Healthy Quinoa Salad with a delicious light dressing. Makes a filling side dish!
I’m sort of obsessed with quinoa. I remember a few years back when I had a little get together at my house and my best friend brought over a side dish. It was a quinoa greek salad with feta cheese and red quinoa. I remember thinking it was the weirdest looking salad I’d ever seen. I didn’t want to try it because it looked so strange but when I finally did, I could NOT stop eating it!
Now I eat it all the time! I have a container of cooked quinoa in my fridge at all times. I add it to soups and use it in place of rice in many of my recipes. I love making quinoa salads as a side dish because they’re my husband’s favorite. If I have this salad sitting in the fridge, he will no doubt eat it all. 🙂
I’m always trying new combinations of flavors and dressings, too. I love a good olive oil & herb dressing with a little citrus. The dressing in this recipe is my go-to base dressing. I switch it up based on what I have around the kitchen.
Have you tried quinoa yet? If not, it’s time to convert you – go try it! 
Ingredients
- 2 cups cooked quinoa
- 1 cup drained canned garbanzo beans
- 1 cup corn kernels fresh or canned
- 1/2 to mato diced
- 3 Tbsp. olive oil
- 1/2 tsp. cumin
- 1 tsp. dried oregano
- 1 tsp. dried basil
- 1/4 tsp. pepper
- 1/2 tsp. salt
- juice of 1/2 of a lemon
- 1-2 cloves of garlic finely minced or put through a garlic press
- 2-3 green onions finely chopped
- 1 tsp. dried parsley
Instructions
- Read instructions on the back of the packaging on how to cook the quinoa (usually one cup quinoa to two cups liquid). Cook and let cool a bit. Measure out two cups of quinoa and place in medium to large sized bowl.
- Add in garbanzo beans, corn and diced tomato; toss to combine.
- In a small bowl, combine the remaining ingredients and stir. Pour over quinoa mixture and stir to combine together. Serve right away or put in an airtight container in the fridge to enjoy later. SO good!
Check out these other quinoa recipes:
Chocolate Chip Quinoa Muffins
Kale & Quinoa Salad
Great side dish and your pictures are beautiful!
I really, really need to just go ahead and try this Quinoa stuff!!! I’m so intrigued yet to lazy to go find it because my regular grocer doesn’t carry it.
Mmm, I really love quinoa! I love the chickpeas in this salad, they add such a nice little “crunch”!
I love quinoa too! Maybe a tad bit obsessed…;) Thanks for the comment, Tanya! XO!
I love quinoa too, but I don’t eat it nearly as often as I’d like to! I need a stockpile of good recipes….maybe I should start a quinoa board on Pinterest! 😉
Uh, heck yeah – and invite me to pin to it! 😉 I LOVE quinoa!!!!
I’m totally with you on the quinoa obsession! I usually make a quinoa/kale pilaf as my go-to side dish…looking forward to giving your salad a try!
I hope you give it a try, it’s my favorite stand-by when I don’t know what to make! Thanks for stopping by!
what a gorgeous salad!
I’ve never tried quinoa before. I made this today and now I get it! I cut back on the basil and oregano and added a big handful of cilantro. Great recipe thank you! I only wish the nutritional information was posted.
Thanks Valerie! I’m definitely trying to get nutritional info posted on my recipes. I’m workin’ on it! 😉 Thanks for giving this recipe a try, I hope you’ll try some more of my quinoa recipes – I have some quinoa muffins that are AMAZING!