Green Bean Quinoa Salad

This green bean salad is packed with flavor from quinoa, chickpeas, feta and lemon. It's healthy and full of nutrients like fiber and plant based protein.

This salad makes me want summer real bad. The ingredients are pretty simple and easy to find. The produce section is pretty well stocked at my grocery store but you could definitely make this salad using canned ingredients and dried spices if you needed to! Hope everyone had a great weekend and staying safe at home hunkering down.

Last week I touched on the fact that Sean and I are moving this week! Which is so exciting! I can't wait to organize and get everything settled. Nothing else new to report here!

How to Make

This green bean quinoa salad can be assembled quickly, especially if using mostly canned ingredients. I had some fresh green beans on hand so I blanched them. If you don't know what blanching is, it's basically a cooking method where you boil (cook) the vegetable, I cooked the green beans for 2 minutes in a vat of boiling water. Then quickly submerge the vegetable into an ice bath to stop the cooking process and retain color. It sounds fancy but it's really pretty simple. Here is a link if you need a step by step tutorial. You can do this with green beans, if you want, you can find canned green beans or a steam-able frozen bag of green beans (I've seen those in the stores before) for a quicker option.

The quinoa requires to be cooked, which you can make up ahead of time to allow it to cool. The rest there is no cooking required 🙂

Ingredients

This green bean quinoa salad is full of fresh flavors like lemon, feta and dill. The ingredients are pretty simple and can be found at most grocery stores.

• Buy fresh, canned or frozen steam-able green beans: If buying fresh green beans, I would recommend blanching them to cook. If buy canned, there is no need to cook them and frozen steam-able bags of greens you should be able to mircowave.
• Quinoa: I would recommend cooking this first and letting it cool before assembling the salad
• Feta: I love a feta crumble with lemon and dill flavors <3
• Fresh Dill: I think fresh dill is best but you can absolutely used dried dill if you don't have fresh.
• EVOO: Extra virgin olive oil adds great flavor to this green bean quinoa salad. You could use avocado oil but it won't have the same taste.
• Chickpeas: Yep! Just open up a can of chickpeas, drain, rinse and your good to go.
• Lemon: Fresh lemon is best but if you don't have it concentrated lemon (you can find by the produce section will work) I would start with 2 tbsp and adjust to your preferences.
• Black pepper: Freshly cracked black pepper gives this salad a pop of flavor.

What to Eat with this Green Bean Quinoa Salad?

You guys know I am a fan of vegetarian lunch options that I can throw together with defrosting meat or worrying about sanitizing every inch of my kitchen for salmonella. This salad works SO well for lunches and is full of fiber and plant protein. If you wanted an extra dose of protein, try adding a hard boiled egg on the side or some whole wheat crackers.

I also like to serve this green bean quinoa salad as a side to a spring or summer dinner. It's great with some grilled steak, shrimp kabobs, chicken and turkey burgers.

I would recommend storing this salad in the fridge for up to 10 days.

Hope you love this recipe as much as I do, please leave a star rating/comment! It helps me get noticed in this big internet world!

Don't forget to PIN IT for later!

Print