Quinoa & Roasted Vegetables with Caramelized Lemon Vinaigrette
Today I am sharing with you a bright, beautiful quinoa-salad bowl packed with nutritious “Super Food” vegetables. This bowl has roasted sweet potatoes, swiss chard, peppers, broccoli, dates, roasted pepitas (pumpkins seeds) and fluffy quinoa. I made a vinaigrette of lemon cooked in salted butter, olive oil, lemon juice, thyme, salt and pepper. So yummy. So good for you.
This is a PERFECT weeknight dinner because everyone in the family can help chop, sauté, peel and cook. Even your littlest cooks can massage the kale to make it taste less bitter. Enjoy!
- See Cooking Notes after Instructions
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Quinoa & Roasted Vegetables with CARAMELIZED Lemon VINAIGRETTE.
1 cup Dry Quinoa- cook according to package instuctions. This will yield about 3 cups cooked.
1/2 Lemon- sliced into thin circles
3 TBSP Lemon Juice
1/2 cup olive oil, divided
2 tsp Kosher salt, divided
1 tsp Ground Pepper, divided
1 TBSP Fresh Thyme Leaves
1 large Sweet Potato, peeled and cut into 1′ cubes
1 head Broccoli, cut into florets
3 cups Swiss Chard, stems and leaves chopped
1 Orange or Red Bell Pepper, chopped
3 cups Italian Kale , massaged and torn into pieces
3 Dried Dates, pitted, cut into thin strips
1/2 cup Dry Roasted Pepitas
2 TBSP Salted Butter
Method- Total time 1 hour. Serves 4
- Pre heat oven to 400 degrees.
Cook quinoa according to instructions. Fluff with a fork. Keep warm. - In a small bowl, toss the sweet potatoes with a little olive oil, salt and pepper. Place potatoes on a roasting pan lined with parchment paper and bake for 15 minutes.
Place broccoli, swiss chard, peppers in the same bowl and toss with a bit more of oil, salt & pepper. Remove potatoes from oven. Add vegetables to sweet potatoes. Toss all well together. Bake another 15 minutes or until browned edges appear on the vegetables. Remove from oven- set aside to cool. - Meanwhile, while veggies are cooking, melt butter in a pan over medium high heat. Place lemon slices into melted butter and cook until the lemons are fragrant and browned.
With a fish spatula, remove lemons to a cutting board and finely chop- rind and all. Reserve browned butter from pan.
In a large salad bowl add in remaining olive oil, browned butter from the pan, lemon juice, thyme leaves, 1/2 tsp of salt and 1/4 tsp pepper and chopped lemon. Whisk well until oil becomes emulsified. - In the salad bowl, add quinoa and toss lightly to coat with lemon vinaigrette. Add in roasted vegetables, kale and dates. Toss all together until coated with the dressing.
- Top with pepitas.
Leftovers can be stored in the fridge for up to 3 days.
- Cooking Notes-
- I did not roast any parts of the sweet potato that were not the same size- ends and angled pices. I just toss those raw pieces in with my dogs kibble. Otherwise, they will burn and become bitter.
- I roasted my pepitas in the same pan I cooked the lemons. The bit of butter made them extra tasty.
- You can make this dish vegan, by cooking the lemons in either coconut oil or olive oil. The butter just adds a cetain warm nutty taste I love.
- For the meat eaters in your family, add in cooked salmon, chicken or even cooked ground turkey.
