Easy Quinoa Salad

After soaking quinoa overnight, I tweeted to see if anyone had a good recipe.

@waterlilyto tweeted an easy salad recipe that looked perfect, so I went to the store to get some canned beans and cilantro.

One of my sons won't eat black beans, so I bought light kidney beans instead. Didn't he then take one look at the salad and declare he doesn't like kidney beans?

Wrong answer, buddy. You can only hate one bean at a time in my house.

I substituted rice vinegar because I bought it last week and I am not going to rush out and buy another vinegar any time soon.

I forgot the corn. I didn't realize my omission until we were eating.

Easy Quinoa Salad

1 cup dry quinoa, soaked overnight (about 2 cups)
1 can light kidney beans
1 can chickpeas
1/4 cup chopped sweet onions
1/4 cup chopped bell pepper
1/2 cup fresh cilantro, chopped
2 tsps rice vinegar
2 tsps olive oil
Juice of one large lime
Salt and pepper to taste

Large lime and penny

Drain and discard the liquid from the bean cans and rinse the beans. Mix all the ingredients together in one bowl and then let it rest about fifteen minutes before eating.

Could it be any easier? Not without eliminating the fresh ingredients that make it taste so good.

The quinoa has a crunchy quality prepared this way that works well with the crisp vegetables and soft beans. If you prefer to use cooked quinoa, 2 or 3 cups of cooked and cooled quinoa should work well in this recipe.

Ceviche Quinoa

My son, the one who now hates black and kidney beans, loved the flavors of this salad and kept calling it ceviche. I had never heard of ceviche, but a Wikipedia search shows this seafood dish originated in Peru. This makes these seasonings seem somehow true to the heritage of quinoa to me, even though there was no seafood in the dish.

Please comment with your recipes for soaked quinoa and let me know if you tried making this easy quinoa salad.

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Soaking Quinoa

Some people recommend soaking quinoa every time you cook with it. Personally, I find that as long as I rinse the quinoa before I use it, I do not have any problems with bitterness or digestive upset, so I do not bother soaking quinoa that I will cook.

However, I have been interested in preparing quinoa to eat raw. There are two ways to prepare quinoa raw:

1. Soak the quinoa overnight to make a nutty, crunchy salad base.
2. Sprout the quinoa to make a sprout salad.

Soaking Quinoa

I soaked quinoa for the first time over the weekend.

To begin, I rinsed the quinoa using my plastic strainer.

Then I put the seeds in a bowl, covered them with about 3/4 of an inch of water, and placed the bowl in the refrigerator overnight. Most sources recommended soaking quinoa for 12-14 hours - I wound up soaking it about 18 hours before I made my salad.

I drained the water from the quinoa using my strainer again, and rinsed away the soapy residue on the seeds.

I measured the quinoa before I made the salad. After soaking, quinoa had doubled in size, going from 1 cup to 2 cups. This quinoa had a chewing texture somewhat similar to chopped walnuts - nutty but easy on the teeth. The seeds still looked very much as they did dry.

I am very interested in learning different ways to use soaked quinoa in my kitchen. I wonder if it can be used in cookies or if the quinoa would change when baked.

You can see the salad I made after soaking quinoa here ==> Easy Quinoa Salad.

Did you know if you aren’t subscribing to How Do You Cook Quinoa? at the new domain, you risk missing out on new posts and quinoa recipes? Not mention the upcoming quinoa contest. Subscribe today and learn tasty new ways to enjoy quinoa along with other exciting (and sometimes exotic) ingredients.

Subscribe in a reader

Subscribe to How Do You Cook Quinoa? by Email

You may also follow @keenonquinoa on Twitter.