Greek Quinoa Salad

I've been making this Greek quinoa salad for so many years, it's one of my go-tos. It's like you're taking a regular Greek salad, but sort of making it more healthy and more filling with the quinoa. Hey guys, I'm Justin from Cooking with Coit. I specialize in clean comfort cooking. And if you love this video, make sure you hit those like and subscribe buttons. Let's get started. First thing we're going to do is rinse our quinoa. So let's take one cup of quinoa and we're going to dump it into our strainer. Oh, this is perfectly one cup. Very lucky. So guys, it's getting late in the day and I just put it into a strainer whose holes are bigger than the grains of quinoa, so it has all gone into the bottom. So give me a second while I swap out to a new strainer. All right, I got a proper strainer. I fixed the problem. Let's go give it a wash. We're going to wash this quinoa until the water runs clear underneath. And the reason why this is so important to do with quinoa is that there is a little encasement around each one of these seeds that tastes a little bit bitter. So by washing it, you're getting rid of that bitter taste. All right, now we need to cook our quinoa. So I'm going to dump it into this pot. Remember, this is one cup of quinoa. We're going to add a cup and a half of water and a pinch of salt, maybe one and a half pinches. Now I'm going to bring this pot to a boil and then lower the heat to a simmer, put a top on it and cook it for 15 to 20 minutes. What's really cool about quinoa is that you don't need to boil the water before you put it in. All right, the quinoa finished cooking a little while ago, but one really important thing that I want to tell you guys is after the quinoa finishes, just give it a little bit of fluff and let it cool. It's got to be cool for this recipe. You don't want to be using warm quinoa. I'm going to get a head start on our salad dressing. First we're going to take a quarter cup of olive oil and put it into a bowl. Next we're going to add two tablespoons of red wine vinegar. Next we're going to add one clove of garlic that I've already minced. Now we're adding one tablespoon of lemon juice, one teaspoon of oregano. I'm not exactly measuring here. I'm just going to kind of do it by feel and one teaspoon of honey for some sweetness. And we are going to finish off the salad dressing with a little bit of salt and pepper to taste. I just do one nice pinch and a half of salt and a little pinch of pepper. Let's give this a quick whisk and then we're going to set this aside. Here is what the salad dressing should look like. Now we're going to move on to prepping our vegetables. We're first going to start with this English cucumber. We're going to dice up one and a half cups. We're going to scoop the seeds out of this cucumber. So the way that I do that is I take a small spoon and I sort of edge my way down on either sides of these seeds, just like that. And then take your spoon and run it straight down the middle and that is going to scoop out the seeds very seamlessly. And what you should be left with is seeds just like that. With the seeds removed, now I'm going to cut the cucumber into half moon shapes. I don't typically remove the skin of the cucumber. I definitely don't do it with English cucumbers typically. So don't worry about it unless you really want to and then you can do it. Now I'm going to transfer this cucumber to a large mixing bowl and I like a really big mixing bowl. I'm talking large because we're going to do lots of mixing by hand in it, so get the biggest one you have. Next, we're going to move on to prepping our grape tomatoes. I've got a cup and a half here and I'm going to halve them. Next I'm going to move on to the Kalamata olives. I've got a cup and a half here. I am going to also halve these. Now this step is a little tedious because we've already halved the grape tomatoes. We've already sliced our cucumber. So if you're feeling like I am too annoyed to cut these Kalamata olives in half, that's all good. You can leave them whole. I've got an important tip here that I just realized after I cut my last olive. Make sure you get olives that are already pitted because if they're not already pitted and you still have to cut them in half, it's going to take you forever. So get pitted olives. Let's add these olives with the rest of the veggies. The last veggie we're going to add here is some red onion and we're going to slice it nice and thin. Guys, I realized I just did something kind of dumb. I should have cut the stem a little bit more off because now I've got this little white part and the pieces aren't separating. I got to go back and fix that. You just kind of trim off this little white part. So cut off the stem a little bit more than I did and you'll have nice loose pieces. All right, we're adding these onions to the bowl with the rest of the veggies. Now I'm going to add our quinoa into the bowl of the veggies. Right on top is just fine. We cannot forget the feta cheese. This may be the most important ingredient of this recipe because there's such great flavor in feta cheese and it gives you this nice kick of salt. So let's add a half a cup. And these are feta crumbles and you can buy them already crumbled, which is just kind of a lazy thing to do, but I like doing it, saves some time. Now we're going to add our salad dressing right on top of everything. Just give this a little drizzle. Here's the fun part. I'm just going to get in here with my hands. I'm not going to use tongs because I think it's just better to do with hands. So let me take off my wedding ring here. Let's just get in there. And this is why we use a nice big bowl so we can get our hands in here and really mix everything around. This is looking so, so good. You know what? One little change I'm going to make here. My hands are covered. Hang on. Let me wash up really quick. I am going to add just a little bit more feta cheese. I feel like maybe a tad bit more is what it needs, especially like on top. All right, guys, before the salad is finished, I'm going to add just a little bit more salt and pepper to taste. How about two big pinches of pepper and one pinch of salt? You probably don't need much more salt, again, because of the feta. All right. Take a look at this incredible quinoa Greek salad. This looks so incredible. I cannot wait to give it a taste. But before I do, if you love this recipe and you want to see more just like it, check out my healthy recipes playlist. All right. Let's see how it tastes. Wow. If you love Greek salad, you're going to love this Greek quinoa salad. It's got the perfect blend of textures and flavors. I know you're going to love it. I'll see you in the next video.