Artificial Food Coloring Free Quinoa Avocado Salad with Turmeric Lemon Dressing
This vibrant salad is a celebration of fresh, whole ingredients — creamy avocado, crisp cucumber, juicy cherry tomatoes, and fluffy quinoa all tossed together with handfuls of bright parsley and mint. The real star is the golden turmeric lemon dressing, which gets its gorgeous color entirely from ground turmeric and fresh lemon juice, no synthetic dyes or artificial additives anywhere in sight. That's actually one of the trickier things about bottled dressings — even "healthy-looking" ones can sneak in color additives to make them more visually appealing on the shelf. Here, every hue on the plate comes straight from nature. The dressing itself is whisked together in minutes with olive oil, lemon zest, ginger, and garlic, and it coats every grain and vegetable in a warm, tangy, slightly earthy flavor that tastes far more complex than the ingredient list suggests. A handful of dry-roasted pumpkin seeds folded in at the end adds a satisfying crunch that rounds out the whole bowl. It's the kind of salad that looks impressive enough for a dinner party but comes together with nothing more than a saucepan and a mixing bowl.
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Learn more →Ingredients
4 servings
For the salad
- 1 cup quinoa, rinsed
- 2 cups water
- ¼ tsp salt
- 2 ripe avocados, pitted, peeled, and diced
- 1 cup cherry tomatoes, halved
- 1 english cucumber, diced
- ¼ cup red onion, finely diced
- ¼ cup fresh parsley, roughly chopped
- ¼ cup fresh mint, roughly chopped
- ¼ cup dry-roasted pumpkin seeds
For the dressing
- 3 tbsp extra virgin olive oil
- 3 tbsp fresh lemon juice (from about 1½ lemons)
- 1 tsp lemon zest
- 1 tsp ground turmeric
- ½ tsp ground ginger
- 1 garlic clove, minced
- ¼ tsp black pepper
- ¼ tsp salt
Instructions
- 1
Combine the rinsed quinoa, water, and ¼ tsp salt in a medium saucepan over medium-high heat. Bring to a boil, then reduce the heat to low, cover, and cook for 15 minutes, until the water is fully absorbed and the quinoa tails have unfurled.
- 2
Remove the saucepan from the heat and let the quinoa steam, covered, for 5 minutes. Uncover, fluff with a fork, and spread onto a large plate or sheet pan to cool for at least 10 minutes, until no longer steaming.
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