Tex-Mex Quinoa Salad Jars
If you haven’t already, it’s high time you embraced the trend of meals in a jar. Packing your lunch in jars lets you make portions ahead of time that are easy to transport to the office, minus any soggy ingredients. You can choose to keep the salad components separate and stuff a jar each night for the next day’s lunch, or prepare a whole batch of jars at once.
The acid from the smoky chipotle dressing helps keep the avocado from browning. Tortillas add nice crunch, and by placing them in the jar far from the dressing, they don’t turn soggy. Ditto for the greens. Still, if storing the jars for more than a day or two, you may want to place a piece of parchment paper between the chips and greens to help keep them crispy.
1 cup (250 mL) quinoa
1 1/2 cups (350 mL) frozen corn
1 cup (250 mL) plain yogurt
3 Tbsp (45 mL) extra-virgin olive oil or avocado oil
Juice of 1 lime
1/2 cup (125 mL) cilantro
1 small chipotle chili pepper in adobo sauce
1 garlic clove, chopped
1/2 tsp (2 mL) ground cumin
1/4 tsp (1 mL) salt
1/4 tsp (1 mL) black pepper
3 small avocado, diced
1 1/2 cups (350 mL) cooked black beans
1 1/2 cups (350 mL) cooked pinto beans
2 1/2 cups (625 mL) cherry tomatoes, halved
3 cups (750 mL) baby spinach or baby kale
2 cups (500 mL) unsalted tortilla chips, crumbled
In fine mesh sieve, rinse quinoa well with cold water. Heat heavy-bottomed medium-sized saucepan over medium heat. Add quinoa and heat, stirring often, until grains are dry and beginning to pop with a toasty aroma. Carefully pour in 1 3/4 cups (435 mL) water, bring to a boil and simmer, covered, over medium-low heat until quinoa is tender, about 12 minutes. Drain any excess water, set aside to cool, and then fluff with fork.
Prepare corn according to package directions and drain.
Place yogurt, oil, lime juice, cilantro, chipotle pepper, garlic, cumin, salt, and black pepper in blender container and blend until smooth.
To assemble, place about 1/4 cup (60 mL) yogurt dressing in each of 6 large wide-mouth glass jars. Divide avocado, black beans, pinto beans, quinoa, corn, tomatoes, spinach or kale, and tortilla chips among jars in that order and seal shut.
To serve, turn jar upside down and pour salad onto serving plate or simply stir together contents in the jar—and dig in.
Serves 6.
Each serving contains: 525 calories; 19 g protein; 23 g total fat (4 g sat. fat, 0 g trans fat); 67 g total carbohydrates (7 g sugars, 17 g fibre); 155 mg sodium
source: "The Lunch Bunch", alive #378, January 2015
Tex-Mex Quinoa Salad Jars
Directions
Matthew Kadey, MSc, RD
Matthew Kadey is a dietitian, nutrition writer, and recipe developer. He is also the author of Rocket Fuel (VeloPress, 2016) and Muffin Tin Chef (Ulysses Press, 2012).
READ THIS NEXT
SEE MORE »
Yogurt Marinated Chicken with Lemon and Cilantro
Yogurt completely transforms the texture of these chicken thighs, making them tender and flavourful with bright notes of lemon and cilantro. Ideal for a day trip, these can be marinated in the morning and cooked in the evening, but they also work well when cooked in advance and packed for a picnic to be eaten cold. Marinade mentions Marinate chicken thighs for anywhere between 4 and 24 hours. Discard excess marinade that has been in contact with raw chicken. It should not be consumed uncooked.
Kale and Napa Cabbage Salad with Sumac Pickled Onions
Citrusy and slightly sour sumac and a touch of maple syrup enliven pickled onions in a perfect complement to this salad. Kale and Napa cabbage stand up for hours to the sweet and puckery dressing, and hearty farro will keep you going while on the road. This salad is sure to be a favourite for picnics, backyard potlucks, or road trip lunch stops. Dressing for dinner This salad stands up well, even while dressed, for up to 4 hours. (Truth be told, I’ve often happily eaten it the next day.) In fact, time helps kale to soften up and become even more delicious. If you’re travelling for a longer period, make the pickled onion dressing as described above: let it stand for about 20 minutes, and then add all the oil and pack it into a separate container so you can finish the salad when you arrive at your destination. The pickled onions are also great with steaks or chicken.
Freeze-Ahead Breakfast Wraps with Sweet Potato, Red Pepper, and Spinach
These wraps are perfect for an overnight journey when you want to have something quick and satisfying the next day. Sweet smoked paprika adds just a hint of smoky flavour to sweet potatoes, which join with spinach and red pepper to dress up eggs in a pleasing way. Make these wraps anytime and stick them in the freezer for your next excursion. Pack them frozen and they’ll have time to thaw on the journey, or put them in the fridge the night before you travel so you have something convenient and tasty to eat before you set off. Leave the ketchup bottle behind, and serve them with your own smoky red pepper sauce. Freeze with ease While foil is convenient for freezing and reheating these wraps, to cut down on waste, freeze wraps in a single freezer-proof container. Insert a small piece of parchment between each wrap so they don’t stick together. This will allow you to remove individual wraps easily when you need them.
Poached Sablefish and Bok Choy with Lemongrass, Ginger, and Chili
While sablefish’s texture and fat content stand up admirably to the heat of the grill, this firm fish is also delicious poached. For this recipe, sablefish’s luxurious taste is combined with a light fragrant broth of lemongrass and ginger punctuated with the heat of Thai chili. Sustainability status Sablefish, also known as butterfish or black cod, is a rich and satisfying fish, plentiful in omega-3s and sourced sustainably from the Pacific Northwest. Skin and bones Sablefish has large pin bones. Ideally, your fishmonger will remove them, but if not, before you begin, locate them along the fish’s centreline and, using a pair of needle nose pliers, grasp them firmly to remove. You can leave the skin on for this recipe, which may help the fish hold together a little better while cooking, but it can be tricky to peel the skin away from the cooked fish and discard before plating. I opted to remove the skin first and simply keep a close eye on the cooking time, being careful to remove the fish from the poaching liquid before it flakes apart.