Beetroot Quinoa Salad with Sprouts

Many people run away when they hear the word salad, and how could we blame them if their idea of a salad is a boring bowl of green leaves and a couple of chopped veggies? Putting their tastebud's hopes and dreams on the dressing.

Doesn't sound appealing AT ALL! This is why I make an absolute effort on creating mouthwatering salads that are colourful, filling, flavourful and anything but bland. Which is the case for the next recipe.

This salad is full of flavour and colour, and as you already know, the more colours you have on your plate the more health benefits you'll be getting form your meal. This bowl is packed with fiber, antioxidants, folate, Vitamin A, and has 13g of protein per serving.

Pretty good, right?!

Now, let me tell you what's in it.

There are many different components in this salad, we have quinoa which is a good source of protein and the perfect way to get all your essential amino acids, it will also keep you full for a while. There are cherry tomatoes and beetroot, raw and cooked to add many different vitamins, minerals and loads of flavour. And finally, greens!, essential part of any healthy diet and a great base for any salad, we will be using salad greens, baby spinach and sprouts. 

One of the great things about this salad is that you can mix it up a little bit and adjust to what you have handy or your personal preferences. In this case, I used sprouts but you could also use micro greens as well, their flavour is slightly different but both are equally delicious and highly nutritious. 

Sprouts and micro greens have similar health benefits and are commonly interchanged in in the kitchen, they look quite different but the main difference between them is that sprouts germinate in water and micro greens need soil to grow. 

Recently, I decided to grow my own and started experimenting on the different ways to grow them. I found that it is easier to grow micro greens in hot weather and that sprouts grow better in "cooler conditions", I guess you might be able to grow sprouts in the fridge, I haven't tried doing so but that means I might have found my next experiment. I'll let you know how it goes! 

Growing sprouts and micro greens is a really fun thing to do with kids since you can see results quickly, sprouts can be harvested in about four to six days; micro greens take a bit longer, around one to three weeks. Also, they are relatively easy to care for so the little ones can be involved in the whole process, from planting to harvesting. 

But what ever you end up doing, either growing your own sprouts or buying them at your local market, you can be sure that adding them to this salad will put that final crunchy touch to an already flavourful and healthy dish. For another awesome salad recipe with an extra portion of protein try out our Easy Three Bean Salad recipe.