Black Bean Quinoa Salad Recipe

Salad recipes

Hi all and Happy Friday! I feel like the week sped past and the weekend is right in front of us now which is amazing. Each weekend, I spend some time coming up with a new salad that will get me through the week ahead. This Black Bean Quinoa Salad works really well for BBQs, work lunches, a side on a dinner plate or when you have to ‘bring a dish’.

Aldi is my usual go to grocery store and they always have millions of tins of black beans on the shelves. I like them as they are a bit smaller than red kidney beans and are great anytime I have Mexican on the menu.

You guys know how much I LOVE quinoa salads and I know that you guys LOVE them as much as me. They are so versatile, easy to prepare and last for days in the fridge. Today’s recipe is no exception. If you remember last week when we were talking about my Shredded Brussels Sprout Salad (and if you don’t get can get that here...), that was a HUGE salad. Food for days! This week was slightly different as I wanted to create a slightly smaller salad, for those days when you need meals but you don’t need to feed an army.

About the recipe:

• I wanted to highlight black beans
• I always feel fuller after eating a salad that has eggs – hello protein!
• Bacon and eggs…..mmmmmmmm
• Bacon, eggs and mustard…..even more mmmmmmm
• I have used edamame a lot lately, so I wanted something similar but different, bring in the peas, she said!

Black Bean Quinoa Salad dressing

The drizzle is super easy, like insanely super easy. It is a combination of low fat greek yoghurt and American mustard, blitzed together and will look like this when it is done:

You could stir it together if you don’t have a blender, but it will be a thicker less consistently mixed dressing. Plus I find that using the blender means the drizzle is quite runny not like a thick yoghurt, but more like milkshake consistency.

The biggest difference you will notice with the salad when you look at the recipe is that I have halved the amount of quinoa I used. So in my recent Edamame Quinoa Salad (YUM!!, just saying), I used 2 dried cups of quinoa which turns into 4 cooked cups. For this Black Bean Quinoa Salad, I only used 1 dried cup, which, yup, you guessed it, makes 2 cups cooked quinoa. On this note, I wanted to add, the if you do have an army to feed, then all you need to do is up the quinoa but keep the remaining ingredient portions that same.

The ‘hard work’ in preparing this salad, is cooking the quinoa, boiling the eggs (use the same saucepan as you did for the quinoa) and cooking the bacon. After that you have the peas, for which you can use frozen ones, defrosted in the microwave (easy as). The black beans, which are drained and rinsed. Then chop the eggs and bacon, make your drizzle, dress and toss your salad and it is all done. You can easily make this salad in an afternoon. Trust me, it is not a super complicated one. Nor is there lots of chopping involved.

Do I serve this salad hot or cold?

You will find that the salad will reheat really well and last. There is nothing in there to pick out (as no longer fresh) if you are on day 3 of your meals and the final day when you are eating the last of your portions (if you are taking to work for lunch), will still taste as good as it does on day 1.

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📖 Recipe

Salad recipes

Salad are so great as they are versatile and there are many healthy options! It is also fun to make salads that are different from traditional ones and give them a unique twist.

See you again soon and have a great weekend.

Adrianne x