Vegan Quinoa Salad with Roasted Vegetables

This Vegan Quinoa Salad is packed with plant-based protein, roasted vegetables and crunchy maple cashews. It makes for a perfect nutritious dinner or a great make-ahead lunch! 

This post is sponsored by Woodward Corner Market. All opinions are our own.

We’ve said it before and we’ll say it again: salad doesn’t have to be boring and tasteless! 

The best salad recipes have a little bit of everything. I like mine with both raw and cooked elements, lots of texture, and a delicious dressing that brings everything together. 

In the case of this vegan quinoa salad, we pair fresh greens with cooked grains, roasted vegetables, dried fruit and the BEST crunchy maple cashews. A simple citrus maple mustard vinaigrette pulls all of the flavors together. It’s delicious, untraditional, and perfect for meal prep.

We’ll get to the recipe details below, but first, we’re excited to share some news! 

Listen up, metro Detroit-ers; If you haven’t heard, Woodward Corner Market (located on Woodward in Royal Oak) is opening later this month! We’re so excited to be partnering up with them to share a few recipes featuring Michigan-made products and let you guys in on all of the amazing things happening at their beautiful new store. 

Woodward Corner Market is part of the Meijer family. It’s located right next to Beaumont (conveniently just a few miles from my house!). They’re focusing on bringing fresh, affordable and local products to the area, and the store is going to be absolutely gorgeous! 

We’re so excited to see the finished store (and we’ll be sharing a sneak peek on stories soon!), and we can’t wait to start shopping there. As food bloggers, we go to the grocery store at least 5x a week. I couldn’t be happier that this new store is so close to my house, affordable, and has so many amazing local products! 

As part of our partnership, we’re sharing a few recipes featuring locally-made food products. To kick things off, we used our favorite Detroit Gourmet Nut Company’s Handcrafted Maple Cashews as a crunchy element in this salad.

You guys. These handcrafted maple nuts are INSANE. (Insanely good, that is!) We first tried them at a local event last year and were hooked immediately. They have just the right amount of salty/sweet coating, and they’re vegan, which is unusual for coated nuts. 

They make Maple Cashews, Pecans and Walnuts, all of which work great in this recipe. We chose to feature cashews because they’re our favorite nut, but you could really use any of the three. 

Plus, we absolutely love that Lynne and Darren from Detroit Gourmet Nuts take a portion of their sales for the year and donate it to mostly Detroit area nonprofits that they feel are doing the most good for residents.

Their company name's initials, DGNC, also are the initials for Doing Good and Noble Causes, which they named their awards. Past nonprofit award winners include Keep Growing Detroit, Alternatives for Girls, Foodlab Detroit, Mercy Education Project and Darkroom Detroit. Amazing, right?

If you live in the area, you can find their products at many local stores, including (of course) the new Woodward Corner Market! We’d love for you to stop by on Opening Day (January 29th) to see the store, sample some local products (including these nuts) and say hello to us! We’ll be at a booth handing out samples of this salad and would LOVE to meet you in person. 

You can check out more about Woodward Corner Market on their site. Plus, stay tuned on Instagram for some exciting updates and behind-the-scenes at the new store!

Now back to the recipe! 

This vegan quinoa salad is super easy to prep ahead of time. 

Simply cook a batch of quinoa according to package directions. We cook ours in vegetable broth to add extra flavor, but if you’d prefer to use water that’s perfectly fine, too. 

I like to cook more than I need for a specific recipe so I have extra to throw into another meal later in the week! Cooked quinoa stores really well in the refrigerator. If you need to reheat it for another recipe, just pop it in the microwave (or on the stove) with a splash of water. 

The rest of the salad is very easy to assemble. We opted for brussels sprouts and sweet potatoes as our roasted vegetables. You can easily substitute with just about any other vegetable that tastes good roasted. Here are a few ideas:

• Squash
• Radishes
• Onions
• Cauliflower
• Potatoes
• Carrots 
• Beets

Roasted vegetables also store well in the refrigerator, so you can make them ahead of time and enjoy in lunches all week.

The salad dressing can also be made ahead of time. (Sensing a pattern here? This is truly a perfect meal prep salad!) Simply whisk everything together, or add all of the ingredients to a jar with a lid, seal, and give it a good shake. 

When you’re ready to serve, toss all of the components in the dressing, serve atop a bed of greens (optional - we used baby kale) and top with crunchy maple cashews. Yum! 

More delicious vegan salad recipes

• Roasted Beet, Citrus & Lentil Salad
• Vegan Cobb Salad with Eggplant “Bacon”
• Roasted Vegetable & Wild Rice Salad
• Moroccan Carrot & Lentil Salad
• Shaved Brussels Sprout Salad

If you make this easy vegan quinoa and roasted vegetable salad recipe, we’d love for you to leave a comment and rating below! We also love to see your creations on Instagram – tag us at @crowded_kitchen so we can see what you’ve been cooking.

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