High Protein Smoked Salmon and Avocado Salad

Quick answer: This salad has 34 grams of protein and 446 calories per serving, with 13 grams of net carbs. It takes 10 minutes with no cooking — smoked salmon and avocado over greens, on a base of Greek yogurt with lemon, dill and capers. Serves 2. It’s also high in sodium at 1,681 mg per serving, about 73% of the WHO daily limit. That’s covered in detail below, along with two ways to reduce it.

Smoked salmon arrives seasoned, cured and ready. There’s nothing to cook, nothing to marinate, and the dressing is lemon whisked into yogurt. Ten minutes from fridge to plate, and 34 grams of protein.

There’s one thing to know before you decide whether to make it, and it’s better addressed first than buried at the bottom of the page.

A Note on Sodium — Worth Reading First

This salad contains 1,681 mg of sodium per serving, roughly 73% of the World Health Organization’s 2,300 mg daily limit. It’s the highest of any recipe on this site.

The recipe contains no added salt at all. It comes from two ingredients:

Cold-smoked salmon is cured in salt — that’s what smoking is, and it can’t be rinsed or cooked out. At about 1,880 mg per 100 g, a 75-gram portion carries 1,410 mg on its own.

Two things that genuinely reduce it:

Use 100 g of salmon instead of 150 g. That takes about 470 mg off each serving, bringing it to roughly 1,210 mg, and leaves the salad at about 29 grams of protein — still a substantial meal.

Swap smoked salmon for poached or canned salmon. This is the real fix. Cooked salmon carries a small fraction of the sodium, and the same salad would land somewhere around 330 mg per serving. That’s an estimate rather than a calculated figure, since it isn’t the recipe on this page, but the order of magnitude is right. You lose the cured flavor and gain a salad you can eat any day of the week.

What doesn’t help: cutting the olive oil, skipping the pepper, or using less yogurt. None of them contribute meaningfully, and the last would cost you protein.

This is a good occasional meal rather than a weekly one, and it isn’t the right choice if you’re managing your sodium intake for a medical reason — that’s a conversation for your doctor rather than a recipe page. If you want a comparable protein number at a fraction of the sodium, the rotisserie chicken Caesar salad comes in at 515 mg, and the shrimp and avocado salad at 226 mg — the lowest on this site, and a seventh of what’s here.

Why This Salad Has 34 Grams of Protein

Here’s the part that surprises people: the yogurt contributes more protein than the salmon does.

Smoked salmon is protein-dense — about 18 grams per 100 g — but a realistic portion is small, and 75 grams per person is already a generous slice. Greek yogurt is less dense at around 10 grams per 100 g, but 150 grams of it is an ordinary amount, and that quantity outweighs the concentration.

It’s why this recipe uses the yogurt as a base rather than a drizzle. Cut it back to a spoonful and the salad drops to around 24 grams of protein.

What You Need

Serves 2.

• 5.3 oz cold-smoked salmon (150 g)
• 1¼ cups plain 2% Greek yogurt (300 g)
• 1 large avocado, sliced (200 g)
• 1½ cups sliced cucumber (200 g), about 1 medium
• About 7 cups mixed salad greens (200 g)
• 1½ tablespoons capers, drained (15 g)
• 2 tablespoons fresh lemon juice (30 g)
• ¼ cup chopped fresh dill (15 g)
• 2 teaspoons extra-virgin olive oil (10 g)
• ½ teaspoon freshly ground black pepper

Notes on the ones that matter:

The yogurt is a base, not a dressing. 300 grams between two people is roughly two-thirds of a cup each, spread across the bottom of the plate with the salad built on top. If you treat it as a drizzle you’ll use a third of it and lose a third of the protein.

Cold-smoked salmon, the silky kind sold in thin slices. Hot-smoked salmon flakes rather than drapes and behaves differently, though it works.

Don’t add salt. Not a pinch, not to the yogurt, not at the table. The salmon and capers have it covered several times over.

Fresh dill, not dried. Dried dill tastes of hay. If you can’t find fresh, use chives or leave it out rather than substituting dried.

How to Make It

1. Whisk the yogurt with the lemon juice, half the dill and the black pepper. Taste it — it should be sharp, since the salmon will bring all the salt.
2. Spread the yogurt across the base of two wide shallow plates or bowls.
3. Rinse the capers briefly under cold water and pat them dry. This removes some of the surface brine without changing what they do.
4. Slice the cucumber and avocado, and pile the greens loosely over the yogurt.
5. Tear the salmon into wide strips rather than chopping it, and drape it over the top with the cucumber and avocado.
6. Finish with the capers, the rest of the dill, the olive oil and more pepper.

Tips

Tear the salmon, don’t cut it. Cut edges look processed; torn strips catch the yogurt and sit better on the plate. It also stops the slices sticking together in a block.

Slice the avocado last. It browns within minutes once exposed. If you’re plating two servings, do everything else first.

Serve it cold, but not straight from the fridge. Very cold salmon is firm and mutes its own flavor. Ten minutes out makes a noticeable difference.

Wide plates, not deep bowls. This is a layered salad rather than a tossed one, and it needs surface area. Everything piled into a deep bowl becomes a heap with yogurt at the bottom that nobody reaches.

Substitutions

Poached or canned salmon in place of smoked. The single most effective change if sodium matters to you — see the section above. Flake it rather than draping it.

Crème fraîche or sour cream instead of Greek yogurt if you want something richer. Both are higher in fat and much lower in protein, so expect the salad to land closer to 22 grams per serving.

Cucumber ribbons instead of slices, cut with a peeler. Purely visual, but it makes a ten-minute salad look considered.

Add-ins worth trying: thinly sliced radish, capers’ cousin the cornichon, a soft-boiled egg for another 6 grams of protein, or a slice of rye bread alongside if you’re not counting carbs.

Skip the capers if you want the sodium down and don’t want to change the salmon. That’s about 176 mg per serving, and the salad still works with lemon carrying the acidity.

Storage

Eat it the day you make it. Ideally within the hour.

This is the least storable recipe on the site. Avocado browns, cucumber weeps water into the yogurt, and the greens collapse under the weight of everything above them.

You can prepare the yogurt base up to 3 days ahead and keep it in the fridge — it improves as the dill infuses. Everything else is assembly, and it takes five minutes.

For a genuinely make-ahead option, the chicken and quinoa mason jar salad is built for four days in the fridge.

Emily Carter

High Protein Smoked Salmon and Avocado Salad

5 from 1 vote

A no-cook smoked salmon and avocado salad with 34g of protein and 13g of net carbs per serving, built on a Greek yogurt base with lemon, dill and capers.

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Prep Time 10 minutes mins

Servings: 2

Course: Salad

Cuisine: American

Calories: 446

Ingredients Method Notes

Ingredients

  

• 150 g 5.3 oz cold-smoked salmon
• 300 g 1¼ cups plain 2% Greek yogurt
• 200 g 1 large avocado, sliced
• 200 g 1½ cups cucumber, sliced
• 200 g about 7 cups mixed salad greens
• 15 g 1½ tablespoons capers, drained and rinsed
• 30 g 2 tablespoons fresh lemon juice
• 15 g ¼ cup fresh dill, chopped
• 10 g 2 teaspoons extra-virgin olive oil
• 1 g ½ teaspoon freshly ground black pepper

Method

 

1. Whisk the Greek yogurt with the lemon juice, half the dill and the black pepper. Do not add salt.
2. Spread the yogurt across the base of two wide shallow plates.
3. Rinse the capers briefly under cold water and pat dry.
4. Slice the cucumber and the avocado, and pile the mixed greens loosely over the yogurt.
5. Tear the smoked salmon into wide strips and drape it over the greens with the cucumber and avocado.
6. Finish with the capers, the remaining dill, the olive oil and more black pepper. Serve immediately.

Notes

• High in sodium at 1,681 mg per serving, about 73% of the WHO daily limit. Almost all of it comes from the smoked salmon, which is cured in salt.
• Using 100 g of salmon instead of 150 g takes about 470 mg off each serving and leaves the salad at about 29 g of protein.
• The yogurt is a base rather than a dressing, and it supplies more protein than the salmon does.

Nutrition

Per serving (recipe makes 2):

These figures are calculated ingredient by ingredient from a USDA-sourced nutrition database and divided by the serving count. They’re calculated values rather than laboratory-tested ones, and they’ll shift with your brands — smoked salmon in particular varies considerably in salt content between producers, so check the label if the figure matters to you. Carbohydrates include fiber, following the US convention, so net carbs are about 13 grams per serving.

At 560 grams, this is the largest serving on the site by weight, mostly from the yogurt, cucumber and greens.

Frequently Asked Questions

How much sodium is in smoked salmon?

Cold-smoked salmon runs around 1,880 mg of sodium per 100 g, because curing in salt is what smoking is. A 75-gram portion carries about 1,410 mg — roughly 61% of the WHO’s daily limit on its own. It can’t be rinsed or cooked out. Poached or canned salmon carries a small fraction of that.

How much protein is in this smoked salmon salad?

34 grams per serving. Unexpectedly, the Greek yogurt supplies slightly more of it than the salmon does — about 15 grams against 14 — because 150 g of yogurt is an ordinary portion while 75 g of smoked salmon is already a generous slice.

Can I use regular yogurt instead of Greek?

You can, but it changes the recipe substantially. Greek yogurt is strained, which roughly doubles its protein and thickens it enough to act as a base. Regular yogurt would run off the plate and would drop the salad to around 25 grams of protein.

Can I make this ahead of time?

No. Avocado browns, cucumber releases water into the yogurt and the greens collapse. The yogurt base can be made up to 3 days ahead and actually improves as the dill infuses, but the rest is assembly — about five minutes.

Is this salad low carb?

Yes. At 23 grams of total carbohydrate and 10 grams of fiber, net carbs come to about 13 grams per serving, most of it from the avocado and the greens.

More High Protein Salads

This is one of fifteen recipes in the high protein salad collection, grouped by no-cook, low carb, vegetarian and meal prep, with protein and calories compared across all fifteen.

If you want a comparable protein number with far less sodium, the rotisserie chicken caesar salad delivers 44 grams at 515 mg.

Made this? Leave a rating and tell me how it went in the comments — especially if you changed something that worked.