The BEST Seafood Casserole Made With Shrimp, Scallops, & Crab Meat

This seafood casserole is the ultimate dinner casserole recipe - especially if you love seafood. It combines tender fish fillets with shrimp, scallops, buttery crab meat, and a rich cream sauce to make a hearty and super satisfying dish. Plus, it's so, so easy to make. In fact, it will only take you about 10 minutes to prep this easy seafood casserole recipe, then the oven takes care of the rest.

The Best Seafood Casserole

If you love seafood, this easy seafood casserole is sure to become your new favorite recipe. It takes all your favorite seafood and pairs them with a rich, decadent cream sauce to create a dish that's to die for.

And, as I just mentioned a second ago, it's super simple to make. In fact, just 4 effortless steps are all you'll need to follow to make it. The recipe basically boils down to doing a little prep work, par-cooking the seafood and making the sauce, and then combining everything together and finishing it off in the oven.

By the way, while the seafood casserole is baking, you'll have time to make a delicious side to go with it - like this hibachi fried rice, these Chinese green beans, or this Southern cornbread.

Ingredients

The ingredients needed to make this easy seafood casserole recipe are all pretty basic. In fact, besides the seafood, I'm willing to bet you have most- if not all - of the ingredients at home already.

Anyway, here's what you'll need to make this seafood casserole recipe:

• 4 oz. sole fillets (or any fish fillet)
• 7 shrimps, peeled and deveined
• 6 scallops
• 4 oz. crab meat (or lobster meat)
• 4 tbsp unsalted butter
• 2 tbsp flour
• ½ cup heavy cream
• ¾ cup vegetable broth
• 1 tbsp mustard
• ½ tsp garlic powder
• ½ tsp onion powder
• ½ tsp dried Italian herbs
• *You can use 1 ½ tsps of Old Bay and skip the above herbs/spices

Pretty simple stuff, right?!

By the way, you can use a lot of these same ingredients to make this tuna noodle casserole, shrimp casserole, and salmon casserole. They're three of my other favorite seafood casserole recipes, so you'll definitely want to give those a try next!

Ingredient Substitutions And Suggestions

Now, I always make this seafood casserole with the ingredients listed above, but there is plenty of wiggle room to put your own spin on it. With that said, I'll go over some of my recommendations.

Experiment With Add-Ons

I like to keep this easy seafood casserole simple and just layer the seafood with the cream sauce.

But if you want to add a little extra flavor, then I recommend topping the seafood casserole with parmesan cheese, swiss cheese, or any shredded cheese you want.

You can also sprinkle Italian bread crumbs, panko bread crumbs, or even crushed Ritz crackers mixed with butter on top of it right before baking it. The Ritz cracker topping is a favorite in our house.

Replace The Vegetable Broth With Chicken Broth Or Seafood Stock

Chicken broth and seafood stock are both great replacements for the vegetable broth in this recipe. Even though they will give your soup a slightly different base flavor, it'll still turn out delicious if you use them. I've made this casserole recipe with both, and it turned out great each time.

Also, for what it's worth, if you are low on broth - and don't want to make a run to the store to get some - you can even use tomato sauce in its place. It will give this delicious casserole a similar flavor to my seafood soup.

How To Make Seafood Casserole

As I mentioned before, this easy seafood casserole recipe is a breeze to whip up!

In fact, just 4 simple steps are all you need to follow to make it. You just cook the seafood, build the cream sauce, then layer everything together and let it bake in the oven.

Yup, it's that simple!

Anyway, let's stop wasting time and get cooking.

Step 1: Prep Work

First things first, you'll want to preheat your oven to 350°F (180°C) and prepare a 5x10-inch casserole dish by greasing it with some nonstick cooking spray.

Then, you can take out a large skillet and melt two tablespoons of butter in it over medium-high heat. Once the butter has melted, you can add the raw shrimp and sea scallops to the skillet and cook them for 1 minute. After a minute, you can remove the shrimp and scallops from the skillet and set them aside.

Step 2: Make The Sauce

Now you'll want to add a splash of broth to the skillet to deglaze it. So, once you add the broth in there, you'll just want to carefully scrape the bottom of the skillet with a spatula to lift up all of those delicious flavors from the shrimp and scallops.

Then, after you've taken care of that, you'll want to add the rest of the broth, followed by the heavy cream, mustard, onion powder, garlic powder, and dried Italian herbs. Give all of this a mix to combine, and then let it simmer.

While the sauce is simmering, mix the remaining softened butter with equal parts of flour - 2 tablespoons of each - and then add this combined mixture to the skillet. Now you'll want to let the cream sauce simmer over low heat until it has slightly thickened. Then once it's thickened, remove the pan from the heat and add the cooked shrimp, sea scallops, and crab meat to it.

Finally, you can mix everything together until they're well combined, and then you can set this seafood sauce mixture aside for later.

Step 3: Cook The Fish Fillets

While the sauce is simmering and the seafood mixture is warming up, you'll want to place the fish fillets of your choice in your prepared baking dish and season them with salt and pepper.  Then, after you've done that, you'll want to add two tablespoons of water to the baking dish and cook the fish for 10 minutes.

After it cooks, drain the excess water from the baking dish and top the fish fillets with the prepared seafood mix and sauce from the skillet. Try to pour the sauce evenly over the fish fillets, and spread it out with a rubber spatula if you need to. 

Step 4: Bake The Casserole

Now that the seafood casserole is assembled, you can put it in the oven and bake it for about 25 minutes - or until it's lightly golden brown on top. Then, you can allow it to cool briefly before serving it.

Enjoy!

How To Store Seafood Casserole

This recipe for seafood casserole makes 4 large servings, so it's perfect to make for a family dinner. With that said though, it's super easy to make a double - or triple - batch of this recipe if you want leftovers or are planning on serving this for a big dinner.

Speaking of leftovers, if you end up with some, you can either put a lid on the casserole dish and store 'em in the fridge like that, or you can transfer your extras in an airtight container. Stored either of these ways, your seafood casserole leftovers should last in the fridge for about 3-4 days.

How To Reheat Seafood Casserole

When you're ready to enjoy your seafood casserole again, you'll definitely want to reheat it first.

So, to reheat this casserole, I recommend adding the leftovers back to the dish you originally used and baking 'em in the oven at 200°F uncovered for about 15 minutes - or until they're fully reheated. By the way, if you need to thin the sauce out a little bit, just add a little broth to the casserole dish.

Wrapping It Up

Well, that's how to make a creamy seafood casserole the whole family will love!

Honestly, out of all the seafood recipes I've made, this one is one of my favorites. I don't know if it's the perfect combination of fresh seafood flavor or if it's the rich, buttery, creamy sauce that makes it so good, but there's just something about it that I/we can't get enough of.

Anyway, I hope you enjoy this easy seafood casserole recipe as much as my family, and I do.

As always, if you make it, be sure to leave a comment below and let us know how it went!

More Casserole Recipes

Did this seafood casserole recipe get you in the mood to make even more casseroles? If it did, you're in luck. We have a ton of other really yummy casserole recipes for you to try next!

Here are some of our most popular ones:

• Chicken cordon bleu casserole
• Beef enchilada casserole
• Pulled pork casserole
• Chili cornbread casserole
• French onion chicken casserole
• John Wayne Casserole

Oh, and as always, make sure to check us out on Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube! We post new recipes on them every day.