things up and add your own twist!

Go Italian

Serve your prawn cocktail with an Italian twist. Dress the prawns in pesto instead of sea food sauce and make a zingy salad with rocket leaves, fresh avocado, baby spinach and juicy baby plum tomatoes. Sprinkle over some chopped sun dried tomatoes and a squeeze of lemon juice to finish.

Go Spicy

Add a kick of heat to your prawn cocktail starter and sprinkle with freshly chopped chillies and a pinch of cayenne pepper and little paprika sprinkled over. Or try adding a dash of tabasco sauce to the dish. And garnish with thinly sliced red onion and chopped chives.

Make Your Own Prawn Cocktail Sauce

You can whip up a quick prawn cocktail sauce using mayonnaise, tomato ketchup and a dash of Worcestershire sauce.

Get More Christmas Dinner Recipes Here

• Air Fryer honey roast carrots and parsnips

• Christmas sprout gratin

• Christmas red cabbage

• Bruschetta with goats cheese

Get more easy Christmas recipes here

Need Some Family Meal Ideas?

Check out our meal planning here – it’s filled with recipes, meal planning tips and pre-filled printable meal plans weekly or seasonally. We’ve got hundreds of the BEST family recipes and Ideas For Tea your whole family will LOVE!

Would it even be Christmas without a glass of Bucks Fizz? 

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