This wild rice salad recipe is modest and bursting with taste, with crunchy veggies, pecans, cranberries, a zingy dressing, and feta cheese!
Right here’s a hearty fall and wintry weather facet dish that’s simply begging to leap onto your desk: wild rice salad! This combination of rice with crunchy veggies, pecans, cranberries, and feta cheese crumbles is perfect for any instance, from the vacations to a easy comfy dinner. A maple Dijon French dressing dressing infuses a tangy taste right through, punctuated via bursts of clean parsley. It’s beautiful easy to place in combination, and simple to make forward. Aspect dish issues, solved!
What you wish to have for wild rice salad
Wild rice is absolute best for fall and wintry weather recipes, however did you understand it’s now not technically rice? It’s the seed from a local grass that grows in lakes and streams within the Northern US and Canada. However because it appears to be like such a lot find it irresistible, wild rice is handled as rice in maximum cuisines. It used to be a very powerful staple to Local American citizens within the higher Nice Lakes house of america. (I’m from Minnesota at the beginning, so wild rice used to be a part of the heritage and historical past of the place I lived rising up!)
This wild rice salad makes use of a wild rice mix, which combines wild rice with more than a few forms of rice (maximum continuously brown). This makes it each more cost effective and a greater texture for a salad! Right here’s what you’ll want for wild rice salad:
- Pantry components: Wild rice mix, salt, white wine vinegar, Dijon mustard, maple syrup or sugar, olive oil, pecans, dried cranberries
- Recent components: Celery, inexperienced onions, Italian parsley
- Dairy: Feta cheese crumbles (forget for vegan and upload extra salt to style)
Notes on the use of wild rice mix
A wild rice mix is absolute best for the use of in a salad, since the texture of untamed rice by itself can also be slightly heavy. Incessantly wild rice blends will use brown rice, and from time to time different varieties like purple and black rice. This makes the mix a lot less expensive to provide and it has a softer general texture, making it more uncomplicated to devour than instantly wild rice.
On this recipe, you’ll use any package deal marked “wild rice mix.” Cooking directions might range relying at the logo, so use the timing and liquid specified at the package deal if it differs from this recipe.
Does this paintings with 100% wild rice?
This wild rice salad additionally works with natural wild rice! If all you’ve got is natural wild rice, you’ll use that too. The cook dinner time is largely the similar, however you’ll use extra water and drain extra liquid after cooking (vs letting the water take in within the wild rice mix manner). Merely make the next adjustments:
- Use 2 ½ cups water as a substitute of one ¾ cups.
- Simmer 45 to 50 mins, till the rice is divided and mushy. (Many of the grains will cut up, however now not all: see this picture.) If many of the grains aren’t cut up, proceed to cook dinner, including extra water if important.
- As soon as cooked, drain any extra liquid.
Customizing this wild rice salad recipe
This wild rice salad recipe is stuffed with goodness, that includes the autumnal flavors of celery, inexperienced onion and parsley towards nutty pecans and candy cranberries. Need to switch out probably the most components to make it your personal, or upload a few of your favourite pieces to the combo? Listed below are a couple of concepts:
- Chopped apple
- Pomegranate seeds (upload or use rather than cranberries)
- Dried cherries
- Pumpkin seeds
- Walnuts
- Child arugula
- Recent rosemary or sage (use simplest very small quantities, to style)
Extra grain salads and facet dishes
This wild rice salad is the most productive fall and wintry weather facet. It’s a super fall salad or Thanksgiving facet dish, it really works for Christmas, and it’s flexible to make use of at any kind of dinner. Pair it with hen, baked salmon or vegetarian dinners for a hearty, filling facet. Listed below are a couple of extra nice facet dishes to take a look at:
This wild rice salad recipe is…
Vegetarian and gluten-free. For vegan, forget the feta cheese crumbles.
Description
This wild rice salad recipe is modest and bursting with taste, with crunchy veggies, pecans, cranberries, a zingy dressing, and feta cheese!
- 1 cup raw wild rice mix (mixture of brown and wild**)
- ¾ teaspoon kosher salt, divided
- 2 ribs celery, thinly sliced
- 2 inexperienced onions, thinly sliced
- 2 tablespoons chopped contemporary Italian parsley
- 1 tablespoon white wine vinegar
- 1 tablespoon Dijon mustard
- 1 tablespoon maple syrup or sugar
- 2 tablespoons olive oil
- ½ cup feta cheese crumbles (not obligatory; forget for vegan)
- ½ cup dried cranberries
- ½ cup chopped pecans
- Rinse the rice in a wonderful mesh strainer underneath chilly water. Upload the rice to a saucepan with 1 ¾ cup water and if desired, 1 tablespoon olive oil or butter (not obligatory). Deliver to a boil, then scale back to a low simmer and cook dinner for 45 mins or till all of the liquid is absorbed (see notes* and **). Quilt and make allowance to face and steam for 10 mins. Stir in ¼ teaspoon kosher salt. Then pour the rice onto a sheet pan in one layer and position it within the freezer for five mins till the rice is room temperature. (Or, you’ll make the rice forward and refrigerate till serving, as much as 2 days.)
- In the meantime, get ready the celery, inexperienced onion, and parsley as famous within the directions above.
- In a small bowl, whisk in combination the white wine vinegar, Dijon mustard, maple syrup, olive oil, and ½ teaspoon kosher salt.
- When the rice is cooked and cooled, combine it in a big bowl with the chopped greens, dressing, feta cheese crumbles, dried cranberries, and chopped pecans. If desired, upload a couple of feta crumbles and pecans to the highest for serving.
- The salad tastes perfect contemporary, however retail outlets as much as 3 days refrigerated. For make forward, cook dinner the rice and blend the dressing prematurely and refrigerate. Upload all salad components in combination ahead of serving.
Notes
*You’ll use any package deal marked “wild rice mix” that accommodates a mixture of wild rice with different forms of rice, together with brown, purple and black. Cooking directions might range relying at the logo, so use the timing and liquid specified at the package deal if it differs from this recipe.
**If all you’ve got is natural wild rice, you’ll use that too. Use 2 ½ cups water as a substitute of one 3/4. Simmer 45 to 50 mins, till the rice is divided and mushy. (Many of the grains will cut up, however now not all: see the picture.) If now not, proceed to cook dinner till maximum grains are cut up, including extra water if important. When the rice is cooked, drain extra liquid.
- Class: Aspect dish
- Way: Stovetop
- Delicacies: American
- Vitamin: Vegetarian
Key phrases: Wild rice salad, wild rice salad recipe
