Quinoa Chickpea Salad with Roasted Tomatoes

Why You’ll Love This Recipe

A really wonderful salad has variety in each bite. This chickpea quinoa salad has a combination of savory and salty flavors along with soft and crisp textures with quinoa, chickpeas, roasted tomatoes, cucumbers and so much more.

Since this salad has quinoa as a base instead of lettuce, it won’t wilt. That makes it great for potlucks and picnics if you’re planning to feed a crowd. Also, it’s a good choice for meal prep like a week of work lunches.

This salad can be a main dish or a side dish. It’s important to have salad recipes in your rotation that don’t rely on lettuce because there are so many ways you can enjoy them. You can serve the salad, warm, at room temperature or cold.

What is Quinoa?

Even though we often refer to it as a grain, quinoa is actually a seed that’s native to the Andes in South America. It is full of nutrition with fiber, protein and amino acids. Quinoa is gluten-free and is lower in carbohydrates than white rice. Another great thing is that cooking quinoa is quick and easy.

Before you start simmering, you need to rinse off quinoa to remove saponin, which is a coating on it that can make it taste bitter. You can do this in a fine mesh strainer over the sink. Quinoa is available in white, red and black and is sold in blends of all three colors.

The Ingredients

This is what you need:

• Quinoa: You can see in the photos that I used a quinoa mix that includes multiple colors. This was all for looks. You can use a single color in this salad recipe. It doesn’t matter. Because of its small grains, couscous would be a good substitute.
• Chickpeas: The recipe calls for canned chickpeas (also known as garbanzo beans). After I drain them from the can and rinse them, I like to put them on a towel to roll them around to dry them and then pull off any loose skins, so they don’t end up scattered throughout the salad.
• Tomatoes: Either grape tomatoes or cherry tomatoes will work.
• Cucumbers: Because they have less seeds and their skin is thinner, I prefer either English cucumbers or Persian cucumbers more than regular ones.
• Olives: Pitted Kalamata olives add a salty accent.
• Red onions give the salad sharp bites here and there. If you like something more mild, then use sliced green onions instead.
• Walnuts add nutty crunch. You can substitute with chopped almonds or pine nuts.
• Feta: With ingredients like cucumbers, tomatoes and olives, crumbled feta makes sense. Goat cheese is fine for a substitute. Grated Parmesan will also work, but it will have a different consistency in the salad. If you need the recipe to be vegan, then leave out the cheese.
• Parsley is my choice for fresh herbs. You can also include basil or chives.
• Olive oil, salt and pepper are needed for roasting the tomatoes. They are also in the dressing.
• Red wine vinaigrette: This dressing is very simple with plenty of garlic, mustard, vinegar, olive oil, salt and pepper.

Optional Additions

I love the salad as the recipe is written, but you can make any of these additions:

• Leafy greens: It’s fine to add lettuce to your quinoa salad. Try chopped kale, arugula or baby spinach. This is also an easy way to stretch the salad into more servings.
• Bell peppers: To add more vegetables, you can include a diced red, yellow or orange bell pepper.
• Hard-boiled eggs: You can chop them and stir them right in. 
• Chicken, shrimp or another protein: The mediterranean flavors of this salad lend themselves to roasted or grilled chicken or shrimp.

How To Make This Quinoa Chickpea Salad

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees F. Line a sheet pan with parchment paper.

1. Toss the tomatoes with olive oil, salt and pepper. You can do this right on the baking sheet. Just make sure to spread out the tomatoes, cut side up, in a single layer.

2. Roast the tomatoes until they are wrinkled but still juicy. This will take about 25-30 minutes.

3. Simmer the quinoa on the stove. When it finishes cooking, pull the pot off the heat and wait 5 minutes before fluffing it with a fork.

4. Make the vinaigrette. Whisk together the garlic, mustard, salt, pepper, vinegar and oil.

5. Combine the salad ingredients in a big bowl including the quinoa, roasted tomatoes, chickpeas, cucumbers, olives, onions, nuts, feta and parsley.

6. Drizzle the vinaigrette into the salad. Stir to combine. After you put it in a serving bowl, you can sprinkle on more chopped parsley and feta if you want. 

Serving

Since it has a quinoa base, this salad is filling enough to be a meal on its own. Serve it warm, at room temperature or cold. You can eat it as a side dish with Barbecue Veggie Tofu Skewers, Baked Zucchini Corn Fritters or another vegetarian main.

Make-Ahead Tips, Storage & Leftovers

You can make the quinoa, roasted tomatoes and vinaigrette up to 3 days in advance. Store them all in separate airtight containers in the fridge. I like putting the vinaigrette in a mason jar. Then I recommend letting them sit out at room temperature for 15 minutes before assembling the salad. This will give the dressing a chance to turn to liquid again if it hardens in the chill of the refrigerator.

Keep the salad leftovers in the fridge up to 4 days. After that and the cucumbers and other ingredients will start to soften. As mentioned, you can add leafy greens to leftovers to stretch them into another meal.

Recipe Tips

Use the time that the tomatoes are roasting to make the quinoa and the vinaigrette. There’s no rushing with this multitasking. You will have plenty of time to prep these ingredients in the 25 minutes or so that the tomatoes are in the oven.

Pull the loose skins off the chickpeas. This is optional, but I think you will prefer the overall look and texture of the salad if you remove them.