I’m living off refrigerator salads all summer, what about you? Oh, you don’t know what a refrigerator salad is? It’s a salad that holds up well to refrigeration (doesn’t go limp and soggy like lettuce), and a meal prepper’s best friend. During the summer months I love mixing up a big batch of refrigerator salads, like this Lemony Artichoke and Quinoa Salad, to eat all week. Sometimes I eat them alone as a light entrée, sometimes I use them as a side dish, sometimes as a base for bowl meals. They’re versatile, delicious, and never go to waste in my house!
This Lemony Artichoke and Quinoa Salad is basically a summer version of my Spanish Chickpeas and Rice. It’s a little lighter, brighter (no smokiness), and served cold. It’s perfect for this scorching heat!
Substitutions and Add-Ins
This salad is super versatile, so here are some other ingredients that would go well in this salad, in case you don’t like any that I’ve included, can’t get them for a decent price, or just happen to have some of these items on hand and need to use them up:
- Couscous or orzo in place of the quinoa
- Cucumber
- Tomatoes (diced or grape tomatoes cut in half)
- Feta
- Roasted Red Peppers
- Red Onion
- Top with a dollop of hummus
How to Serve Lemony Artichoke and Quinoa Salad
I intended this dish to be a vegetarian/vegan main dish with a large serving size of 2 cups, but it could also be served as a side dish to any other meal (smaller serving size of about 1 cup). This would make a great base for a bowl meal (add grilled chicken or hard boiled egg), or could be stuffed into a pita as a sort of sandwich.
How Long Does This Salad Keep?
This Lemony Artichoke and Quinoa Salad is very sturdy, so it’s good for about 4-5 days in the refrigerator (time may vary with refrigeration conditions). I haven’t tried freezing this one yet, but based on how well my Roasted Cauliflower and Quinoa Salad freezes, I think this one would also freeze well. I find frozen foods like this are usually best if eaten within three months.
Need some help getting juice out of your lemons? Here are 5 Tips for Juicing Lemons.
Lemony Artichoke and Quinoa Salad
Servings 4 2 cups eachIngredients
- 1 cup quinoa ($1.20)
- 1 fresh lemon ($0.37)
- 1/4 cup olive oil ($0.48)
- 2 cloves garlic, minced ($0.16)
- 1 tsp salt ($0.05)
- freshly cracked pepper ($0.05)
- 1 13oz. can quartered artichoke hearts* ($2.59)
- 1 red bell pepper ($1.00)
- 1 cup chopped fresh parsley ($0.35)
- 1 15oz. can chickpeas ($0.49)
Instructions
- Rinse the quinoa well in a fine wire mesh sieve. Place the rinsed quinoa in a pot with 1.75 cups water. Place a lid on the pot, turn the heat on to high, and allow the water to come to a boil. Once it reaches a full boil, turn the heat down to low and let it simmer for 15 minutes (lid on).
- While the quinoa is cooking, prepare the lemon garlic dressing. Zest the lemon, then squeeze the juice (you'll need 1/4 to 1/3 cup juice). Add the lemon juice and 1 tsp of the zest to a bowl or jar along with the olive oil, minced garlic, salt, and some freshly cracked pepper (10-15 cranks of a pepper mill). Whisk the ingredients together or close the jar and shake until they are combined. Set the dressing aside.
- After the quinoa has cooked, spread it out into a casserole dish or other wide shallow dish and refrigerate uncovered for about 15 minutes to cool it down.
- While the quinoa is cooling, prepare the rest of the salad ingredients. Drain the artichoke hearts and roughly chop them into smaller pieces. Finely dice the red bell pepper. Roughly chop the parsley. Rinse and drain the chickpeas. Place the artichoke hearts, bell pepper, parsley, and chickpeas in a large bowl.
- Once the quinoa has cooled, add it to the bowl with the other salad ingredients. Toss gently to combine, then drizzle the lemon garlic dressing over top. Gently toss again until everything is coated in dressing. Serve immediately or refrigerate up to 4-5 days.
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Notes
Nutrition
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Keep scrolling to see the step by step photos below…
How to Make Lemony Artichoke and Quinoa Salad – Step by Step Photos
Rinse 1 cup of quinoa well in a wire mesh sieve. Once rinsed, add it to a pot along with 1.75 cups water. Place a lid on pot and turn the heat on to high. Let the water come up to a boil. Once it reaches a boil, turn the heat down to low, and let it simmer for 15 minutes with the lid in place.
While the quinoa is cooking, prepare the lemon garlic dressing. Zest a lemon, then squeeze out the juice. You’ll need anywhere from 1/4 to 1/3 cup juice.
Add 1 tsp of the lemon zest, 1/4 cup olive oil, 2 minced cloves of garlic, 1 tsp salt, and some freshly cracked pepper (10-15 cranks of a pepper mill) to the lemon juice. Whisk the ingredients together, or, if using a jar, shake until the ingredients are combined. Set the dressing aside.
After simmering for 15 minutes the quinoa should be tender and fluffy, an no liquid should remain in the pot.
Spread the quinoa out into any sort of shallow dish then place it in the refrigerator to cool for about 15 minutes. Spreading it out is key because that increases the surface area in contact with the cold air and allows any excess moisture to evaporate.
While the quinoa is cooling, prepare the rest of the ingredients for the salad. Drain and roughly chop one 13oz. can of quartered artichoke hearts. Finely dice one red bell pepper. Roughly chop about 1 cup of fresh parsley. Rinse and drain one 15oz. can of chickpeas. Place the artichoke hearts, bell pepper, parsley, and chickpeas in a large bowl.
Once the quinoa is cooled, add it to the bowl with the rest of the ingredients and gently toss to combine.
Pour the lemon garlic dressing over the salad and toss once more until everything is coated in dressing.
The Lemony Artichoke and Quinoa Salad is ready to be eaten immediately or…
Or portion it out into containers for your meal prep and refrigerate up to 4-5 days.
So light and refreshing!
Really enjoyed the flavor of this salad! We subbed bulgar for the quinoa (I thought I had quinoa but was wrong so this was a last-minute substitution), which I would not recommend, as it adheres to itself much more than quinoa does and gets kind of gloopy. Obviously this was my mistake and not a fault of the recipe, so this is just an FYI to others.
Update: have now made with quinoa (a double-batch for a family gathering) and it was EXCELLENT. It even went over well with the two toddlers both at the main meal and again as leftovers the next day. I think they liked picking up the small pieces of the salad with their hands. 😂
That’s so cute! Happy to hear it!
my daughter Kelly made this for us Awesome! I just found GRILLED artichoke hearts in a jar at the store yummy
Ooooh, grilled artichoke hearts sound amazing!!
I made this for dinner last night and it was awesome! Thanks, Beth! I’m so glad I found your site.
Made this for dinner tonight, served with Salmon and it was delicious 😋. My new favorite quinoa salad. Can’t wait for lunch tomorrow 🤪
I don’t know much about quinoa, so does it matter what kind (color) you use?
I used a blend of red and white quinoa, millet, and buckwheat (“super grains blend” from Whole Foods) and it came out great!
It shouldn’t matter, but if the quinoa you have has cooking instructions on the package, just check to make sure it has a similar cook time and water ratio.
Made this yesterday for lunches this week with grilled chicken on top… it is so so yummy
Thanks for the recipe
Hi Beth, This looks fabulous! I’m going to pick up artichokes tonight to make it. If you get around to it, I’d LOVE a roundup of some of your favorite refrigerator salads. I too live off these in the summer and am looking to shake up my routine. Thanks as always!
Great idea! Thanks!
I second this suggestion! Thanks for the awesome recipes Beth! :)
I made this last night and it was delicious! I used 3 bell peppers instead of 1, two lemons (mine were small so one didn’t give enough juice), an extra clove of garlic in the dressing, and added crumbled feta. I discovered that I like quinoa more than I thought I did but I’m ambivalent about artichokes. So in the future I think I’ll skip the artichokes and just add a second can of chickpeas instead. I got a lemon pepper rotisserie chicken from the grocery store to go along with this and the combination was perfect. I’m excited to eat the leftovers for the next few days!
This was great! I loved having it on hand in the fridge. Good work. I also added a few more greens, in this case, green onion and cilantro.
Is there a substitute for the chickpeas? I can’t have beans. I know I can leave them out, but would it be it e less filling?
It would definitely be less filling, but I think white beans (cannellini) would also work great. :)
I’m not a bean person myself, but I like to use sliced mushrooms and feta in combination (about a cup of each) to make it reasonably filling whist skipping the beans.
Thank you, I’ll try the mushrooms and feta.
Instead of chickpeas, how about sweet peas, diced firm tofu, chunks of feta, or other cheese?
YES to more refrigerator salads! This is what I’m craving this summer too. I plan to make this with bulghur and eat it over greens (kept separate until ready to eat). I’d love to see many more refrigerator salad recipes! I particularly like farro in salads.
Since you like farro in your salads, have you tried making the “Tomato Mozzarella Pasta Salad” that Beth posted at the end of June with farro substituted for the pasta?
That pretty much as been declared the “best salad of the summer” by my family with the substitution of the farro (I cook up about a cup of uncooked farro to use ) and the addition of some.basil from the garden. We also like onions, so I add a bit of red onion and delete the mayo from the dressing.
This looks delicious. It’s pretty similar to a couscous salad recipe in one of the Moosewood cookbooks. Based on that recipe, you might try:
zesting the lemon and adding it to the dressing
using copious amounts of green herbs – the parsley is great, but consider mint and green onions/chives as well
kalamata olives would go well with this too
It looks great as is, but if you want to play around with it a bit….
This looks so good! And artichocke and lemon is such a great combination :)
I think I see Sensation Salad dressing.
love quinoa and artichokes, this is the perfect salad,thank you.