Wild Rice Salad

This Wild Rice Salad features chickpeas, cranberries, and toasted pecans. Tossed with a honey-sweetened sesame ginger dressing, and topped with lots of cilantro, this is an easy, healthy recipe.

This Wild Rice Salad was the second recipe I ever posted on this site. It's such a lovely salad and was buried shamefully deep in the archives, so I thought it was high time for new photos, a printable recipe card, and some updated instructions.

This salad was born of a series of long ago girl's night potluck dinners. At one of these dinners a fellow attendee brought a wild rice salad she had picked up from the deli of a natural food store (I'm not naming names, but it rhymes with schmole schmoods), and it was tasty.  

A short while later on a night when I was tired and hungry, the salad was still on my mind so I trundled over to schmole schmoods and picked some up for dinner - dang, it was expensive!  

As I ate, I ran my eyes over the list of ingredients and I thought two things; 1. I can make this, and 2. I can make this better.

I wanted my Wild Rice Salad to be a meal in a bowl. I wanted to be able to reach into the fridge and grab leftovers, or throw some into a container to pack for lunch and have the salad be all I need to pack.

Also, because I'm very often the only vegetarian at a gathering, I wanted the item I brought to be both nutritionally satisfying and ensure that I wouldn't be stuck eating bread and leaves all night. And that's how this salad came to be. 

Let's make some!

What goes into this Wild Rice Salad?

• Wild Rice! No duh, guys.
• Brown Rice. Because wild rice is expensive AF so we're bulking it out with the brown stuff. 
• Chickpeas. For some plant-based protein!
• Tomatoes. I like using roma tomatoes in this recipe. 
• Red Pepper. Tasty! Pretty!
• Dried Cranberries. They're festive AND delicious. 
• Toasted Pecans. Because we're worth it. Also: crunch!
• Cilantro. Please and thank you. 

The dressing includes:

• Honey
• Sesame oil
• Rice vinegar
• Light soy sauce
• Ginger
• Garlic

How do you make this wild rice salad?

Step 1: You're going to need to cook up some wild rice and some brown rice. I'm a big fan of batch cooking whole grains in bulk and freezing portions of them, so feel free to cook way more than you need for this recipe. 

Pro tip: If you're cooking the rice to make this wild rice salad and you need it in a hurry, spread it out on a sheet pan to cool down.

Step 2: While your rice is cooking / cooling you can prep everything else. Chop your tomato, red pepper, and cilantro. Toast your pecans. 

Step 3: Then, make the dressing!

Pro tip: Frozen ginger is waaaaaaay easier to grate than fresh ginger. Plus if you keep your ginger in the freezer it'll last for ever and you won't end up finding a sad, shrivelled ginger root stashed behind your fruit bowl / at the back of your fridge / wherever you keep your ginger. 

Pro tip: Since you're grating your ginger anyways, you may as well grate the garlic also. But be sure to grate the ginger first and the garlic second, otherwise your ginger root (which is going back into the freezer, right? right?) will end up tasting like garlic. 

So grate your ginger and garlic, add the honey, soy, sesame oil, and rice vinegar, and whisk it all together. Done!

Step 4: Then, combine everything into a big old bowl, toss, add the dressing, and toss again. Wild Rice Salad done like dinner. 

Pro tips / Recipe notes:

• Is this recipe hard to make? No! If the rices are cooked in advance, this salad is super quick and easy to make! 
• I don't have wild rice. Bummer. But really, you can use any blend of rice or grains you're into. 
• Is this recipe vegan? Strictly speaking, honey isn't vegan. But you can sub in maple syrup instead and you're good to go. 
• Is this recipe gluten free? Um, yes.
• Can I make this recipe in advance? You bet! Just leave the pecans and cilantro out until the last minute.
• How long will this salad last? It'll be good for about 3 days in your fridge. 
• I want to make more/ less or this recipe. No problem! Just adjust the number of servings in the recipe card below and it'll do the math for ya!

Hey Nutrition Lady, what's the deal with wild rice?

Wild Rice isn’t actually rice at all. Rather, it’s a type of grass, known as an aquatic cereal, which is native to Canada and the United States. It’s been part of the diet of the First Nations people in areas where it is grown for thousands of years.

Wild rice is a good source of B vitamins including B1 (Thiamine), B6, B9 (Folate) and B12, as well as dietary fiber, which helps steady the pace of digestion and regulate glucose uptake.

Other recipes you might enjoy:

Spicy Tofu Grain Bowls 
Winter Vegetable Meal Prep Bowls
Barbecue Tofu Bowls
Spicy Mung Bean Salad
Spicy Roasted Butternut Squash Salad

 

This recipe was originally published July 6, 2010. It was retested, rephotographed, and updated on December 21, 2018. Last updated December 22, 2020.