Delicious Quinoa Salad Recipe

This Delicious, Zesty Quinoa Salad refreshes your palate with a zingy vinaigrette. Fresh lemon juice, red wine vinegar and herbs combine into a palate pleasing dressing.

Quinoa is a handy and healthy ancient grain. It has a rich history of sustaining civilizations for millenia. I added this delicious grain seed to our diet decades ago.

I often use quinoa as a side dish mixed with brown rice. It’s very simple to make and flavorful. You can add different broths or vegetables to it and change it up to accompany so many main dishes.

After feeding my family quinoa for decades I can tell you it is very easy to work with. Your family will enjoy it in this salad.

Quinoa has a much higher nutrition profile than either potatoes or rice. Quinoa is high in protein and fiber. It’s also gluten free.

It’s a perfect base for this nutritious, filling and flavorful salad.

This quinoa salad is an example of how using this interesting seed will expand your palate. And provide a wonderfully healthy dish to your menu.

Quinoa Salad Notes:

This is a delicious, simple healthy salad. We give you this recipe, however feel free to change it up to suit yourself. Here’s a few ideas.

Substitutions:

• Black beans can replace the chickpeas
• use any heat pepper you prefer. We chose a bell but if you like spicy, do spicy. 🙂
• Red onion is colorful and milder than a white onion but either will work for this salad.
• cherry tomatoes can replace grape tomatoes or, in a pinch, finely chop a large tomato.
• Any cucumber will work finely chopped.However, English cucumbers are best, in my opinion, since they have a good firm texture and clean crisp flavor.
• Quinoa comes in several colors including white, black and red. And you will find quinoa mixes with all three colors. Any will color will work in this salad. They all taste the same and cook the same.

Timing this Salad:

It’s really all about the quinoa. This is an excellent recipe for using up cold leftover quinoa. This will also save you lots of time for this salad recipe. You avoid the cooking and chilling. So I build this recipe with the chilling already done.

But if you need to start with uncooked quinoa follow the instructions below.

Cooking Quinoa:

If you are sourcing your quinoa from a bulk section in your local grocery. Or if your package does not say rinsed on the label … You may want to soak your quinoa a few minutes.

Then rinse it under tap water through a tight mesh sieve. This gets the saponins off it before cooking. Saponin is a bitter substance that naturally coats quinoa.

Some people have a sensitivity to saponins. to be on the safe side, do the soak and rinse.

I don’t rinse and soak quinoa because I buy Costco quinoa. It is pre-rinsed and ready to cook. Most groceries carry the rinsed quinoa.

I cook quinoa like rice on the stove top. I use two parts liquid to one part grain proportion. Bring the liquid to a boil. Add the quinoa, Let it boil a minute or so and then reduce heat to simmer for 10 to 15 minutes. It does cook faster than rice.

You can also cook quinoa indoor instant pot. It’s so easy. Learn how in this post!

For this salad you need to completely chill the cooked quinoa before assembling the salad.