Chinese Salad (Easy)

A refreshing, slightly sweet(due to the raisins), just the right amount of salty, crunchy, cold, rice salad that can be prepared ahead of time as a great compliment to most any meat dish. Tonight we are having ours on the side with pulled pork. You have a combination of veggies, raisins, cashews, and rice all in one. This dish is best served cold and best prepared 1 hour to many hours in advance.  I prefer to make this salad in the morning so that it has all day to allow the flavors to combine. The soy sauce/garlic/olive oil dressing tossed with it adds just the right amount of flavor to bring it all together. This salad is great for a potluck because there is nothing in it that will spoil without the constant need of refrigeration. This recipe makes a large amount, so large that I would have to say 10-12 servings, possibly more than that.


INGREDIENTS:

• 1 cup mushrooms, sliced
• Juice of ½ lemon, (I microwave my lemon for 20 seconds first, you get more juice out of it)
• 2 cups cooked, cooled rice (Cook rice first so it has time to cool while preparing other items)
• 2 cups fresh spinach, washed and dried
• 1/3 cup raisins
• 14 oz can bean sprouts, drained
• 3 celery stalks, diced
• 1 green bell pepper, diced
• ¼ cup green onions, chopped
• 1 cup cashews

DRESSING:

• ¼ cup low-sodium soy sauce
• ¼ cup olive oil
• 1 garlic clove, finely diced

DIRECTIONS:

1. Sprinkle mushrooms with lemon juice and place in large salad bowl. Add other ingredients and set aside.
2. In a bowl, combine oil dressing ingredients. Pour over vegetable salad. Toss. Marinate for 1 hour before serving.(I prepare mine in the morning the day I will be serving it. It can even be prepared the night before for the next day.)

All the ingredients needed to make the salad minus the dressing ingredients. I use a rice cooker to prepare my rice. It comes out perfectly every time!

While the rice is cooking, start cutting up and preparing the other ingredients. The mushrooms are the first to be sliced up and placed in the bottom of the bowl and then half of a lemon of juice is squeezed all over them.

Add the fresh spinach leaves, diced up celery and green pepper, sliced green onions, drained bean sprouts, raisins, and cashews. Mix to combine ingredients.

Cooked rice.

I removed the cooked rice from the rice cooker and that allowed it to cool much faster at room temperature.

Dressing ingredients. I recommend using a low-sodium soy sauce.

The dressing: I grabbed a small container with a lid  for shaking it up and mixed the soy sauce, olive oil, and garlic together.

By now the rice should be cooled enough to room temperature to combine with the other veggies.

Do not pour the dressing over your salad yet. First mix your rice in with a wooden spoon to evenly distribute the rice throughout the other ingredients; then pour the dressing on and mix.

Dressing has now been added and mixed in evenly. Time to refrigerate for an hour or more to allow the flavors to blend.

There you have it! A yummy cold rice salad, ready to eat!