This Quinoa Chickpea Salad recipe is bursting with Mediterranean flavors! Fresh, light, and lemony, packed full of nutrients; you’ll want to serve this up all summer long! Healthy, vegan, gluten-free, and great for meal prep. Video.
Why you’ll love this Quinoa Salad
Bright and punchy, this quinoa salad is a flavor explosion! Full of fresh, healthy ingredients and Mediterranean flavors, it’s one you’ll want to make over and over again. Quinoa is combined with chickpeas, cucumber, tomatoes, kalamata olives, red onion, fresh dill, and loads of parsley, but it’s the incredible preserved lemon dressing that elevates it!
This was our “go-to” quinoa salad in our catering business, always a hit with our clients, and such a crowd pleaser! The salad can be made ahead and stored in the fridge for up to 4 days, actually improving with time. Perfect for meal prep! The best thing is, you probably have everything on hand to make this right now – and please don’t worry if you don’t have preserved lemons (take a peek at the recipe notes), but they do truly elevate here.
Quinoa Chickpea Salad Ingredients
- Quinoa – dry uncooked white quinoa, red quinoa, or tricolored quinoa
- Canned chickpeas- drained, or feel free to cook from scratch!
- Fresh Veggies- red onion, English Cucumber, red or yellow bell pepper, cherry or grape tomatoes
- Kalamata olives, pitted, chopped or halved
- Herbs – flat-leaf parsley and dill ( or sub fresh mint)
- Optional additions: avocado, feta, radishes
The Lemon Dressing!
- Extra-Virgin Olive Oil– for richness and polyphenols!
- Fresh lemon juice– fresh lemon juice is a must here! Don’t use bottled.
- Fresh garlic cloves- for a punchy flavor, finely minced
- Salt and black Pepper
- Optional additions: sumac and preserved lemon ( or sub lemon zest)
How to Make Quinoa Salad
Step 1. It starts with cooking the quinoa- you can use this guide to cook the quinoa.
Step 2. Make the lemon dressing. Today we are using preserved lemons to make this even more punchy and flavorful- but no worries, you can leave them out! Preserved lemons, if unfamiliar, are a flavorful Middle Eastern condiment, and in a nutshell, are lemons preserved in salt. Here they are chopped finely and added to the dressing. If you don’t have them- don’t worry- see the recipe notes!
Step 3. Prep your veggies and herbs while the quinoa is cooking!
Step 4. Assemble! Then assemble the quinoa salad, adding the chickpeas, veggies and herbs to the bowl. Give a toss with the Lemon Dressing and taste, adding more salt and lemon to your liking. Sprinkle with a little sumac if you like and fresh herbs!
Serving Suggestions
This salad pairs well with Mediterranean dishes or Middle Eastern flavors! Here are a few ideas:
- Grilled Chicken Shawarma
- Mediterranean Stuffed Peppers
- Sheet Pan Mediterranean Chicken
- Grilled Tofu
- Baba Ganoush
- Homemade Pita Bread
- Authentic Falafels
- Tzatziki
Storage
This Quinoa Salad will keep up to 4 days in an airtight container in the fridge. If making this salad ahead, re-taste for salt and lemon right before serving and quinoa can soak up some of the salt.
I hope enjoy this fresh, vibrant salad- please leave a rating and a comment below- always appreciated! 💛 Sylvia
MORE Favorite SALADS YOU MAY LIKE!
- Thai Quinoa Salad
- Carrot Quinoa Salad
- Southwest Black Bean Quinoa Salad
- Quinoa Asparagus Salad (aka Spring Tabouli)
- Moroccan Quinoa Salad with Blood Oranges, Quinoa, Olives, Almonds and Mint
- Grilled Corn Salad
- Blueberry Salad
Watch how to make Quinoa Salad
Quinoa Chickpea Salad
- Prep Time: 15
- Cook Time: 15
- Total Time: 30 minutes
- Yield: 6
- Category: salad, vegan salad
- Method: tossed
- Cuisine: Middle Eastern
- Diet: Vegan
Description
This Quinoa Chickpea Salad is made with chickpeas, cucumber, tomato, kalamata olives dill, parsley and Preserved Lemon Dressing. A healthy vegan salad with Middle Eastern flavors that can be made ahead!
Ingredients
- 1/4 cup preserved lemons, finely chopped (or see notes)
- 1/4 cup olive oil
- 1/4 cup lemon juice
- 2 garlic cloves, finely minced
- 1/2 teaspoon salt
- 1/2 teaspoon pepper
- 1/2 teaspoon sumac (optional)
- 3/4 cup quinoa (dry, uncooked)
- 1 1/2 cups water
- 1 15-ounce can chickpeas, rinsed and drained ( 1 1/2 cups cooked chickpeas)
- 1/2 cup red onion, finely chopped (see notes)
- 1 English cucumber, diced (2 cups)
- 1 bell pepper (yellow is nice) diced
- 1 cup cherry or grape tomatoes, halved ( or chopped radish)
- 1/4 cup kalamata olives, chopped or halved
- 1/2 cup flat-leaf parsley, chopped
- 1/4 cup dill, chopped (or sub mint, or use both!)
- Other optional additions: avocado, feta, radishes
Instructions
- Place quinoa, water and pinch of salt in a medium pot, bring to a boil, cover, simmer on low 12-15 minutes until all the water is gone. Uncover, fluff, cool slightly.
- Make the dressing by mixing all ingredients in a bowl. You can make this up to 3 days ahead and store in a jar in the fridge.
- Prep all the veggies. If sensitive to onions, dice, then soak in cold salted water while you chop the rest.
- Place the chickpeas, onions, cucumber, bell pepper, tomatoes, olives, dill and parsley to a large bowl. Add the cooled quinoa and the dressing and give a good toss.
- Taste, adjust salt and lemon to your liking. If making ahead, taste once more right before serving as the quinoa and chickpeas have a tendency to soak up the salt and lemon, so you might want to add a little more.
Notes
No preserved lemons? Substitute lemon zest from one medium lemon plus 1/2 teaspoon of salt. Add more lemon juice to taste.
Salad will keep 4 days in the fridge.
Nutrition
- Serving Size: 1 cup
- Calories: 253
- Sugar: 3.4 g
- Sodium: 607.4 mg
- Fat: 12.8 g
- Saturated Fat: 1.7 g
- Carbohydrates: 30.3 g
- Fiber: 6.1 g
- Protein: 7.5 g
- Cholesterol: 0 mg
I made this quinoa salad for my family and it is absolutely delicious. Everyone loved it and it will be my go-to salad. Thanks🙂
Great to hear Carolina!
This salad is amazing! I made it as an app for a Mediterranean dinner, placing spoonfuls into individual Boston lettuce leaves. It was a hit!
Love that idea! Thanks Karen.
Greetings, this is delicious! However, we do have a chickpea allergy in the family- what do you suggest would be a good substitution? From across the way in South Florida…
I bet most any bean would work ok here- white beans, lentils, etc. 🙂
This was absolutely delicious to both my husband and I and makes a filling meal all by itself.
Great to hear Melanie!
This salad is delicious! Thank you for sharing your recipes. They always turn out fantastic.
thanks Sonja!
About to try this recipe and want to check first…………..for preserved lemon dressing:-
1) do you use both the flesh and skin of preserved lemon; and
2) do you rinse/soak preserved lemon in water before using to dilute salt concentrate?
Thank you
Hi Jane- I use both flesh and skin and do not rinse. 🙂
served this with christmas lunch the other day. what a great recipe, love that lemony hit. everyone loved it, and its now in my go to recipe list 🙂 thanks so much.
Thanks Janine!
Making this beautiful salad right now.
I hope you enjoy it as much as we have!
Made this tonight without cucumbers and tomatoes but added the radishes. So yum!!!
Oh perfect! Thanks Kat!
Delicious! Prepared recipe as stated, except added some minced celery in place of some cucumber and did not look for the Sumac spice. Friends loved it and took all the few leftovers! Will definitely become a staple in my house. Thanks Sylvia!
Yay Janet! 🙌 Glad this worked for you!
AMAZING!!! Perfect balance of flavors!! For the dressing, I leave out the preserved lemon (I don’t put lemon zest), and it’s delicious! I also leave out the dill and parsley, because my mom doesn’t like them. This is a REGULAR in our house!! Thank you sooooo much for the recipe! 5 stars!
Great to hear Oona!
So good, will definitely make it again and again and share the recipe. Thanks, love it
Great to hear!
This was the first recipe I ever made from Feasting at Home, and I made it again recently as a side for a cookout. It is so delicious and such a crowd pleaser!
Thanks Kathleen-glad you enjoyed this!
Fabulous salad! Didn’t have preserved Lemon, so I used lemon zest and lots of juice, and skipped the Sumac. Will for sure do this again, many times.
This is an outrageous salad! One I am sure to make again. Instead of a lemony dressing, I substituted olive oil, small amount, and Colavita Balsamic vinegar.
Glad you enjoyed it!
Looks delicious. I will try it soon.
Omg, this salad is so delicious! The combination of flavours is dynamic! So good!
Thanks Wendy!
I will make this as often as possible. It is soo delicious! Fresh summer vegetables. Preserved lemons are my new favorite ingredient. I have shared this recipe with all of my friends.
Appreciate this!
The preserved lemon and sumac really make the flavor POP! So worth the effort to use these ingredients.
Just made this, so healthy and delicious, perfect thing to pack for a work lunch!
I made this today and it was delicious. Because of food allergies, I had to make two versions and leave some of the ingredients out in one version, but both were delicious. We used quinoa, bulgar and black rice mixed as the grains. We’ll definitely make it again.
Perfect Michelle- thanks so much!
This hit all,the right spots for my family. I’m a vegetarian and so is one of my granddaughters. My son loves preserved lemons, the wife of one of my grandsons loves quinoa. Plus we all love chickpeas. I had a very happy family. It was delicious!
We tried this with tri-color quinoa last week and loved it! So fresh and lemony, and avocado and feta seal the deal. Thanks for another healthy delicious salad!
I’m not a huge fan of quinoa but I plan to try this recipe because everything else looks so darn tasty!
This quinoa salad was incrdible. It was a hit even for my picky carnivorous family. Will put in the rotation this summer!