Our Green Bean and Quinoa Salad is a simple summer salad that the whole family will love.
Being healthy, gluten-free and vegan, this salad makes a perfect dish or side dish to serve to your loved ones. It contains fresh vegetables, grains, pulses, nuts and a tangy but lovely vinaigrette.
It can be served at room temperature or chilled. You can prepare the salad the day before or even have all the ingredients ready to just put them quickly together on the spot.
When we go on holiday with our friends, we take it in turns to cook. This is definitely a great choice for those days, as we can bring everything prepared from home and have it ready in a couple of minutes. It would be a lovely dish to bring to a dinner party too, a healthy option to bring to work for lunch or even a yummy meal to bring to the beach!
How to build the perfect Green Bean and Quinoa Salad
Base: For this salad, we used a combination of red, black and white organic quinoa. To cook the quinoa, use 1:2 ratio, so double the amount of water for the quinoa you are going to cook and leave the pan uncovered while cooking it. When all the water has evaporated, your quinoa will be ready.
Fruit & Veggies: Green Beans and Beetroot. For this salad we used a lot of green beans as a good friend of ours brought us a huge bag full of beans. We also used roasted beetroot cut into cubes. Beetroot is considered by many people a super food for its nutritional value and health benefits. This salad is a good dish to incorporate some beetroot!
Protein: For this meal, we used pre-cooked chickpeas but you can use dry chickpeas soaking them overnight and cooking them for 30 minutes before adding them into the salad.
Nuts or Seeds: A proper salad needs a bit of crunch. This salad contains slightly roasted cashew nuts and almonds. We cut them both in halves and they deliver a great nutty flavour to the salad.
Vinaigrette: Our Green Bean and Quinoa Salad is made with a delicious vinaigrette made with extra virgin olive oil, vinegar, honey and mustard.
If your salad contains a healthy grain as a base, fruit and veggies, protein, nuts and a yummy vinaigrette you will definitely have a lovely and complete salad.
How to cook the Green Beans to make them extra tasty
As much as we love green beans, we enjoy them better when cooked with some seasoning. It's really easy to bring out the beautiful flavour of this vegetable.
Cook the green beans on a grilling pan. When they are almost fully cooked, add the juice of half a lemon, thinly sliced or crushed garlic, salt and pepper. Reduce the heat and they will be ready for your salad.
Summer Salads
What's a better meal than a salad in Summer? Here are some more refreshing and healthy summer salad ideas to cook this season!
- Roasted Sweet Potato and Black Bean Quinoa Salad. Another quinoa salad for the summer. It's a family favourite and packed full of nutrients!
- Traditional Greek Salad. Cucumbers, tomatoes, green bell peppers.. all these vegetables contain more than 94% of water, which means that you will feel completely hydrated after eating this beautiful salad. Perfect for really hot days!
- Beet Carpaccio with Goat Cheese. This dish is another great way of eating beetroot. Our Beet Carpaccio with Goat Cheese, Walnuts, and fresh mint vinaigrette is both refreshing and healthy
- Vegan Coleslaw. The perfect choice for a grilled meal. We love preparing our vegan coleslaw when we are having grilled veggies.
Green Bean and Quinoa Salad
Ingredients
- ¾ cup quinoa
- 1 small pre-cooked beetroot
- A handful cashews
- A handful of almonds
- ½ cup chickpeas
- 150 g green beans
- 1 garlic clove
Vinaigrette
- Juice of half a lemon
- 4 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
- 2 tablespoons vinegar
- 2 teaspoons honey
- 1 teaspoon dijon mustard
- Salt and pepper
Instructions
- Heat in a medium-size pan double the amount of water than quinoa and add the quinoa. When the water starts boiling, reduce the heat to really low and leave it cooking until all the water is absorbed. Add to a big salad bowl and leave it to cool for a few minutes.
- Preheat the oven to 180Cº. Cut the beetroot into cubes and place on a baking tray. Add the almonds and cashews and roast everything for around 10 minutes. Turn off the oven and leave the ingredients to cool. Cut in halves the almonds and cashews and add the roasted ingredients into the salad bowl.
- Rinse the chickpeas and add into the salad bowl.
- Cut the green beans and heat some oil on a grilling pan on medium heat. Add the green beans to the grilling pan. Cook for around 7-9 minutes and when they are almost fully cooked, add the juice of half a lemon, thinly sliced garlic, salt and pepper. Reduce the heat and they will be ready for your salad.
- To prepare the vinaigrette, combine the olive oil, vinegar, honey, mustard, salt and pepper. Wisk all the ingredients together and pour on the salad.
- Mix all the ingredients into the salad bowl and serve.
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| If you tried our recipe, please leave a comment or tag us on Instagram @Sixhungryfeet. We are always happy to see your creations! |
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