This Avocado Blueberry Quinoa Salad balances sweet and savory flavors with crunchy creamy textures. Made with blueberries, quinoa, pecans, and avocado tossed in a lime basil dressing, this vegan, gluten free, and high protein salad is packed with nutrients!
Love adding fruit to your salads? Then check out this avocado salad, mango black bean salad, or kale quinoa salad for more fresh and delicious options!
Table of contents
This salad is full of whole foods that will never have you thinking about what else to put with it. It has everything you need in one bowl and it easily comes together in minutes!
To the hearty quinoa, we’re adding sweet blueberries, creamy avocado, and toasted pecans and finishing it with a drizzle of fresh lime basil dressing. It’s super refreshing and so flavorful, and those textures…my goodness!
You’ll find healthy fats, plant based protein, complex carbohydrates, fiber, amino acids, antioxidants, and so many more nutrients.
It is all you need for a wholesome filling lunch or dinner, especially on hot summer days!
Quinoa is a great addition to many meals that help keep me full longer. It’s one of the reasons why my list of healthy quinoa salad recipes grows by the month!
Ingredients for Blueberry Quinoa Salad
This salad comes together in one bowl and is packed with creamy, crunchy textures and a zesty dressing! Here’s what you need to make it:
- Cooked quinoa: Used as the foundation of the entire salad. Has a nutty flavor and a bit of a bite to it!
- Blueberries: When sweet, ripe, juicy fruit gets added to grains or greens, it’s an amazing combination.
- Avocado, diced: Creamy, yet firm, it’s a wonderful textural component that balances the crunchy nuts and nutty quinoa. It makes great avo toast any day!
- Pecans: A crunchy element that’s even better when toasted!
- Olive oil: It’s the base of the salad dressing.
- Maple syrup: A natural sweetener that gives an amazing maple flavor that pairs well with nuts, blueberries, and lime juice.
- Lime juice: The bright citrus flavor that brings zest and life to the dressing.
- Basil, finely chopped: Along with the lime, the herbs add freshness to the entire recipe.
- Salt & pepper: To enhance the flavors of the entire salad.
How to Make Quinoa Salad
If you’re using leftover quinoa, this salad will be ready to eat in just 15 minutes! If not, add a little extra time to cook our quinoa and enjoy!
Cook the quinoa: Follow my instructions on how to cook quinoa or use the Instant Pot quinoa for perfect fluffy results every time.
Prepare the fruit: Peel and dice the avocado. Wash the blueberries and allow them to dry.
Toast the pecans: Over low-medium heat, toast the pecans in a skillet on the stovetop, for about 5 minutes.
Combine salad ingredients: Into a large bowl they go.
Let’s make the dressing: Whisk together all of the lime basil dressing ingredients together. Or shake if you’re using a mason jar with a lid. Pour over salad ingredients and toss to combine.
Tips for Making Blueberry Quinoa Salad
- Watch pecans closely as you’re toasting them so they don’t burn.
- Pick avocados that are ripe, yet still firm. Overripe avocados will be too mushy. In the same way you’d have them in chickpea avocado salad.
- Make this salad using whatever berries or fruit you want! Swap the blueberries for strawberries, mangos, blackberries, etc.
- Change up the nuts for a different crunchy element. Pistachios, almonds, walnuts, you name it.
- Make this salad even easier by cooking your quinoa ahead of time. If you’d like to assemble it earlier on, be sure to leave out the avocado and salad dressing until just before serving.
- To rinse or not to rinse your quinoa? If it doesn’t come pre-rinsed, then I suggest you do. It’ll help get rid of the bitterness, but some people find soaking it aids digestion.
Use leftover blueberries to make almond flour blueberry muffins, healthy blueberry muffins or blueberry oatmeal crumble bars too!
How to Store
Store it in an airtight container in the fridge for up to 3 days. The lime juice will help to keep the avocado from turning brown.
Any extra salad dressing can be kept in a jar in the fridge for up to 1 week.
I try to cook extra quinoa in a large enough quantity to have leftovers to freeze for up to 3 months. That way I can make more salads like this one any time!
What to Pair This Salad With
Yes, this salad is a whole meal in itself, but sometimes hungry teenagers remind you that “salad is not a meal!” and so, here are some ideas to satisfy everyone:
- Serve a smaller portion of this salad on the side of vegetarian quesadillas for a completely vegetarian meal. How about a bit of strawberry mango salsa as a second side? Yummy!
- If you want to add some meat protein to dinner time, think about making chicken and whole wheat spaghetti, or healthy pesto pasta to go along with a side of quinoa salad.
- Any one of these 30 minute meals would be great to pair with the salad for a quick and easy weeknight dinner.
- You can’t go wrong with chicken! Grilled chicken breast or Instant Pot chicken breast would be easy to do! If you want a bit of meat protein in your salad, slice the chicken breasts and add it on top.
More Quinoa Salad Recipes to Try
If you enjoyed this salad recipe, then you might like some of these other healthy quinoa salads!
- Quinoa and black bean salad
- Mexican kale salad
- Broccoli quinoa salad
- Southwest quinoa salad
- Mediterranean quinoa salad
- Jennifer Aniston salad
You may also like to browse through this list of 52 healthy salad recipes! You might also like this fruity raspberry vinaigrette!
Avocado Blueberry Quinoa Salad
Ingredients
- 2 cups quinoa cooked
- 1 cup blueberries
- 2 large avocados diced
- 1 cup pecans
Lime Basil Dressing:
- 1 tbsp olive oil extra virgin
- 1 tbsp maple syrup
- 1/2 large lime juice of
- 3 tbsp fresh basil finely chopped
- 3/4 tsp salt
- 1/2 tsp ground black pepper
Instructions
- Cook quinoa as per package instructions. Or here is how to cook quinoa stovetop or check out Instant Pot quinoa.
- In a large bowl, add cooked quinoa, blueberries and avocados.
- In a small skillet, toast pecans on low-medium heat until lightly brown, about 5 minutes. Stir frequently and watch closely not to burn. Transfer to a bowl with other ingredients.
- In a small bowl, whisk olive oil, maple syrup, lime juice, basil, salt and pepper. Pour over the salad and gently stir to combine. Serve cold.
Notes
- Store: Refrigerate covered for up to 3 days.
- Make ahead: Cooking quinoa ahead of time, be sure to leave out the avocado and salad dressing until just before serving.
- Pick avocados that are ripe, yet still firm.
- Make this salad using whatever berries or fruit you want! Swap the blueberries for strawberries, mangos, blackberries, etc.
- Change up the nuts for a different crunchy element. Pistachios, almonds, walnuts, you name it.
Hi, I saw you reposted this recipe on Instagram earlier this week. I’m going to attempt to make this but I’m not a fan of avocado, can you recommend any substitutions for avocados?
Hi Lecretia. Yes, sure. Grape tomatoes would be great. Or cucumbers.
Perfect u love both. Will give this a try. Thank you
Thank you for sharing this recipe! It’s my first time cooking quinoa but surely won’t be the last. I used dry basil since I didn’t have fresh but it still tasted awesome. This salad is a keeper!!
Was looking forward to trying this, since I’ve never tried Quinoa before. I might have made a few mistakes. I took easy way out with chopping the basil up by using a mini food processor…so that didn’t let the basil spread out as much I think. Other issues could have been my ingredients, but the tastes just didn’t seem to blend well together. It wasn’t really a hit in our house so its not a keeper. Thanks for all the recipes you have here though, I’ve got a few more that I want to try. The first one of this site was a homerun (Thai Chicken Spaghetti Squash Bowl ). For me it’s back to the drawing board with Quinoa.
You are welcome.:) I hope you grow on quinoa – it’s really awesome!!!
Your recipes always look so great! I’ve spent half of the morning pinning them. I share your spaghetti squash boat recipe a lot. Hopefully I’ll get a chance to try out some of your others this weekend. My mouth is watering!
This looks so incredible. I really want to make it but where I live is impossible to find any blueberries. What could be a good substitute? FYI cranberries also unavailable…
You could substitute blueberries with fresh blackberries, raspberries or even strawberries.:)
Love strawberries, will give this a try. Thank you!
a lime and basil dressing sounds so delicious.. this just looks perfect for summer. defintiely will be recreating this in my kitchen, thanks olena!
Such a clean pic,very healthy and tasty salad indeed
This looks delicious 🙂 Such simple and clean ingredients that we can all feel good about. Thanks for another great recipe! Pinning this now!
This looks so delicious, Olena! Love a good quinoa salad, and that basil lime dressing sounds amazing!
I love BC blueberries, too. I stock our freezer with them every year… I like your salad – so easy, right? Ive been eating quinoa and avocado + something random thrown in for like 2 weeks straight, lol… strips of beef, grilled corn, spinach… whatever i have. I would not have thought of blueberries, though, I will need to keep this in mind. 🙂 take care.