Curried Quinoa Salad
This Curried Quinoa Salad features lentils, brown rice, chickpeas and a warmly flavoured curry and apple cider dressing. Vegan + Gluten free and PERFECT for meal prep.
If you’re looking for a satisfying, veggie packed, grain filled salad with crunch, texture, and spicy sweetness, look no further!
I’m still holding onto the last days of summer and salads will continue to dominate my dinner plate.
For this sensational salad, I thought since I was keeping things cool for dinner I’d warm it up with the spices. The dressing is a winning combo, marrying together cumin, curry and coriander powder with olive oil, maple syrup and apple cider vinegar.
It. is. so. good. I did a taste test at work with this salad and the troops loved it.
Once a week I cook up some grains and store them in the fridge to add to soups, salads, even to eggs! This week, knowing I had this salad planned, I cooked up the quinoa, lentils and brown rice at the same time and stored them all in the fridge.
The next day it was pretty easy just to chop up the veggies, stir in my cooked and cooled quinoa, rice and lentils, pour on the dressing and boom!
Done!
CURRIED QUINOA SALAD
This salad is very versatile so, feel free to use up whatever veggies you happen to have.
I had some cucumber leftover from the blueberry and cucumber smoothie I made earlier in the week, so into the salad it went.
There were some baby carrots in the crisper, so I used them as well. I thought it would be nice to grate them however, I don’t recommend this method for baby carrots. They are so small that the tips of my fingers became dangerously close to becoming an ingredient in this salad!
I had a can of chickpeas in the cupboard so, to add in some extra protein they were drained rinsed and mixed in with rest of it. I
t turned into a ‘clean out the cupboards and crisper’ meal which is my favourite thing to do. I spend a lot of my hard earned dollars on quality groceries and never want them to just sit around or, god forbid, go bad.
So, what I do is create ways to use up what I have. Case in point, why buy a chicken breast to add to this salad for protein when I have chickpeas and lentils in the cupboard?
Use them up!
Look how beautiful the layers of leftovers are!
Keeping with that theme, this week I made this 3 ingredient tomato sauce and tossed it with the leftover quinoa.
I hope I’ve inspired you to get in the kitchen and use up those leftovers!
MORE HEALTHY SALAD RECIPES:
Clean Three Bean Salad with Cilantro Salsa Dressing
Originally posted in August 23, 2013, Updated July 23, 2019
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I use glass storage containers in this recipe.
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Curried Quinoa Salad
Ingredients
- For the salad:
- 6 cups cooked grains I used quinoa, lentils & brown rice
- 1 bell pepper diced
- 1 cup carrots grated
- ½ large cucumber peeled & diced
- 1/2 cup each of parsley and green onions finely chopped
- 1 540ml can of chickpeas, rinsed and drained
- For the dressing:
- 3 tbsp olive oil
- 4 tbsp apple cider vinegar
- 1 tsp cumin
- 1 tsp coriander
- 1 tsp curry
- 1 1/2 tsp sea salt
- 2 tbsp maple syrup
Instructions
- Shake the dressing ingredients together in a small mason jar
- Assemble the rest of the ingredients in a large bowl and stir in the dressing
- Store, covered in the fridge for up to 5 days
This salad looks so yummy! For sure I will try it! I will just bake chickpeas…. 🙂
Oooooh! Baking the chickpeas! Great idea …
Hi, Sharon! I just found your blog and love this recipe. We have a very similar eating style and it looks like we started our food blogs at the same time. 🙂 I’m excited to try this.
Hi Bonnie:) Thanks for stopping by! So nice to connect with another food blogger ‘newbie’. I hope you love this salad as much as I do!
I’ve been making lots and lots of things with quinoa lately, and this gorgeous salad is going straight to the must-try-SOON list! So fab that you simply used what you had on hand to make something really, deliciously wonderful! (And so glad you still have all your fingers! :D)
Thanks for commenting … now I have a new blog to read … yours! Love your site:) Looking forward to spending some time reading!