A healthy, nutritious and filling quinoa salad loaded with roasted vegetables, quinoa and tossed in a homemade cilantro pesto dressing.
This quinoa salad is seriously delicious; it is all that I have been eating for the last three days. No jokes, I have just been loving the simple yet tasty flavour combination. Roasted red bell peppers with crunchy green beans and roasted sweet potatoes make the bulk of the salad. Then it gets sprinkled with cooked quinoa and tossed in my amazing homemade cilantro pesto dressing.
Quinoa Salad with Cilantro
Fantastic as a side dish or as a stand alone meal for lunch or dinner. I hope you enjoy it as much as I have.
Enjoy.
By the way, if you haven’t cooked quinoa before check out my post The Best Way To Cook Quinoa
I also have a recipe for Homemade Cilantro Pesto if you’d prefer to make your own over store bought (it tastes a lot better!)
Quinoa and Cilantro Salad
Ingredients
- ½ cup quinoa cooked see THE BEST WAY TO COOK QUINOA
- 2 medium sweet potatoes
- 2 tablespoons olive oil
- 2 good handfuls of green beans
- 2 roasted red bell peppers you can either prepare your own or use ones from a jar
- salt and pepper
- 4 heaped tablespoons CILANTRO PESTO can sub basil pesto
Instructions
- Prepeare ½ cup quinoa (THE BEST WAY TO COOK QUINOA)
- Heat oven to 400 (200C) and line a baking tray with parchment paper.
- Peel the sweet potatoes and cut into 1½ inch chunks. Spread them out on the baking tray and drizzle with olive oil. Place in oven for around 15 minutes turning once until tender.
- Bring a medium saucepan of water to the boil. Slice the green beans into ½s and blanch in the boiling water for 2-3 minutes until just cooked. Quickly strain the beans and either place them in a bowl with ice and cold water or simply run some cold water over them. You want them to stop cooking so they will still be crunchy in the salad.
- Slice up the roasted bell red peppers. Take a large mixing bowl and place the red bell peppers, green beans, sweet potato and quinoa inside. Add the CILANTRO PESTO and toss until the pesto has nicely covered the salad. Season to taste with salt and pepper.
