Strawberry Spinach Quinoa Salad
on Apr 20, 2020, Updated Jul 08, 2024
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This Strawberry Spinach Quinoa Salad is a delicious and healthy salad to make this spring and summer! Loaded with quinoa, goat cheese, strawberries, spinach and pistachios, then tossed in a lemon vinaigrette.
Today felt like a good day to post a fresh, spring, Strawberry Spinach Quinoa Salad! After all the snow and record low temperatures we had last week I’m in need of sunshine, warm weather and something besides soup and comfort food. It felt more like January than the middle of April.
What Do I Need to Make the Quinoa Salad?
- Cooked Quinoa
- Baby Spinach
- Strawberries
- Goat cheese
- Pistachios
- Lemon
- Honey
- Dijon Mustard
- Olive oil
This salad is a great side dish to have with your favorite protein or you can add protein to the salad to make it a main dish. Grilled chicken would be my first choice, but grilled steak would be a great option as well.
How to Make the Salad
This salad takes almost no time to make if you cook your quinoa ahead of time. If you don’t cook it ahead of time, be sure to allow enough time for it to cool completely. You can read my process on how to cook perfect quinoa in the blog post for this Sun Dried Tomato Quinoa Salad.
- In a small jar or bowl combine the lemon zest, juice, dijon mustard, olive oil, honey, salt and pepper. Whisk or shake the ingredients until emulsified.
- In a large bowl add the cooked quinoa, spinach, sliced strawberries, crumbled goat cheese and pistachios.
- Pour the vinaigrette over the salad and toss everything together until it’s coated. Then it’s ready to serve.
Can I Make This Salad Ahead of Time?
This salad is best assembled just before serving. The spinach will likely wilt if it’s sitting in the vinaigrette overnight. I also prefer the texture of the strawberries when they haven’t been sitting in the vinaigrette for too long. You can prep all of the ingredients ahead of time. For instance, cook and chill the quinoa, slice the strawberries and make the vinaigrette.
Ingredient Substitutions
This salad is easily customizable depending on what’s available at the store and your personal preferences.
- Baby spinach can be substituted with baby kale or arugula.
- Goat cheese can be substituted with feta cheese or mini mozzarella balls.
- Pistachios can be swapped with toasted almonds, pecans or walnuts.
- If you don’t like quinoa try using farro, millet or couscous.
- If the strawberries don’t look good at the store, don’t settle. Substitute with blackberries, raspberries or a combination of berries.
This Strawberry Spinach Quinoa Salad is perfect to make this spring and summer when berries are at their peak. It will also be a lovely salad to make for Mother’s Day next month. It can be served with brunch or dinner.
More Quinoa Salads
Mexican Quinoa Salad with Honey Lime Vinaigrette
Strawberry Spinach Quinoa Salad
Ingredients
Salad
- 2 cups cooked and cooled quinoa
- 5 ounces baby spinach
- 2 cups sliced strawberries
- 2 ounces crumbled goat cheese
- 1/3 cup shelled pistachios
Vinaigrette
- 1 teaspoon lemon zest
- 1/4 cup fresh lemon juice
- 1 tablespoon dijon mustard
- 1 tablespoon extra virgin olive oil
- 2 teaspoons honey or maple syrup
- Kosher salt and fresh ground black pepper to taste
Instructions
- Combine all of the ingredients for the salad in a large bowl. In a small bowl whisk together the ingredients for the vinaigrette. Pour the vinaigrette over the salad and toss everything together until combined. Taste for seasoning and serve.
Video
Nutrition
Nutrition information is automatically calculated, so should only be used as an approximation.
This recipe is so good I could live on it for months!
Hi Betsy, it’s good to hear you love this Strawberry Spinach Quinoa Salad. It’s one of my favorites too!
My mother in law and I made this for lunch today. Such a light and refreshing salad. The vinaigrette was AMAZING. We used maple syrup instead of honey, but think we will try making it with honey. I am going to try it on other salads just to see. Thank you for sharing.