Corn, Avocado, and Quinoa Salad with Marinated Tomatoes

Do I love quinoa? No.

Do I love this luscious and juicy summery salad, which does, in fact, contain quinoa? YES.

If you are a quinoa hater – I think I can get you on board with this salad. I really do.

This gem of a salad is a win for anyone who:

• Can appreciate a really good textured salad – I mean, look at all the little bite sizey bits!
• Prefers to hang out in the sun instead of spending hours cooking (aka THIS RECIPE IS SO EASY)
• Does or does not like quinoa – we accept all
• Appreciates a good meatless meal
• Goes weak in the knees for big, juicy, summery flavor

The amount of texture and flavor here is staggering. We have quinoa and corn making the base, marinated tomatoes as the juicy crown jewel, avocado to butter things up, shallot, chives, cilantro, lime zest and lime juice to wake you ALL THE WAY up, and Cotija cheese for just the tiniest bit of something creamy / crumbly (just omit if you’re vegan).

Let me just say this: it’s been a long time since I loved a quinoa salad as much as I love this one.

And maybe just a salad in general.

Healthy, but not too healthy. Punchy, textured, and craveable at all hours. Colorful and happy. Exactly how I like to eat.

And if you keep the avocados out until just before serving, it can be a lunches-made-ahead thing that will keep the mood high all the week long.

Quinoa, you win.

Corn, Avocado, and Quinoa Salad with Marinated Tomatoes

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• Author: Lindsay
• Prep Time: 30 minutes
• Cook Time: 10 minutes
• Total Time: 30 minutes
• Yield: 6 generous servings

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Description

The perfect summery quinoa salad – fresh corn, buttery avocado, nutty quinoa, juicy marinated tomatoes, and tons of fresh herbs. SO GOOD.

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Ingredients

• 1 cup quinoa, uncooked
• 4 ears raw sweet corn, kernels cut off the cob
• 1–2 cups marinated tomatoes and their juices
• 1 shallot, minced
• lots of fresh cilantro and chives, minced
• 1–2 limes, juice and zest
• olive oil to taste
• 1 teaspoon kosher salt
• 1/2 cup Cotija cheese (optional)
• 1–2 avocados, diced

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Instructions

1. Cook quinoa according to package directions.
2. Toss cooled quinoa with corn, tomatoes and juice, shallots, herbs, lime juice and zest, olive oil, and salt.
3. The mixture will hold up pretty well for a few hours in the fridge (or even for a day or two, if you don’t mind that it will look a little less perky). Wait to toss in your avocado and cheese just before serving for optimal freshness, and if it’s been sitting for a while, give it one more salt / oil / lime juice treatment to wake it all up. YUMYUMYUM.

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Equipment

Serving Bowl

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Wooden Spoon

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Notes

The equipment section above contains affiliate links to products we use and love!

If you’re using regular tomatoes instead of marinated tomatoes, you’ll want to add some fresh grated garlic, salt, and olive oil to compensate for the missing juices!

• Category: Salad
• Method: Toss
• Cuisine: American

Keywords: corn salad, quinoa salad, tomato salad, summer salad, salad for potluck, cookout recipe

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5-Ingredient Marinated Tomatoes

Where are you at with summer cooking? Because I’m at level: marinated tomatoes. Which is conveniently low maintenance AND extremely juicy and delicious and I probably won’t stop anytime soon.

I don’t mean like I’m making marinated tomatoes and having it as a side dish (although you go right ahead – if you’re fancy enough to have side dishes right now, don’t let me stop you).

I mean like, for the day to day, the extent of my entire “cooking” is a bowl of tomatoes that hang out for a little soak time in some garlic, salt, olive oil, lemon juice, and some fresh herbs.

What you get is a tomato salad of sorts – one that is swimming in tomato juices and olive oil and infused with garlic and herbs.

And oh, did we already establish that it takes about five seconds to make? Great.

It is my gold medal summer recipe right now.

Here are some ways you can use marinated tomatoes to make yourself feel as though you’ve cooked something really wonderful, when in fact, you’ve been sitting around enjoying the nice weather instead, like the good summer person you are:

• Spooned over grilled chicken or shrimp.
• Scooped onto your avocado toast.
• Sopped up with a slice of golden toasted, crusty bread thick with butter and salt. Because the bread with THE GARLICKY TOMATO JUICES. Wahhh. So good.
• Tossed with some raw corn cut straight off the cob (more on this tomorrow).
• Assembled over a pre-made bag mix salad. Kinda like this.
• Eaten straight, in a bowl, alongside salt and pepper ruffle chips. It’s summer, let me live.

Marinated tomatoes. Tonight. Make it happen.

5-Ingredient Marinated Tomatoes

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• Author: Lindsay

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Ingredients

• 1 pound cherry or grape tomatoes, halved or quartered
• 1 clove garlic, finely grated
• 2 tablespoons olive oil
• 1 tablespoon vinegar or lemon juice
• 1 tablespoon freshly minced herbs (I like parsley)
• salt to taste (I use about 1/2 – 3/4 teaspoon kosher salt)

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Instructions

1. Toss tomatoes, grated garlic, olive oil, vinegar, herbs, and salt together in a small bowl. You’re done.
2. Now just let the marinated tomatoes get real yummy. Give them 2-3 hours minimum to just rest in the fridge, but you can also let them soak in all that goodness for up to 24 hours, especially if your tomatoes were sturdy to begin with, and/or if you’ll be mixing them into other things like a salad. Bring them back to room temperature for ideal serving conditions!

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Notes

Tomato Options: You can also use whole beefsteak tomatoes and just cut them into slices.

Acid Options: I have used white vinegar, red wine vinegar, and lemon juice all with very delicious results.

Timing: For longer marinating times, sometimes the oil will congeal a bit in the fridge. This should be resolved by just bringing it back to room temperature.

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10 Recipes To Save You When You Just Don’t Feel Like Cooking

And by the way, “when you just don’t feel like cooking” is code for THE WHOLE SUMMER.

I think we can all appreciate that summer is the time where sitting outside on a hammock with a sparkly drink and watching dogs and kids play in little splashy pools is far, far superior to standing over the stove trying to get creative about what we eat for dinner.

The problem, for me, is that while I have little to no interest in meal planning and cooking right now, I still want to eat GOOD food. Like, if I could exclusively eat food that tastes happy and fresh and fun while also exerting little to no effort for planning, prep, or dishes, that would be great.

Option A: get takeout for every meal.

Option B: embrace the low-key nature of the summer season and hit up one of these tried and true lazy person recipes instead.

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1. Cheater’s Power Salad

Listen, this is not meant to impress you. That’s why it’s called Cheater’s Power Salad. But if we are going to talk about what to make when you really don’t feel like cooking, then we need to face the very real facts that sometimes a pre-bagged salad can deliver the foundation from which to build something very scrappy, healthy, and delicious.

Here’s the recipe: a bag of salad, a package of pre-made dressing if it’s a good one – YES YOU HEARD ME – and then whatever fresh veggies are in your fridge (tomatoes? cucumbers? corn?). Don’t forget some chunks of avocado, maybe some beans, possibly grilled chicken if you are going fancy, and done.

I am totally for real with this. Variations of this have been on my real life meal plan for the last three weeks. Zero shame.

2. Magic Green Sauce

So you don’t feel like cooking? Cool. Don’t cook.

Gather some raw veggies, some cheese, crackers (and by crackers I mean chips), and make a five-minute batch of Magic Green Sauce.

I have been known to eat this sauce with a heap of tortilla chips as just straight lunch. It’s not really advisable from a balanced eating perspective, but listen, we are dealing with some major cooking delinquency here. A win is a win is a win!

3. Carnitas

In other words, crispy pork loaded with flavor that delivers greatly and yet asks so very little of you. You make it in the slow cooker or Instant Pot. It feeds a crowd beautifully and everyone is always impressed at “what a great cook you are.” The end.

4. The Actual Easiest Fish Tacos

This is the fish tacos recipe for when you are THISCLOSE to getting takeout. Again.

Recipe instructions: Put fish in pan. Cover with melted butter and spices. Bake, flake, and done.

A) it’s so easy.

But B) IT’S REALLY SO GOOD.

Make the (admittedly very delicious!!) garlic cilantro sauce if you want, or skip it if you’d rather just sit outside and drink a lemonade. How much can one person be expected to do when it’s this nice outside, honestly?

5. Salmon Burgers

Under no other circumstances would I tell you to eat salmon from a can.

Except for now. This is the time that I’m going to tell you that yes, salmon from a can will save your lazy bum when you’re just needing a good meal right now, like, ready in 15 minutes. And things will get shockingly delicious when fried into a little salmon burger situation and thrown onto a bun and/or over some saucy cabbage slaw. It is one of my favorite easy recipes of all time.

6. Fried Chicken Sandwiches

The twisted thing about not wanting to cook is that sometimes you don’t really want to cook but you are open to taking on a bigger cooking project. Like, no, I can’t make dinner tonight. And yes, after I eat a frozen pizza, I will embark on my first ever journey to homemade croissants.

No one said this was going to make any sense.

Weirdly, I find that when I don’t feel like cooking, sometimes what it means is that I’m just bored with cooking. And making something mega from scratch, like FRIED CHICKEN SANDWICHES THAT WILL BLOW YOUR MIND, is exactly what the doctor ordered to get my excitement level up again. Is this… am I… like, how do we feel about this?

Yes, this is a project. No, technically this recipe doesn’t belong on this list. But speaking from experience, this could be the OMG-yum project that makes you excited to cook again.

7. Sheet Pan Fajitas or Sheet Pan Pitas

Or sheet pan anything.

Here’s one of my favorite hacks about sheet pan pitas: you make one sheet pan of stuff (chicken and peppers), and then you can buy all the sauces and extras! No prep needed! Sure, you can make your own tzatziki or hummus or pitas, but hey guess what! LOTS of grocery stores sell that stuff pre-made! 2020 is a great time to be alive!

Looks beautiful, makes people happy, very low maintenance. Highly recommend.

8. Curry Chicken Salad or Avocado Egg Salad

This is a picture of avocado egg salad on a toasted everything bagel because is there any other way?

Both the egg salad and the chicken salad are just so friendly to us Not-Wanting-To-Cook People in that they require, like, 5-8 pantry ingredients, and about 10-15 minutes of prep. I think lunches are settled then.

9. Cashew Crunch Salad

Hello hi this is a salad that features those little crunchy chow mein sticks? So that is where we are at now.

This is more of an assembly situation and less of a cooking situation. The creamy, sweet, unusually yummy dressing can be shaken up in a jar and the chow mein noodles can be, well, you can just open the bag. There’s also plenty of non-demanding healthy stuff in there like edamame, cashews, and cabbage.

I might actually make this for dinner tonight. It’s pulling me in.

10. Instant Pot Mac and Cheese

I’ll be the first to tell you that we eat a lot of boxed mac and cheese at our house. There is a time and a place (or lots of times and places!) where that is the exact thing you need.

But this mac offers something even more special by combining the low, low effort of boxed mac and cheese with the texture, sauciness, and actual cheese flavor of a really nice homemade mac and cheese. It’s truly the best of both worlds.

In the form of cheese sauce. On noodles. In the Instant Pot.

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What do you cook when you don’t want to cook?

Asking for a friend.

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Caramelized Pork Tacos with Pineapple Salsa

Hi friends! This recipe is a favorite from 2015 and it’s getting a replay on the blog this week because salty-sweet pork and pineapple salsa never goes out of style. We took some new photos, added some new videos, and all-around spiffed her up for your taco enjoyment!

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Ha-looooo!

And welcome to today’s episode of Tacos Are The Best Food Ever featuring Caramelized Pork Tacos.

I don’t mean to be super obvious here, but we have some really delicious things going on in the food department right now that you need to know about. Starting with thin strips of caramelized pork tucked into a soft corn tortilla, moving on to fresh cucumber pineapple cilantro salsa, and finishing with a chili mayo sauce over the top because SAUCE RULES THE WORLD.

I’m just a little obsessed.

Scrappy is Best

When I read the book Bread and Wine (affiliate link) a long time ago, one of my favorite concepts/takeaways from the book was this idea that anything can be made into a few certain super-flexible recipes.

Soup, for example. Just about any combination of random ingredients that might happen to be hiding in the depths of the produce drawer of the fridge can probably be made into soup. It might be a scary soup – I’ll give you that. But with a little water, a little salt, a few spices… no biggie. You’ve got a basic soup.

Or stir fry. Assuming you have some sort of grain or rice – or maybe not even because you’re just going to create more of a stir-fry-meets-hash situation? I wouldn’t be mad – you can almost guarantee that any random ingredient combination can become something resembling a stir fry.

And that’s sort of how I feel about these pork tacos, in the most scrappy, hungry, wonderful way.

How to Enjoy These Pork Tacos

These are coming to your face today in TACO FORM. Make no mistake – taco form is the original. This is where it’s at. Warm tortilla stuffed to the brim with all those colors and textures and the Sweet Salty Spicy trifecta. But if you’re a person who sort of takes these things called recipes and runs with them into crazy food places ( hiii), this is an open invitation for you to reincarnate these tacos into a new food form.

After we devoured the tacos themselves, I found myself bringing this combo back to life in SALAD FORM (toppings + meat over greens with the chili mayo as dressing), and then in STIR FRY FORM (toppings + meat + leftover quinoa, fried into something that resembled the most delicious sweet and savory fried rice) which was really, really good.

And then there was the DIPPED WITH CHIPS form, but that’s really only for the select few who have a refined enough palate to really appreciate that kind of sacred food wizardry.

Start with the tacos, though, okay? Sizzle up that meat and chop up your salsa and drizzle with spicy chili sauce – just think of it as your gateway to greatness.

More Taco Yum

• Instant Pot Hawaiian Chicken Tacos with Jalapeño Ranch Slaw (you NEED!)
• Walnut Chorizo Tacos with Pineapple Salsa (totally vegan and so good)
• Spicy Shrimp Tacos with Garlic Cilantro Lime Slaw (the perfect summer dinner right here)
• The Best Chicken Tinga Tacos (literally though, the actual best!)

Check out our video for how to make Caramelized Pork Tacos:

This recipe inspiration is coming to us from the extremely talented Stephanie Le of I Am A Food Blog! Here’s her original caramelized pork taco recipe and here’s her beautiful, drool-worthy cookbook, Easy Gourmet (affiliate link), which is full of recipes like dis. Mwah!

Caramelized Pork Tacos with Pineapple Salsa and Chili Sauce

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★★★★★

4.7 from 68 reviews

• Author: Pinch of Yum
• Prep Time: 10 mins
• Cook Time: 15 mins
• Total Time: 25 minutes
• Yield: 6-8 tacos (depending on the size of your tortillas)

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Description

Caramelized Pork Tacos with Pineapple Salsa – topped with sriracha mayo, obviously! Quick and easy to make! Naturally gluten free.

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Ingredients

For the Pork:

• 1 tablespoon oil
• 1 shallot
• 1 clove garlic
• 1 jalapeño, ribs and seeds removed
• 2 teaspoons fish sauce
• 18 ounces boneless pork loin, sliced into thin strips
• 2 tablespoons sugar
• 2 tablespoons water

For the Pineapple Salsa

• 1 cup chopped pineapple
• 1 cup chopped cucumber
• 1/2 cup chopped cilantro
• 1/2 cup chopped red onion or shallot
• a squeeze of lime juice
• a pinch of salt
• tortillas for serving
• cilantro and lime for serving
• chili sauce for topping – see notes

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Instructions

Video

1. For the pork: Heat the oil in a heavy pan over medium heat. Add the shallot, garlic, and jalapeño – saute until fragrant, about 2 minutes. Turn the heat to high and add the pork and the fish sauce – stir fry for a few minutes until the pork is no longer pink. With the heat very high, add the sugar and water and stir once – then let the pork caramelize by not stirring it for about 1 minute. Repeat this process until the pork is nice and golden brown.
   
2. For the salsa: Toss everything together in a medium bowl.
   
3. For the tacos: Warm the tortillas quickly in a skillet with a little bit of oil. Arrange the pork between 6 tortillas and top with the salsa and the chili sauce.
   

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Equipment

Tortilla Warmer

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Stainless Steel Mixing Bowl

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Large Skillet

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Notes

The equipment section above contains affiliate links to products we use and love!

For the chili sauce, combine two parts mayo and one part hot sauce (more or less depending on how hot your hot sauce actually is – I used Sriracha which is just moderately spicy). Whisk to combine or shake in a jar. Add water if needed to thin out the consistency – serve over the tacos.

For leftovers, store each element (pork, salsa, and sauce) separately.

• Category: Dinner
• Method: Stovetop
• Cuisine: Mexican

Keywords: taco recipe, pork tacos, pineapple salsa, pork recipe

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One more thing!

This recipe is part of our collection of best taco recipes. Check it out!

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