Mizuna Quinoa Salad with Honey Chilli lime Dressing

Mizuna quinoa salad incredibly delicious and filling salad for lunch. Mizuna is Asian salad green with a peppery taste that I have recently fallen in love with and trying out a few mizuna recipes. If you don’t find Mizuna you can substitute it with Arugula or rocket leaves, But Guys! You MUST make this Mizuna quinoa salad if you love healthy quinoa salad recipes for lunch.

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Mizuna Salad with quinoa is fast (just 20 minutes!). This is also dairy free, gluten free, Super healthy, flavourful with zesty with a peppy salad dressing for quinoa salad. I am sure you will love this salad for brunch, lunch or dinner, as a side or as light and filling meal.

I know I am raving too much about this, but to tell you the truth I literally carried this to the office pretty much every other day.  Yes! Quinoa Salad in the Jar is my favorite thing to do for office Lunch these days. You know that if you are following my Instagram stories. If you are not till now you can follow along on Instagram to see my smoothies, everyday meals and some bits of life. Also, If your young boy who does not care much about the Salads, eats salad for the meals, asks for the seconds and thirds is the best testimony that “this is Seriously Tasty”! Another tasty quinoa salad you can try is Red Quinoa manngo salad.

Some of you asked me about eating salad straight from Jar is not convenient, how do I eat the salad in the Jar. I agree, eating salad straight is not an easy thing to do. I mostly dump it on a plate and carry the dressing in a separate bottle. While eating I simply dump salad from the jar onto a plate and drizzle the dressing over it.

Why I pack the salad in the Jar then? Tips for packing Jar Salad

• Because it keeps the salad fresh for the longer times. Packing in different layers keeps the salad fresh. The trick of packing these Jar salads is layer the soggy/watery ingredient first. For example, I layered quinoa first and then topped it with vegetables. This way vegetables remain crisp and fresh.
• The second thing I do is as soon as I reach office I immediately put these jars in the refrigerator. If you do not make use of fridge in the office but have an air-conditioned office. It should remain okay.
• Another thing you can do is carry it in insulated lunch carrier bag.

For more Salad making tips - How to Build a Better Salad

Coming back to this quinoa and mizuna salad If you have not tried Mizuna till now, it is a Japanese mustard green that is peppery in taste. You will often find it in salad green mix leaves in supermarkets. But if you can’t find it Rocket or Arugula is a good substitute.

The great thing about this salad is, it stays good in the fridge for a couple of days. So what I do is make a base quinoa salad recipe and keep adding different sorts of proteins to it. Also using a different salad dressing each time makes it quite versatile. That makes previous meal different from present meals… And, so many of us think salads are boring! What? NO!

Quinoa by itself is very filling and has good protein and is a glutenfree grain. I still like to add more proteins with beans, topping it with boiled eggs, roasted/broiled chicken all make good salad toppings for quinoa salad. One day we went crazy and topped it with Paneer tikka and that was one insanely good Quinoa salad! Talking about eggs to get perfect creamy yolks of boiled eggs here's my post. How to make perfect hard boiled eggs.

Quinoa Salad - Try these Variations

• As I have mentioned that this salad is very versatile, you can work with various ingredients to make this salad. If you do not have quinoa you can substitute it for brown rice, black rice, boiled whole oats or barley. Love quinoa like I do? You can use red quinoa, brown quinoa, black quinoa or simply use the regular white quinoa.
• If you can’t find Mizuna greens, substitute that with Arugula or rocket leaves. That also has a peppery taste, not like Mizuna but that’s the closest substitution I can think of.
• Experiment with various proteins, In this one I added chickpeas and boiled eggs, you can add cooked chicken, chilli lime paneer, or go nuts about nuts.
• You can experiment with dressings. These days I am making  3 different dressings for the week and storing in the fridge. Most of the salad dressings stay good for up to a week.

If you love salads or looking for good salad recipes that are filling, try this Mizuna and quinoa salad. I know I am making this too often as I am in detox mode after several weeks of regular Indian meals. But detoxing or not You should try this I am sure you will love this crowd pleaser tasty, filling and super easy salad.

Mizuna Quinoa Salad with

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Course: Salad

Cuisine: continental

Author: Rekha Kakkar

Ingredients

• 2 cups Mizuna leaves
• 100 g baby tomatoes
• 100 g celery chopped
• 200 g armenian cucumber
• 300 g cucumber
• 2 Cups Quinoa cooked
• Boiled eggs optional
• 200 g Chickpeas (cooked optional)
• a! SALAD DRESSING
• ⅕ Cup Olive oil
• 2 tablespoon lime juice
• 2 tablespoon honey
• 1 tablespoon Red chilli flakes roasted
• ½ teaspoon sea salt

Instructions

• Wash and pat dry Mizuna leaves.
• Slice Cucumber, Armenian cucumber, cut baby tomatoes in halves.
• To make Dressing, mix all the ingredients given under salad dressing in a bowl and whisk to combine well.
• To pack in a jar layer the quinoa, veggies, chickpeas, mizuna leaves, all equally divided into 4 Jars.
• Add boiled egg as well and cover the jar with lid. And store in freezer until lunch time. This keeps well in fridge for 1-2 days.
• You can eat it straight out of jar after pouring the dressing. Or, just put everything on plate and drizzle dressing over it.
• Season with more salt as per your taste. Enjoy!