Quinoa and glazed carrot salad

A healthy quinoa salad with glazed carrots, pecan nuts, radish and parsnip chips is without a doubt a salad you must make. It is a perfect salad to serve for your guests, as a light lunch to take to work or as an addition to other dishes. The salad is flavoured according to taste with a yoghurt dressing and there is not a gram of mayonnaise in it.

You can serve this quinoa and glazed carrot salad in a layered form, i.e. without mixing the ingredients or by combining them just before the serving. I mixed all the ingredients together before I served the salad for dinner as an addition to meat – it nicely replaced potatoes and any other additions and made a healthier dish altogether.

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Ingredients for quinoa and glazed carrot salad.

• 300 g baby carrots
• 200 ml orange juice
• 1 tablespoon of honey (I used flower type)
• 50 g roasted pecans
• 150 g quinoa
• 1/2 teaspoon of salt + pinch of seasoning the salad
• 80 g radish
• big bunch of parsnip chips

Yoghurt dressing:

• 250 g natural yoghurt
• 1 tablespoon of tahini
• few leaves of fresh mint
• 1/4 teaspoon of salt

How to make quinoa and glazed carrot salad.

Pour water into a pot, add 1/2 teaspoon of salt and bring it to boil. Pour the previously rinsed quinoa into the boiling water, bring it to boil again and cook for 15 minutes, covered, over a low heat. Pour the cooked quinoa into a colander and let it cool down.

Pour water into a separate pot, put in the cleaned and peeled carrots and bring it to boil. From the moment it starts boiling, simmer the carrots for 6-7 minutes. Once done, let the carrots cool down a bit and cut each in half lengthwise.

Put honey, orange juice and the pre-cooked carrots into a pan. Cook over a medium heat with a tendency to high, until the juice evaporates completely and the carrots get slightly caramelised. Allow the carrots to cool down.

Coarsely chop the roasted pecans and cut the radish into thin slices.

Put the yogurt, salt, tahini and mint leaves into a tall mug and blend.

Put the cold quinoa on a serving dish and pour some of the yoghurt dressing over it. Next, put on the glazed carrots, radish slices, chopped nuts, the remaining dressing and parsnip chips. Sprinkle the salad with a little salt on top.

Good to know when making quinoa and glazed carrot salad.

In this recipe, you can use both baby and slightly more mature carrots. Baby carrots are cooking much faster and it is also not really necessary to peel them, it is enough to just wash and clean them thoroughly. Personally, I like carrots to be al dente, i.e. still slightly hard after cooked.

I roasted the pecans in a non-stick pan over a low heat for 6 minutes.

I used freshly squeezed orange juice.

Prepare the parsnip chips by slicing the parsnip very thinly, preferably with a vegetable peeler and drying them in the oven. After cutting, lightly drizzle the parsnip slices with oil, sprinkled with salt and place them on a baking sheet lined with baking paper. Then, they dry them in an oven preheated to 160 degrees Celsius for 20 to 25 minutes. Make sure you are checking on them occasionally in order to avoid burning.

It is not necessary to blend the ingredients for the yoghurt sauce. You can finely chop the mint and mix it with the rest of the ingredients.

Are you looking for dishes with quinoa? If so, try our recipe for Sweet potato and quinoa cakes.