You'll love this gluten-free fall quinoa salad with cranberries and pears for a healthy lunch or side dish! Full of harvest fruit and nuts, this salad is tossed with a delicious apple cider vinaigrette. This beautiful fall salad is Vegan, Paleo and Whole30 compliant.
This healthy quinoa spinach salad is studded with fresh pears and dried cranberries. It's sprinkled with pumpkin spice pecans, toasted almonds and tossed with an apple cider vinaigrette. A perfect salad for fall!
While you may decide to put this on your menu as a side dish at your upcoming holiday dinners, once you taste it, you'll probably want to have this harvest quinoa salad make regular appearances for weekday lunches and dinners, too!
While pears are available year-round, they're at their peak in the early autumn. Look for the firm varieties for this salad, like Bosc, Anjou, Seckel, or even the tiny Forelle pears will be delicious. You could also use an Asian pear, also known as Apple Pear.
Ready to get started on this beautiful pear salad?
🛒 Ingredients
You'll find a complete list of ingredients in the recipe card below.
- quinoa: cooked and cooled.
- baby spinach: or massaged kale
- dried cranberries: for natural sweetness
- dried apricots or raisins (optional)
- pear any variety of firm pear, like Bosc, Anjou, Seckel, or even the tiny Forelle pears will be delicious. You could also use an Asian pear, also known as Apple Pear.
- green onion: adds a nice contrast to the sweet fruit
- flaked almonds: toasted to bring out their flavour. Almonds add extra crunch to this salad.
- pumpkin spice pecans: these add lots of fall flavour to this salad
- apple cider vinaigrette: brings fall flavours to this healthy salad!
🔪 Instructions
- Cook the quinoa and spread it out on a parchment paper-lined baking sheet to cool.
- While it's cooking, combine the Apple Cider Vinaigrette ingredients and set aside to allow the flavours to blend.
- Prepare Pumpkin Spice Pecans
- Slice pears and toss with lemon juice to prevent browning.
- Chop dried apricots (if using) and green onions.
- Toast thinly sliced almonds.
- In a medium bowl, combine quinoa, dried cranberries, optional dried apricots or raisins, sliced pears, and green onions with the Apple Cider Vinaigrette, adding a little of the vinaigrette at a time, just until moistened. You may not need all the vinaigrette.
- Arrange this quinoa mixture on a bed of baby spinach.
- Garnish with toasted flaked almonds and pumpkin spice pecans just before serving.
🔁 Possible variations
I chose harvest fruit, like pears and cranberries, but you can easily substitute other seasonal fruit. Make it your own!
Substitute Asian pears (also known as apple pears.)
Toss it with this easy Maple Balsamic Dressing instead of Apple Cider Vinaigrette for a change.
Use this fall quinoa salad with cranberries and pears recipe as a guide and try these variations.
- Honeycrisp apples, raisins, and toasted walnuts
- Bosc pears, dried figs, and pumpkin seeds
- Granny Smith apples, golden raisins, and toasted pecans
Storage instructions
Like you, I'm sure, I like making a dish and having leftovers for lunch or dinner the following day. This quinoa and pear salad keeps well in the fridge, for a day. If I'm making more than I need, I keep the spinach separate, adding it just before serving.
🍽 More healthy fall salads
Fall salads can be fun to create! You might also like these salads for autumn days:
🗒 More salad recipes
- Roasted Sweet Potato Kale Salad with Nutritional Yeast Dressing
- Winter Persimmon Kale Salad
- Hearty Tuscan Salad with Creamy Gorgonzola Dressing
- Shaved Brussels Sprout Salad with Cranberries and Pecans
📖 Recipe
Harvest Quinoa Salad with Cranberries and Pears
Ingredients
- 1 cup dry quinoa, rinsed
- 1 ¾ cups water
- 1 teaspoon salt
- ¼ cup dried cranberries
- ¼ cup dried apricots, finely chopped, optional
- 1 medium pear, firm variety, thinly sliced and tossed in 1 tablespoon lemon juice to prevent browning
- 1 green onion, thinly sliced
- ¼ cup toasted flaked almonds*
- ¼ cup pumpkin spice pecans
Apple Cider Vinaigrette
- ⅓ cup olive oil, extra virgin
- ¼ cup apple cider vinegar
- 1 tablespoon honey
- ½ teaspoon Dijon mustard
- ¼ teaspoon garlic powder
- ½ teaspoon salt
- ¼ teaspoon pepper
- 6 cups baby spinach leaves
Instructions
- Cook quinoa in water and salt, following your package directions. Once cooked, spread it out on a parchment paper-lined baking sheet and cool completely.
- While it's cooking, combine the Apple Cider Vinaigrette ingredients and set aside to allow the flavours to blend.
- Slice pears and toss with lemon juice to prevent browning.
- Chop dried apricots and green onions.
- Toast thinly sliced almonds and prepare Pumpkin Spice Pecans.
- In a medium bowl, combine quinoa, dried apricots, dried cranberries, sliced pears, and green onions with the Apple Cider Vinaigrette, adding a little of the vinaigrette at a time, just until moistened. (You may not need all the vinaigrette.)
- Add baby spinach to a salad bowl, or to individual salad plates and top with the quinoa salad mix.
- Garnish with toasted flaked almonds and Pumpkin Spice Pecans just before serving.
Notes
Nutrition
This post has been updated with new information and photos and the recipe has been tweaked.
Evi
Thanks for making me look good! I made this for a women's luncheon and I received lots of compliments! It was a perfect recipe to welcome fall.
Elaine
That's great news!