Green Vegetable Quinoa Salad

Green vegetable quinoa salad with a savory, Japanese-inspired dressing is fresh, crisp, flavorful, and ready in minutes. Don’t miss it.

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Why we love this recipe

One of the tricks I learned time and again from cafés in London is that quinoa knows how to share the spotlight. Sometimes it wants to be the star — or the bulk — of the dish, but other times it’s perfectly happy to be just one element in an ensemble.

In this savory quinoa salad:

• Crisp celery, cucumber, and green beans keep things light and fresh
• Perfectly cooked quinoa adds just the right amount of heft
• The punchy, umami-rich dressing ties it all together

This recipe is vegan, gluten-free, and make-ahead friendly. It’s an equally great candidate for meal prep and your next cookout or picnic.

I first published a version of this salad here in 2012. I’ve since updated both the post and the recipe. If you enjoy old-school food blog narrative, you can scroll down below the recipe card to read some of the original text.

What you’ll need

Here’s a glance at the ingredients you’ll need to make this recipe.

• You’ll start with some perfect cooked quinoa
• For the vegetables, I like to use diced celery and English or Persian cucumber, along with some steamed green beans cut into segments. You can add or substitute other vegetables if you like, since the dressing works well with lots of flavors.
• Cilantro works nicely with the dressing, but you can substitute parsley if that’s more your vibe.
• Mirin is a sweet Japanese rice wine that’s pervasive in cooking and in dipping sauces. It’s pretty easy to find in grocery stores these days, but you can also buy it here. If you’d like to learn more about mirin, please head over to Just One Cookbook to support a wonderful blogger.
• Toasted sesame oil (sometimes called dark sesame oil) has tons of great flavor and provides the backbone for the dressing. You can use the kind with or without hot chili, depending on your preference. But don’t confuse it with light sesame oil, which has a lighter color and much less flavor.
• If it’s important to you that this salad be gluten-free, be sure to use certified GF versions of all the condiments, especially the soy sauce.

How to make it

Here’s what you’ll do to make a great batch of vegetable quinoa salad. You can see the steps in action in the video that accompanies this post, and get all the details in the recipe card below.

1. Mix up the dressing right in the serving bowl.
2. Add some perfectly cooked quinoa.
3. Add your vegetables and herbs.
4. Stir it all up. Salad is ready to serve right away and will keep well in the fridge for up to a week.

Expert tips and FAQs

More favorite quinoa recipes

• Fava bean burgers with quinoa, spinach, and feta
• Warm quinoa and lentil salad with cauliflower
• Bowls with squash, spinach, and cilantro-lime dressing
• Or buy the quinoa book I contributed to

5 from 6 votes

Green Vegetable Quinoa Salad

By Carolyn Gratzer Cope

Green vegetable quinoa salad with a savory, Japanese-inspired dressing is fresh, crisp, flavorful, and ready in minutes. It's vegan, gluten-free, and make-ahead and meal prep friendly.

Prep: 15 minutes mins

Cook: 15 minutes mins

Total: 30 minutes mins

Servings: 8

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Equipment

• We Love Quinoa: Fresh and Healthy Inspiring Recipes

Ingredients 

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For the dressing

• ▢ 2 tablespoons (30 ml) toasted sesame oil
• ▢ 1 tablespoon (15 ml) rice vinegar
• ▢ 1 tablespoon (15 ml) freshly squeezed lime juice
• ▢ 4 teaspoons (20 ml) reduced-sodium soy sauce
• ▢ 1 tablespoon (21 grams) honey
• ▢ 2 teaspoons (10 ml) mirin

For the salad

• ▢ 2 cups cooked quinoa
• ▢ 8 ounces green beans, steamed and cut into segments
• ▢ 1 medium English cucumber, diced
• ▢ 2 celery ribs, diced small
• ▢ ⅓ cup chopped fresh cilantro leaves

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Instructions 

• In a large mixing bowl, whisk together the ingredients for the dressing.
• Add the cooked quinoa, the vegetables, and the cilantro to the bowl.
• Toss well and serve.

Notes

1. Toasted sesame oil (sometimes called dark sesame oil) has tons of great flavor and provides the backbone for the dressing. You can use the kind with or without hot chili, depending on your preference. But don’t confuse it with light sesame oil, which has a lighter color and much less flavor.
2. Mirin is a sweet Japanese rice wine that’s pervasive in cooking and in dipping sauces. It’s pretty easy to find in grocery stores these days, but you can also buy it here.
3. If it’s important to you that this salad be gluten-free, be sure to use certified GF versions of all the condiments, especially the soy sauce.
4. To cook the green beans, bring an inch of well-salted water to a boil in a wide, lidded pan. Add green beans, cover, and cook until crisp-tender, 2-4 minutes depending on your preference. Drain and place into a large bowl of ice water to stop the cooking and retain bright green color.
5. The total quantity of chopped vegetables will be about 5 cups, give or take. The exact amount isn’t critical, and you can adjust it to your preference.
6. This salad is very flexible, and the flavors work well with a wide variety of green vegetables. Either in addition or to substitute, try steamed broccoli, steamed or sautéed zucchini, raw or sautéed baby spinach, diced green pepper, steamed asparagus cut into segments, or lightly cooked fresh green peas, snap peas, or snow peas. For herbs, you can easily substitute parsley for the cilantro, or use a combination. To add protein while keeping it green, steamed, shelled edamame work beautifully.
7. Serve salad right away or store in an airtight container in the fridge for up to a week. Salad is great at room temperature or cold.

Nutrition

Calories: 219kcal, Carbohydrates: 38.4g, Protein: 8.3g, Fat: 4g, Fiber: 5.2g

Nutrition information is automatically calculated, so should only be used as an approximation.

Additional Info

Course: Grains

Cuisine: American

Tried this recipe?Mention @umamigirl or tag #umamigirl!

P.S. Here’s some of the original text from 2012

This green quinoa salad came about when my seven year old’s yoga class had an end-of-year party, and they were asked to bring healthy snacks. Most kids went the route of fruit kabobs or maybe some raisins. But mine, being mine, asked me to make a quinoa salad.

Now that I’ve had the opportunity to consider the issue, I feel strongly that when a seven year old asks you to make a quinoa salad, you say yes. You do not say no. Not ever.

If she wakes you up in the middle of the night after you’ve had one too many glasses of wine, you stand up, put in your contacts, and say yes. If you’re swimming or biking or feeding the baby, you towel off, dismount, or drop that baby, and say yes.

Then you head directly to the kitchen to start rinsing some quinoa.