Quinoa salad

While quinoa is not the most popular grain in my home country, I have noticed a lot of American people love to use it in different dishes or simply as a side dish. My favorite recipe with quinoa that I am going to share with you today, is a simple quinoa salad. The preparation is fast, it is healthy, full of proteins and it will make you feel full quickly while not containing a crazy amount of calories, and you can store it in the refrigerator for up to a week. Sounds good enough? Keep reading to find out how to make this finger-licking dish. Preparation time for this dish is around forty minutes, including slicing the vegetables, and it will make about ten servings.

Ingredients

• Water for boiling the quinoa
• A pack of quinoa grains - they usually sell it in 150 g packs
• Two cucumbers
• One lime
• One small onion (I usually use the red ones)
• Two large tomatoes
• Parsley (amount depends on how flavourful do you want the salad to be - I usually use a handful of parsley leaves)
• A few basil leaves
• 1/2 juiced lemon
• 1/2 cup extra virgin olive oil
• 1/4 cup vinegar (I usually use balsamic vinegar)
• Salt and pepper
• One avocado (if desired)
• Any other vegetable that you want to add

Preparation

Boil the water in a saucepan. When you are waiting for the water to boil, you can start preparing other ingredients. Peel and slice the cucumbers, juice lemon and lime, peel and cut the onion, cut parsley and basil leaves, cut the avocado.

Fresh ingredients make the quinoa salad taste amazing.

When you are slicing the vegetables, it is entirely up to you how big or small pieces you cut them into. Cutting vegetables into small pieces requires a little bit more work and patience, but it will blend with the quinoa much better.

Slicing vegetables into small pieces pays off.

When the water is boiling, add the quinoa, stir and cook over medium heat for approximately ten minutes. When quinoa is cooking, stir a few times and do not cover the saucepan. When the quinoa is cooked, rinse it with cold water and drain it (make sure you use a drainer with small holes, otherwise quinoa will wash through the holes). When draining, make sure to shake the drainer well to remove as much moisture as possible.

When the quinoa is dry, put it in a bowl and add all the ingredients. Make sure you stir olive oil and vinegar well so it distributes evenly through the whole salad.

You can also use wine vinegar, but using balsamic vinegar will give the quinoa salad much more flavor.

Storage

You can store the quinoa salad in a plastic Tupperware container, or in a covered bowl. Just make sure you keep it refrigerated and eat it up to one week after making it.

Suggestions

If you decide to use the avocado, make sure you do not mix it into the salad, because I am sure you know how quickly avocados go bad once peeled. Just put it on the salad every time you serve it.

When serving, you can get creative. Or you can just put it on a plate like I did when I was really hungry. My favorite serving suggestion is to put a few scoops of quinoa salad on lettuce leaves and put sliced avocado on the side.

I tried to use black beans once, but it did not turn out as I expected because the only thing I could taste, were the beans, even after adding a lot of extra dressing.

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