Diversity Grain Salad

13+ different plant sources

This grain salad is easy to make and works with almost any protein. It can be adapted endlessly depending on the herbs, nuts, seeds or vegetables you have to hand. Keep it simple as a base, or build it out with things like cucumber, tomatoes or other seasonal veg. You could make it every week for a month and it would never feel exactly the same.

Nutritionally, that flexibility is part of the point. Using a mix of whole grains, herbs, nuts, seeds and olive oil gives you far more fibre, plant diversity and micronutrient range than a plain rice or even quinoa base. It brings useful amounts of minerals like magnesium, manganese and copper, alongside vitamin E from the nuts, seeds and olive oil, plus vitamin K, folate and some vitamin C from the herbs and lemon. Having something like this ready to go means you can pull together a very nourishing meal in minutes with very little thought. It brings plenty of fibre and a wide range of plant foods, and my gut definitely seems to notice the difference on weeks when I make it.

Makes approx. 8 cups

Tips & Tricks:

• Cooking: Typically I use my rice cooker for this, for it’s ease and convenience. However, as i know many households don’t have a rice cooker in the UK, I’ve given instructions below for using a saucepan with a lid. If using a rice cooker, measure the grains and water out using the instructions below and let the rice cooker do the rest.

• Grain mix: I like using a third each of mixed quinoa, pearl barley and bulgur wheat, but you can play around with the ratio depending on what you have, or mix in other whole grains that you like. The cooking time is based on the pearl barley taking slightly longer than the others. If you swap the pearl barley for a smaller grain, you may find it cooks more quickly.

• Protein: To boost the protein (& fibre) further, you could also stir through some cooked, firm lentils, such as green, brown, or beluga. Lentils take different times to cook depending on the variety, so unless you’re familiar with them and their cooking time, I’d stir them in later rather than cooking everything together.

• Herbs: I would keep a generous amount of parsley as the main event for both flavour and versatility, as well as its nutritional value. The others can be adjusted depending on your preferences or what you are serving it with. You can also mix through salad vegetables such as tomatoes, cucumber or spring onion. Just bear in mind that their moisture can affect the texture and shelf life, so I prefer to add those on the day.

• Nut and seed: Use whatever is already open in the cupboard and change it up from week to week for extra variety. You could also include dried fruit - cranberries, sultanas, dried apricots etc - depending on how you intend to serve the salad.