Zesty Quinoa Salad Recipe (With Video)

This transcription will have some mistakes because it is partially automated.

Hello and welcome to Freshly Served the healthy vegan cooking show. I’m Heather and tonight we’re gonna make a quinoa dish with some mint and some other lovely flavors.

And what we’re gonna start with is the quinoa and what I wanted to show you is how to rinse quinoa because it has a little bit of a bitter coating on it and if you don’t rinse quinoa it can have a bit of a bitter flavor which is fine sometimes but sometimes you don’t want that especially if your people that aren’t used in eating quinoa they might not be used to that.

So what you do is put some water on it and this is ok to use non-filtered because we’re gonna strain it off and all you do is get your hand in there and rub the quinoa with your hand.

So, see all I’m doing is just grabbing it and rubbing it and if you do that in the water that little bit of bitter coating will come off the quinoa.

Alright! So once you got it nice and rinse you can do that multiple times if you wish, alright it will just make sure that all that bitterness comes off the outside of the quinoa.

So once you have it nicely rubbed you can just pour this water off and you can use a lid to stop the grains from getting out of the pot but I don’t usually do that because the ones that float are ones that you probably don’t want to eat anyway.

So, I don’t usually get every last drop of water out of there but I’m ok with that. So then we want to add water for cooking and with quinoa I’ve got one cup of quinoa in here so I’m gonna add two cups of water. One and then two!

Little pinch of salt, this is to help the cooking process not to make it salty so just add a tiny little pinch there and then we’re gonna put in on the burner. I’m gonna get it up to high so that it’ll boil, put the lid on to get up there faster. Once it gets to a boil then I’ll turn it down to simmer and it will take about half an hour.

So while that is cooking I’m going to start preparing my vegetables which are two beautiful fresh tomatoes, some green onion, some lovely fresh mints from the garden, smells delicious! That’s gonna be the star of our dish. Bring that mint flavor into it.

And then I’ve got parsley for some extra green and this is a little bit wet, before you work with your herbs you want to wash them but then you want to make sure they are dry because otherwise they won’t chop up nicely.

And I’ve got a lemon for flavor that I’m gonna zest and juice and I’ve got some walnuts. Now these walnuts I have soak it in water to help break down fibric acid which is around every nuts and seed so soaking them for a little while helps them to be digested more easily.

Now after you soak them you can toast them if you wish. I’m not gonna do that but roasting them lightly helps bring out the flavor as long as you don’t leave them in there for too long.

They will still be fine, they will lose some nutrients to the heat but as long as you don’t leave them for too long they will be ok. And I’m gonna use some garlic and some cumin to flavor it up.

So I’m gonna get all of my ingredients ready while the quinoa cooks and then we’ll put it together and we’ll have a nice summer salad.

Now our quinoa has come to a boil so what I’m gonna do is turn that down and I’ve got the lemon, got it zested and juice into this bowl and I’m gonna throw the vegetables in here.

Now an interesting thing about lemons or oranges or any citrus, I’m sure you’ve all heard of putting lemon juice on things to keep them from turning brown like apples or avocado or guacamole, stuff like that. Reason being is the vitamin C.

Vitamin C aside from being assisted to your immune system is also an antioxidant. And an antioxidant means that it stops molecules from reacting with oxygen in the air so when you cut open an apple it starts to turn brown right?

Those are molecules reacting to oxygen and if you put lemon juice on them which has an antioxidant, it stops those molecules from reacting so since I’ve cut this vegetables and they might start reacting with the air I’m gonna put them in the lemon juice and give it a toss.

Now you can also add some olive oil to this if you like but we’re getting some really nice oils in the walnuts so better to use more walnuts than some olive oil because the walnuts are fresh.

When they stay as a whole food they don’t have a chance to start to breakdown like the olive oil does.

So give that a toss, get the lemon juice all around the greens and tomatoes and you can toss the walnuts in here same time if you like, are they going till the end but since all I’m doing is waiting for this quinoa to cook I’m just gonna toss everything together and then when the quinoa is done I’ll just toss it in and we’ll be ready to go.

So, I’ve put a little bit of garlic in here just one clove press coz when we’re not cooking any garlic can get pretty powerful, toss that in there and then I’m gonna throw some cumin on here. Totally optional, this could be just fine without any cumin.

And a little sprinkler of salt just to bring the flavors together, we’ll toss it. And then we’re gonna put the cooked quinoa in here. Put the quinoa in last because it will tend to suck up the lemon juice and the garlic and any flavor that you put in there.

So you wanna put it around the vegetables first. Now there is our cooked quinoa. You could see it’s nice and light and fluffy, ok! That’s what you’re looking for, if it’s not in this consistency, it’s not done or you’re off in the ratio of water to quinoa.

So get it all in there and give it a toss. You can add some other greens to this as well if you like. Or you can just serve it over with bed of greens.

But once you get it toss together there it’s going to be delicious, enjoy it. It’s some mint quinoa.

You can find the recipe at HealthyVeganRecipes.net. I’m Heather and this is Freshly Served.