Name: Healthy Black Bean and Feta Quinoa Salad
Prep time: 10 min
Cook time: 15 min
Total time: 25 min
Yield: 10 servings
Ingredients: 1 cup uncooked quinoa; 15 oz can black beans (drained and rinsed); 1 red pepper (chopped); 1 green pepper (chopped); 1/2 cup feta (crumbled)

Summer is quickly approaching and what better way to accompany your BBQ than with this healthy black bean and feta quinoa salad. This salad is so easy to put together and should be served cold.

What makes this salad so great is the feta cheese. I do love feta cheese and I think it really compliments this dish. When I was thinking about an easy summer side dish, I knew that I had to make it include feta. My love affair of feta cheese is pretty evident on the blog. Think: this strawberry summer quinoa salad with feta is a perfect example. While that salad was on the sweet side, this one is savory.

We had my mom over for Memorial Day weekend and grilled out hamburgers. I made this salad for that occasion (my family is great for being guinea pigs), and she loved it. I’m hoping she wasn’t just saying that because she gave birth to me…I hope she really and truly meant it. Besides the feta cheese, this dish has green and red peppers as well as black beans in it. The explosion of flavors really popped from the peppers and beans together. The cheese just added that little bit extra zip that it needed.

If you like cold salads as a side dish, you should also try this easy orzo and feta salad with tomatoes.

Speaking of Memorial Day weekend, we spent the extra day unpacking and getting our house in more of a working order. Moving and unpacking has been a gradual process for us, and that is exactly the way I wanted it done. I usually want things done immediately, but I had to realize that it’s just not possible. We went from a 1200 square foot condo to a 2200 square foot house, so figuring out where everything was going to go has taken a lot longer. We have so much storage that I almost don’t know what to do with it all. The main rooms (the kitchen and master bedroom) are pretty much unpacked and we were able to unpack those and organize them over Memorial Day weekend. It was such a blessing to have that extra day that we were able to devote to unpacking and organizing.

Fun note: These pictures were the first ones taken for the blog at the new house. I’m sorry they are so sparce (they will get better…I promise). I just couldn’t find anything I needed to dress them up and wanted to shoot these that day before we ate all the salad.

Now, back to this salad. I love that you can combine so many things in quinoa to dress it up. Plain quinoa isn’t really my favorite…I like to add veggies or fruits to it to add in the delicious flavors and really make it pop.

To make this Healthy Black Bean and Feta Quinoa Salad:

Cook the Quinoa

Heat 2 cups of water to a rolling boil. Add 1 cup of uncooked quinoa to the pot. Cover and cook for 15 minutes. Turn off the burner and let the quinoa stand, covered for 5 minutes.

Assemble the Salad

Once the quinoa is cooked, transfer it to a large bowl. Add in the black beans, peppers and feta. Stir to combine. Serve immediately. If you want to serve this cold, let the quinoa cool off before you add the veggies and feta. You can do that by taking it out of the pot and put it into a bowl. This will help it cool faster. You could also place it in the refrigerator to cool as well.