Grain Salad

This delightful chilled Grain Salad is chock full of nutty brown rice, herbs, garbanzo beans, cucumbers, tomatoes, feta cheese, and red onions with a simple olive oil and lemon juice dressing. Make a batch of this to stash in the fridge and lunch is in the bag all week!

I’m so excited to introduce you to my current favourite salad… And you know I love a good salad.

(If you’re new here, I’ll just point your attention to this pizza salad, White Bean Salad, Asian Pasta Salad {Asian Noodle Salad}, Tex-Mex Cobb Salad, Dill Pickle Egg Salad, and heck, our whole Salad Recipes page. Like I said, I love salads.)

Not only is today’s chilled Grain salad easy on the eyes, but it comes together in a flash; leftover brown rice tossed with loads of fresh herbs, diced cucumber, halved cherry tomatoes, garbanzo beans, crumbled feta cheese, and red onions (pickled or raw). All of this gets the world’s simplest dressing made directly in the salad of fresh lemon juice, garlic olive oil, salt, and pepper.

Ta da! Seriously, that’s it. That’s all it takes!

But whoa, wait until you taste this Grain Salad. It’s substantial but it doesn’t make you feel like there’s a brick in your stomach.

As a stand alone vegetarian meal for the summer, this cannot be beat. It also makes a killer side dish for any number of grilled chicken, pork, or fish dishes.

But if you should feel so inclined, Grain Salad truly sings if you add some grilled Greek chicken to it. And if you’re feeling a little fishy, sub in some good tuna or canned salmon in place of the chicken.

Rice Salad

When you’re making a Grain Salad with rice, it’s important to make sure you have well-chilled leftover rice. If you don’t have leftover rice, you can cheat a little by spreading your cooked rice in a shallow layer on a baking sheet and stashing it in the freezer for an hour, or until it’s cold.

You want chilled rice both because you don’t want carry-over heat from the rice to cook the veggies or melt the cheese and also because the rice forms a nifty little coating on the outside of the grain as it chills. This process is called retrogradation and it helps prevent mushy rice in chilled salads and fried rice alike.

If you want to have a head-start on making grain salad any old time, you can cook a large batch of rice ahead of time and freeze it for both grain salads and fried rice!

Now let’s talk TYPES of rice, shall we? For our grain salad, I prefer brown basmati rice. The long, thin grains stay separate quite nicely but still have a lot of character.

Any long grain brown rice that you like should do the job well, though. I don’t advise using instant or quick rice, however, as it has been processed in such a way that the taste and texture are inferior to “regular” brown rice.

A word about herbs, too, if I may. My favourite combo for our grain salad is a mixture of parsley, dill, and mint for a taste of the Mediterranean. If your garden is positively bursting with cilantro, though, feel free to sub it in for the dill and/or mint.

If you do not have garlic olive oil, you can either make some using the recipe from my first cookbook or purchase some here on Amazon.com.

Grain Salad

Add the brown rice, feta cheese, cucumber, cherry tomatoes, garbanzo beans, and onions to a large mixing bowl and mix to combine evenly. 

Add the herbs, lemon juice, garlic olive oil, kosher salt, and black pepper and toss gently to distribute everything evenly. 

You can serve this immediately, but it benefits from at least an hour in the refrigerator to allow the flavours to meld and marry. 

Grain Salad

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Rebecca Lindamood

Prep Time 10 minutes mins

Total Time 10 minutes mins

Cook ModePrevent your screen from going dark

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This delightful chilled Grain Salad is chock full of nutty brown rice, herbs, garbanzo beans, cucumbers, tomatoes, feta cheese, and red onions with a simple olive oil and lemon juice dressing. Make a batch of this to stash in the fridge and lunch is in the bag all week!

Equipment

• 1 mixing bowl
• 1 spoon
• 1 knife
• 1 cutting board

Ingredients

  

1x2x3x

• 4 cups chilled leftover cooked brown rice
• 4 ounces crumbled feta cheese
• 1 seedless cucumber diced
• 2 pints cherry tomatoes quartered
• 1 can garbanzo beans drained and rinsed
• ½ a red onion peeled and thinly sliced or diced
• 1 cup fresh herbs use about 2/3 parsley, but add in some fresh dill and mint for maximum wow!
• 1 lemon juiced
• ⅓ cup garlic olive oil
• 1 teaspoon kosher salt
• 1/2 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper

Instructions

 

• Add the brown rice, feta cheese, cucumber, cherry tomatoes, garbanzo beans, and onions to a large mixing bowl and mix to combine evenly.
• Add the herbs, lemon juice, garlic olive oil, kosher salt, and black pepper and toss gently to distribute everything evenly.
• You can serve this immediately, but it benefits from at least an hour in the refrigerator to allow the flavours to meld and marry.

Nutrition

Calories: 263kcalCarbohydrates: 32gProtein: 6gFat: 13gSaturated Fat: 3gPolyunsaturated Fat: 1gMonounsaturated Fat: 8gCholesterol: 13mgSodium: 472mgPotassium: 471mgFiber: 4gSugar: 4gVitamin A: 1313IUVitamin C: 46mgCalcium: 115mgIron: 2mg

Nutritional information is an estimate and provided to you as a courtesy. You should calculate the nutritional information with the actual ingredients used in your recipe using your preferred nutrition calculator.

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