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A fresh approach to vegetarian cooking.
June 8th, 2026
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Feta, pomegranate, and scallions dress up this barley salad with warm spices.
Summer is coming, and so are spectacular grain salads
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Jack Bishop
Author, editor, and vegetable enthusiast
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A well-made grain salad is a treasure chest of goodies. Start with something like barley, farro, or quinoa and you have a delicious, nutritious base. Then there are three opportunities to add excitement—the dressing, the stir-ins, and the garnishes.
Egyptian Barley Salad showcases pearl barley cooked via the pasta method. Spread the drained grains out on a sheet pan so they cool quickly and don’t stick together. The dressing contains just four ingredients (cinnamon, cumin, pomegranate molasses, and olive oil) plus salt, but each one is bringing a lot to the table. Mix in golden raisins, pistachios, and cilantro to add sweet, nutty, and herbaceous notes as well as chewy and crunchy textures. Finally, a triumvirate of gorgeous garnishes turns this seemingly humble dish into a stunner.
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PRO TIP
You can find ready-to-use pomegranate seeds in many markets, but there’s something satisfying about buying the whole fruit and doing the job yourself. The trick:
Submerge the pomegranate in a bowl of cold water to contain the mess. As you pull the fruit apart, the seeds will sink to the bottom while the inedible parts float to the top.
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Farro cooks a bit faster than pearl barley, but the method is the same. Before boiling the farro for this
Mediterranean-inspired salad, blanch asparagus and sugar snap peas in the same pot. Spread the veggies out on a baking sheet to cool them down. Dress the cooked and cooled farro with a lemony vinaigrette and add halved cherry tomatoes and dill along with the blanched veggies. Finish with crumbled feta or perhaps shaved Parm.
Quinoa is typically cooked via the absorption method in a measured amount of water. Toasting the quinoa in the empty saucepan brings out its nutty notes. The water will sputter when it goes into the hot pot, so choose a larger pan than you might think is necessary. Cool the cooked quinoa on a baking sheet and then flavor it with a bold cilantro-lime dressing. Red bell pepper, black beans, and mango add contrasting colors and textures to this
vegan superfood quinoa salad. Garnish with avocado slices and you’ve made a healthy supper that’s pretty and delicious.
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PRO TIP
Quinoa has a natural coating, called saponin, that’s quite bitter. Washing removes this coating and is recommended. Buy prewashed quinoa and you can skip this step. If the packaging doesn’t say, rinse quinoa in a fine-mesh strainer held under cool running water for 30 seconds.
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All three of these grain salads can be prepped a few hours in advance and kept in the fridge, making them perfect for warm-weather dining. Just add the garnishes right before serving. I consider these salads to be one-dish meals, but feel free to add flatbreads or a basic green salad if you want something else on the table.
P.S. Have you picked up your copy of
The New Vegetarian: 500+ Recipes for a Lifetime of Great Meals? I’m confident this mammoth cookbook will become a trusted kitchen companion.
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The Vegetarian Pantry
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Barley
Pearl barley, with some of the bran removed to speed cooking, is the standard choice in most recipes. However, you might see “hull-less” barley in some markets. This whole grain requires a very long cooking time (often an hour) and it doesn’t absorb dressings all that well. For these reasons, it’s not the best choice for salads. Stick with pearl barley.
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Farro
You definitely want to look for whole farro. It’s more nutritious than pearled farro and cooks in just 20 minutes. Whole farro is also more flavorful and retains its chewy texture, making it the preferred option in all recipes.
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