Tricolour Quinoa and Wild Rice Salad

This tricolour quinoa and wild rice salad is one of my favourites and I keep going back to it. When I first noticed that I was becoming sensitive to gluten, a friend recommended I try quinoa. I had never heard of it, so I went searching for it in the grocery store and did not find any. I went into the local health food store. As luck would have it, they had plenty of the tricolour version. I brought some home and cooked it up and found it had a really good flavour. I was expecting it to be much like rice – mostly flavourless. Since then, I have tried so many different recipes using it.

Ingredients for the Quinoa and Wild Rice Salad

This delicious salad has some of the usual ingredients and some not-so-usual ingredients.

The Ingredients List:

• 1 cup tricolour quinoa
• 1/2 cup wild rice
• 1 cup of cooked chickpeas (or 1 tin of chickpeas)
• 1 English cucumber
• 1 sweet red pepper
• 1 sweet yellow pepper (you can use orange too)
• 1 green onion
• 1 green chili (you can use jalapeno or any other kind of chili)
• 1/4 cup almonds (I use whole almonds and cut them into bits)
• 1/4 cup dried cranberries
• 3 tablespoons good quality balsamic vinegar
• 3 tablespoons good quality olive oil
• 1/2 cup crumbled feta cheese
• salt and pepper to taste

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Prepping the Dry Ingredients

Let’s start by boiling the chickpeas, wild rice, and quinoa. They all have different cooking times, so they need to be cooked separately. They need to be cooled completely before you can put the recipe together. Since this is a time-consuming process, it can be done in advance. It requires a little bit of pre-planning, but it’s worth the effort in the end.

Try cooking the grains a day in advance. I have even cooked more wild rice than I need and frozen it in an air-tight container for up to a month. Defrost it the day you want to have the side dish.

For the chickpeas, you can also use a tin of cooked chickpeas. Alternatively, you can boil your own. Chickpeas take a while to cook, so if you decide to make your own, it’s best to soak them for up to an hour before you boil them. Use a pressure cooker to boil them or else they will take a long time to become tender.

The Vegetables for Quinoa Salad

We need to chop all the vegetables we are going to use for the salad.

• Chop an English cucumber into bite-size cubes.
• Finely chop a green chili (or jalapeno pepper). The chili is optional – if you can’t handle the heat, you can skip the chili. If you prefer it spicier, you can add a second one.
• Seed and chop one sweet red and one sweet yellow (or orange) pepper into bite-size pieces.
• Slice one green onion on the bias.

Assembling the Quinoa Salad

Now we are ready to make the salad. Make sure the cooked ingredients have cooled completely before you assemble the salad.

• In a large mixing bowl, combine the quinoa and wild rice.
• Add the cucumber, green chili (if using), sweet peppers, green onion, almonds, dried cranberries, chickpeas, salt, pepper, olive oil, and balsamic vinegar.
• Mix everything well.

Adding the Cheese

Once all the salad ingredients are well combined we can add the cheese.

• Crumble 1/2 cup of Greek feta. You can use the pre-cubed version of feta.
• Add the crumbled feta to the bowl and mix well so the feta is evenly distributed.
• Now you are ready to enjoy the tricolour salad.

That’s it! It’s as simple as that. The saltiness of the feta, combined with the sweetness of the dried cranberries and the nuts makes this a perfect meal.

Sprinkle some fresh herbs of your choice and enjoy! A salad can be made a couple of hours in advance and refrigerated or made and consumed right away. I try and make it about an hour before we are ready to eat so that the flavours can marry and enhance with time.

Serving Suggestions

This tricolour quinoa and wild rice salad can be

• eaten as a main course.
• or as a side with my divine oven-grilled chicken thighs.
• enjoyed with my honey garlic chicken thighs.

Tried and Liked the Recipe?

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