Fresh and Savory Quinoa Salad

Happy Wednesday! I’m still major de-load from my trip to Adobe MAX (which I’m still writing about — slowest blogger ever award please), but I wanted to pass along the recipe for the awesome quinoa salad Neil put together for our BBQ at CrossFit this weekend. It was a complete hit, so much so that we made another batch the next day and took it to my parents for Mother’s Day dinner.

We found the original recipe via Pinterest, and then tweaked it a bit to make it more “us.” I think the other version would obviously be equally as good, but I’m partial to the addition of bacon in ours.

Ingredients

¾ cup uncooked quinoa
5 or 6 strips of uncured bacon, cooked and chopped
1-2 cups shredded red cabbage
1 red bell pepper, diced
½ red onion, diced
1 cup shredded carrots
½ cup chopped cilantro
¼ cup diced green onions
½ cup cashew halves
Squeeze of fresh lime

Dressing:
¼ cup all natural almond butter
2 teaspoons freshly grated ginger
3 tablespoon Dr. Braggs Liquid Aminos
1 tablespoon honey
1 tablespoon coconut sugar
1 tablespoon red wine vinegar
1 teaspoon sesame oil
1 teaspoon olive oil
1 teaspoon rice vinegar
Water to thin, if necessary

Directions:

1. In a mesh strainer, rinse quinoa thoroughly with cold water until the water runs clear. Bring a 1 1/2 cups of water to a boil and then add quinoa. Reduce heat and simmer for 15 minutes or until quinoa has absorbed all of the water. After 15 minutes remove quinoa from heat and put in a large bowl and toss to help cool. Allow to cool for 10 minutes.
2. If you did not cook the bacon beforehand, now is a good time to fry it up until crunchy/chopp-able.
3. Heat dressing ingredients in a small saucepan over medium-high heat until smooth. Mix dressing in with the cooled quinoa until thoroughly combined, adding water to thin if necessary.
4. Add all of the vegetable ingredients and bacon to the dressed quinoa and fold over to mix so that the dressing coats evenly.Add cashews and fold over again until combined. Cool thoroughly in the refrigerator before serving.

It’s the perfect summer cold salad. It’s packed full of veggies and flavor and it complements other dishes as well. I haven’t made a ton of things I’ve found via Pinterest, despite pinning nearly everything in sight lately, but I’m so happy I gave this a try. So with that being said…

Have you found any Pinterest gems lately?