Mediterranean Quinoa Salad

I have a secret I have to admit to you guys! I am completely and utterly obsessed with these fast and easy summer salads!! They make my life so much easier, while also being super tasty and delicious… I recently started meal prepping this type of salad for the week. Imagine how easy it is to come back home hungry and tired from a whole day of work/school and gym/errands and find something like this already ready for you.

This recipe specifically reminds me of what my aunt back in France used to make for us. The beautiful memories that come with it are endless but after about a year of making it myself, I decided to tweak it a bit! This originally used to have cucumbers in it… but unfortunately, when you are trying to make this recipe for the week, the cucumbers tend to go soggy and of course, nobody wants soggy salad! So I decided to get rid of that to make this healthy quinoa salad last a little longer in my fridge. The other thing that I changed would be the tomatoes used, she would usually use the larger red tomatoes… They were not Roma tomatoes or any of those that we see in the regular supermarkets here in Vegas. So I decided to go for the cherry tomatoes because I appreciate the sweetness and the tanginess that they bring to the dish itself.

So without further ado, here is the recipe down below!

Mediterranean summer Quinoa Salad

Yield  about 4- 5 cups

Prep Time  10-15 minutes

Total Time  1 hour

Ingredients

1 cup of dry quinoa, which will yield about 3 cups of cooked quinoa

About 1 cup of quartered cherry tomatoes

½ a green bell pepper cut into small squares

3 tablespoon chopped up Italian parsley

¼ of a medium red onion

½ – 1 lemon

2 tablespoon olive oil

Salt and pepper to taste

Directions

1. First, start by cooking your quinoa according to the direction on the package.
   1. In my case, I had to use a ration of one cup of quinoa for 3 cups of water. Bring to a boil then cover and let it simmer for about 15-20 minutes.
2. While your quinoa is cooking;
   1. Dice up the Italian parsley
   2. Cut the cherry tomatoes in quarters
   3. Chop up the ¼ of the red onion
   4. Cut the green bell pepper into small squares
      
      
3. After the quinoa is cooked, let it cool down because we do not want the heat to make the vegetables soggy.
4. Add your chopped up parsley, onions, tomatoes, the bell pepper, the olive oil, and the juice of half a lemon*.
   
   
5. Mix well, add some salt and pepper to taste and voila! 

* Start with the juice of half a lemon and taste the quinoa salad, if you’d like it to be more tangy and sour then go ahead and add the juice of the second half of the lemon. I personally used the juice of one whole lemon because when you store this in the fridge, the juice gets soaked and all the flavors come together. So, all in all, it is not extremely sour with the juice of one lemon so go for it!

As always, I would love to see you guys try my recipes so make sure to tag me ( @chahinez_tbt ) on Instagram whenever you try this!