Most of you have seen a million bland and boring quinoa recipes, boasting this and that and delivering little in flavor, texture and excitement. Here’s a recipe that combines fresh produce, great crunch lots of colors and is packed with flavor!

First we start out by prepping the great produce we picked up at Specialty Produce. Cube everything into small 1/8 in cubes. It takes about 1/4 of a small red cabbage, 1 full-sized cucumber, 1 large red bell pepper, and 3-4 carrots. The carrots are the exception here, we used a box grater to shred them up. Next, we dethawed some frozen organic edamame, which you can find in your freezer isle at the grocery store.

To add a bit of extra flavor to our quinoa, we like to let it toast in a dry pot or pan before cooking. Just keep it moving around over low heat for about 5 minutes until you can start to smell it. This will help take your quinoa to the next level too! Once the toasting is done, add water and bring to a boil for 5 minutes. Then turn the heat to low and simmer for 15 minutes, or until the water is absorbed. When it’s done, remove from heat and fluff with a fork or spatula. We then turned all the cooked quinoa out into a large bowl.

With the quinoa cooled slightly, add all of the prepped vegetables and the edemame.

In a small bowl or measuring cup, whisk together soy sauce, sesame oil, rice vinegar, ginger, red pepper flakes, salt and pepper. Also roughly chop up a large handful of fresh cilantro. Now pour the dressing over the quinoa salad, add the cilantro and stir to combine.

This salad is great served at room temperature, or you can chill it overnight. It holds up well even with the dressing and won’t get soggy on you for a couple days. If you want to spice it up even more, you can add sriracha and chopped green onion too.

INGREDIENTS:

A lot of the ingredients can be found using our resources page: Resources