Sweet Potato Quinoa Salad is a vegetarian salad recipe that is perfect for a meal in one! The combination of roasted sweet potato, beetroot and feta is a great one in my book and they are boosted with a few other key ingredients.
Salads are such fun, easy meals to make! Readers favorites are the Crispy Chicken BLT Salad and Watermelon Cucumber Salad (vegetarian). Popular festive salads are the Thanksgiving Salad and the Christmas Salad.
How to make sweet potato quinoa salad
I love making salads as you know – last week’s was my Black Bean and Quinoa Salad, the recipe for which is here.
The other bonus is that this salad is vegetarian, so if you are, or you partner or friends are, you will be able to whip this up and cater to everyone’s lifestyle choices in style!
Sweet Potato is so yummy and delicious, but I still find that I like to season it really well so that after the roasting all of those yummy flavours have come out in it.
If you look on my insta stories (here) you will see a few videos of how I did this recipe. The most time consuming part of the dish is preparing the Sweet Potato.
What you need to do is peel it, slice it up, mix up your seasoning mix and brush that all over. I have used chilli flakes, thyme, salt and pepper and once it is cooked, it tastes amazing!
As you can see from the pics here, you place it all on a baking tray to get it ready, pop it in the oven and in almost no time at all, you have delicious roasted Sweet Potato for your salad.
Let's get it all done
If you are a fan of multi-tasking, you can even use the time whilst the oven is on to get your other ingredients together. The quinoa cooks really easily as you just need water and the grain for that one. For this recipe, I used tinned beetroot and chickpeas, nuts from a packet and then chopped up the feta. You can definitely make this one a few hours before serving it, then dress and toss it all together when your family or guests arrive. I also love salads like this for work lunches as they last for days. If you have seen some of my other salads, like my Shredded Brussels Sprout Quinoa Salad, you will know that a salads that stay good for a couple of days are right up my alley.
A little about my week...
For work this week, I drove to Toowoomba to have a catch up with our hard working volunteer team out that way. We had a lovely morning tea. Whilst there, they insisted I go and have a look at the Carnival of Flowers with them. I was delighted at the idea, so we popped across to the park and had a wander around. It was SO BEAUTIFUL!! If you are ever in Sunny Queensland around this time of year, you definitely have to make the trip, it is so worth it. The council put together this amazing display of beautiful beds of flowers. There are pretty colours, lots of tourists and bees everywhere! We took a trip around the ferris wheel and got to see the flowers from above, it was a great morning and I was happy to be welcomed to the city with such friendliness and good company.
Sweet Potato Quinoa Salad questions answered
About the recipe:
- I wanted to make a vegetarian salad for a change
- Sweet Potato and beetroot, are like best friends, they WORK together so well
- Last few winter salads from me, so quinoa is great in a warmer salad recipe
- I love feta in salads and I knew you would too
- The nuts and chickpeas are for texture, a little crunch and you will notice the flavour
How to prepare sweet potato to add to salad
You peel and cut your potatoes, then chop them into cubes. Use a dish to mix the olive oil and spices and then a pastry brush to coat the potato cubes.
Roast them for 20-30 minutes in the oven and use a skewer to test to see if they are cooked all the way through (if you hit any hard bits, roasted for about 5 minutes longer).
The drizzle for this one is a combination of peanut butter and low fat Greek yoghurt – it really compliments the salad ingredients. Mmmm Hmmm YUM!!
When our quinoa is cooked, we start adding it all to our bowl. I use a blender to make my drizzles as the yoghurt becomes thinner and the perfect consistency to pour.
So throw it all in there, pour your drizzle all over and then use 2 spoons to toss it together.
Thanks for stopping by, love having you here and sharing my love of all things food and drink with you.
Adrianne x
📖 Recipe
Sweet Potato Quinoa Salad
Ingredients
Sweet Potato Quinoa Salad
- 2 cups dried quinoa
- 4 cups water
- 2 small sweet potatoes or 1 large
- 1 420g cubed beetroot
- 1 450g chickpeas
- ⅓ cup granulated nuts
- 200 g greek feta cheese
- ⅓ cup olive oil
- 1 tablespoon chilli flakes
- 1 tablespoon thyme
- 1 teaspoon himalayan rock salt
- 1 teaspoon cracked black pepper
Peanut Butter Yoghurt Drizzle
- ¾ cup low fat greek yoghurt
- ¼ cup crunchy peanut butter
Instructions
- Heat oven to 180 degrees and line a baking tray with grease proof paper
- Peel sweet potato, then chop into small cubes
- In a small bowl, add olive oil, chilli flakes, thyme, salt and pepper, stir to combine
- Use the olive oil mix and a pastry brush to coat all of the pieces of sweet potato, then place baking tray into oven for 20 minutes
- Use a medium sized saucepan and add the 4 cups of water and 2 cups of dried quinoa. Bring to the boil, then reduce heat to a medium temperature. Stir occasionally and remove from the heat when all of the water is absorbed
- Drain beetroot (do not rinse).
- Drain and rinse chickpeas
- Chop up feta into small cubes
- Add to the salad bowl quinoa, sweet potato, beetroot, chickpeas, granulated nuts and feta
- Dress and toss salad
Peanut Butter Yoghurt Drizzle
- Combine greek yoghurt and peanut butter in blender jug and blitz to combine
Notes
- For nut allergies, substitute is roasted wasabi peas instead of the granulated nuts and basil pesto instead of the peanut butter in the drizzle
- Crunchy peanut butter = best kind of peanut butter ever!
- The danish style feta cheese has much less texture and is less softer. You can use it, but for a bit of bite, I think the greek one is the winner
- Make either 1 ⅕ times or double the drizzle if you want the salad to last for a few days and you can re drizzle each portion as you serve it.
Anna says
Love the colorful combination of ingredients - especially the inclusion of beets in the recipe! 🙂
Adrianne says
Cheers Anna! Love your positive vibes xx