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This Wild Rice Salad features crunchy pecans, sweet apples, and dried cranberries. It’s the perfect side dish for a holiday menu!
This recipe comes from my friend Jenn’s book, Once Upon a Chef, the Cookbook. It’s the perfect salad to bring to a Thanksgiving dinner and lends itself well to leftovers.
Add some leftover turkey on top for a lighter post-Thanksgiving meal, or serve it with some chickpeas for some plant-based protein, instead.
It’s also delicious when served with baked chicken breasts or stuffed into a baked sweet potato!
Ingredients You’ll Need
Wild rice is naturally gluten-free and has more protein per serving than brown rice. It takes slightly longer to cook than other varieties of rice and results in a tender, chewy texture you’ll love.
Paired with crunchy nuts, dried fruit, and diced veggies, this wild rice salad recipe is loaded with flavor. This recipe calls for toasted pepitas (which are hulled pumpkin seeds) but if you can’t find those at the store, sliced almonds, walnuts, or pistachios will also work.
It’s also easy to customize! Add crumbled feta cheese or goat’s cheese for creaminess, or sprinkle in some pomegranate seeds for extra festive color. You can also add in diced red onion or some spicy arugula if you’d like to bulk it up even more.
For another variation, you can replace the fresh orange juice and zest with the lemon zest and lemon juice from 1 lemon. Either way, it’s delicious!
How to Make the Best Wild Rice Salad
To prepare the rice, rinse it well in a fine mesh strainer. (This will improve the texture.) Transfer the rinsed rice to a medium saucepan, add 3/4 teaspoon of salt, and cover it with 4 cups of water.
Bring the water to a boil, then lower the heat and cover the pot. Let the rice gently simmer for 50 minutes, then remove the pot from the heat and let it sit with the lid on for an additional 10 minutes.
The cooked rice should split open when it’s done, and there will most likely be excess water in the pot. Drain the rice in a fine mesh strainer to remove the excess water and set it aside to cool.
While the rice is cooking, combine the orange juice, orange zest, dijon mustard, extra-virgin olive oil, vinegar, honey, salt, and black pepper in a large bowl. Whisk well to combine the vinaigrette.
Add in the diced celery, apple, pecans, cranberries, pumpkin seeds, parsley, and green onions. Toss well to coat everything in the dressing.
When the rice has cooled down, stir that in and adjust any seasoning to taste.
Let the salad marinate for at least 30 minutes in the fridge before serving. The flavors will get even better as they meld together.
Leftovers can be stored in an airtight container in the fridge for up to 3 days.
Frequently Asked Questions
Yes, you can prepare the rice and vinaigrette up to 3 days in advance, but wait to stir in the nuts, chopped apple, and fresh parsley until shortly before serving. This will give you the freshest flavor and texture.
If you don’t have wild rice on hand, you can swap it for cooked quinoa to keep this recipe gluten-free. Or use any other cooked grain you love! (Farro would work well here, too.)
You can cook the wild rice in the Instant Pot by combining 1 cup of rinsed wild rice with 1 1/2 cups water. Cook at high pressure for 25 minutes, then let the pressure naturally release for 10 minutes after that.
If you swap the honey for maple syrup, this salad is vegan-friendly.
Looking for more holiday side dishes? Try my Easy Butternut Squash Soup, Homemade Cranberry Sauce, and Instant Pot Mashed Potatoes for more ideas.
Ingredients
- 1 cup wild rice , rinsed
- 4 cups water
- 1 ¼ teaspoons fine sea salt (divided)
- ½ teaspoon orange zest
- ¼ cup fresh orange juice , from one orange
- 2 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
- 3 tablespoons apple cider vinegar
- 2 tablespoons honey
- 1 teaspoon Dijon mustard
- ¼ teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
- 1 cup toasted pecans , roughly chopped
- ½ cup dried cranberries
- ½ cup chopped fresh Italian parsley
- 2 celery ribs , diced
- 1 apple , peeled, cored, and diced
- ¼ cup roasted and salted pepitas (hulled pumpkin seeds)
- 2 green onions , light and green parts, thinly sliced
Instructions
- In a medium saucepan, combine the rice, 3/4 teaspoon of salt, and 4 cups of water. Bring the liquid to a boil, then turn the heat down to low. Cover and simmer for 50 minutes, then remove the pot from the heat but keep the lid on for an additional 10 minutes. Remove the lid and make sure the rice is tender, with most of the grains split open. Transfer the rice to a fine-mesh strainer to drain any excess water. Let cool.
- In a large bowl, whisk together the orange zest, orange juice, olive oil, vinegar, honey, mustard, pepper, and remaining 1/2 teaspoon of salt. Add the cooled rice, pecans, dried cranberries, parsley, celery, apple, pepitas, and scallions. Taste and adjust the seasoning, if desired. Serve cold or at room temperature.
- Leftovers can be stored in an airtight container in the fridge for up to 3 days.
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Notes
Nutrition
If you try this Wild Rice Salad recipe, please leave a comment and star rating below letting me know how you like it.
Very nice write-up. I absolutely love this site. Continue the good work!
I think honey smoked salmon would be a great addition to this salad with some greens and blueberries.
What a tasty dish that pairs well with so many things. Thank you for sharing.
This was delicious!!! My very picky family absolutely loved it!! Will be making it again!!
I just now made a BIG batch of this salad to use for my daughter’s baby shower tomorrow. I taste tested it and its truly delicious. My only problem was in multiplying the ingredient list. I know that the website has the increase in ingredients, but it would be so very helpful to not have raw rice to measure, but the finished rice amount to use. I bought a package of wild rice (only one in the store) and a wild rice blend. I cooked both separately and would’ve loved to have seen how much to use of the finished rice in my recipe for 14 people. I’m guessing because I made lots of extra rice (kept extra aside) and will see how this absorbs the dressing and maybe play with the extra dressing and rice tomorrow before serving it up. Lovely salad though and I’ll make again! 🙂
This is just what we were looking for. it is going on our Christmas Eve menu. Thank you for the inspiration.
Hi, I think perhaps the recipe should read two sticks of celery rather than stalks. Two stalks would be a heck of a lot of celery.
Ahh, thanks for catching that! Just fixed it.
This is the best rice salad I’ve ever had! I love the orange vinaigrette, it complements the wild rice, fruit, nuts, and celery so well. The texture of the salad is great too, with the chewy rice and nuts and the crunchy apple and celery.
Absolutely perfect harvest salad! I used lemon instead of orange and added some feta cheese. So good! Thank you!
Great recipe! This was delicious and easy. The hardest part of this salad was chopping the parsley. To make it vegan I swapped out honey for maple syrup. Because I had blueberries and not crasins I made that swap too. I made the rice in the rice cooker and reduced the amount of water by 1/2 cup. My dinner companions found it delicious as well – so I shared the recipe iwth them. Will definately make again.