Jewelled Rice Salad With Fruit & Nuts
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Make this festive Jewelled Rice Salad for parties and celebrations. The delicious ingredients which include mango, dried apricots and cranberries, red chilies, and pomegranate are flecked through white long grain and wild rice, and look like little jewels! A herb-filled dressing and a selection of chopped nuts complete this amazing salad.
Right-click to open more of our Rice Salad Recipes in a new tab to read next.
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Jewelled Rice Salad
The full ingredients list and instructions are found in the printable recipe card at the end of this post. I highly recommend reading the blog post all the way through so that you don’t miss any tips or substitution suggestions; to ensure that you have all the ingredients and equipment required, and to understand the steps and timings involved.
I made this dish for our Boxing Day Buffet. I was serving vegetarians, and wanted something that was not only packed with flavour, but looked festive too. I think I hit the mark with the jewelled rice salad! All the different ingredients flecked through look like little jewels, which is how I came up with the name of this rice salad recipe.
The rice used in this salad is a mixture of white long grain rice and wild rice. I used microwave packets of Uncle Ben’s Ready Rice Pouch Long Grain & Wild Rice – if you can’t find this mix, you can use just regular rice instead. Or cook up some wild rice and mix with white rice.
For my American friends, you can find this rice in Walmart
I used 4 packs of 250g/8.8oz of Uncle Ben’s Ready Rice – that makes a total of 1kg/2.2lbs.
If you have to cook rice from dry weight, I know that white rice increases by about three when cooked. This means you would need to cook around 330g or 12oz or 1½ cups of dry, raw rice.
It doesn’t have to be exact, this is the kind of recipe that doesn’t matter if there is a little extra or less of any of the ingredients!
The dressing for the rice salad is made with a ton of fresh herbs – adjust the quantities to your personal preference – along with olive oil and lemon juice.
Since Christmastime is filled with dried fruit and nuts (at least, in our house it is!) they are the main stars of the salad, with some fresh ingredients thrown in as their understudy!
Ingredients Used in This Recipe
Here is what I used, but you could make some swaps if you don’t like a particular ingredient.
- Dried Apricots
- Dried Cranberries – you could use golden raisins or sultanas instead
- Macadamia Nuts
- Walnuts
- Flaked Toasted Almonds
- Scallions – also known as spring onions or green onions
- Fresh Red Chilies
- Fresh Mango – pineapple would also well.
- Red Bell Pepper
- Pomegranate Arils/Seeds
Once you have the base of this recipe down (which is really the rice and the dressing) you can experiment with different ingredients. In fact, this is a tweak on another recipe of mine – Empire Rice Salad.
Recipes on The Purple Pumpkin Blog use both cup measurements and/or weighted measurements. American cups and kitchen food scales are handy pieces of equipment to have in your kitchen as it means you’ll be able to make all of the different recipes on my blog! I try to give American, imperial, and metric measurements in my recipes. You can mix cup measurements with weighted measurements, but never imperial (pounds, ounces, pints, etc.,) with metric (kilograms, grams, liters, etc.,).
More Recipes Using Rice
One of the hero ingredients in this recipe is rice, so here are some more recipes using the same:
- Teriyaki Pork Fried Rice with Carrot & Baby Bok Choy
- Carolina Red Rice
- Jewelled Persian Rice with Pomegranates, Walnuts & Parsley
More Salad Recipes
Looking for more salads to make? Check these recipes out next:
How Do I Make Jewelled Rice Salad?
Just check out the recipe card below with full ingredients, instructions, and demonstration photos. You can print the card out too (don’t worry, the pics don’t print to save your ink!).
This dish would also work well for Spring and Easter! I’ve got a collection of Easter Recipes that you might like to try out – right-click and open them in a new tab to read next.
Jewelled Rice Salad
Ingredients
- 4 250g / 8.8oz packs Uncle Ben’s Ready Rice Long Grain & Wild (microwavable)
- 8 Tbsps extra virgin olive oil
- 2 Tbsps lemon juice plus extra to taste
- 12 Tbsps finely chopped mixed fresh herbs e.g. flat-leaf parsley, chives, mint, and coriander
- Salt and freshly ground black pepper
- 8 spring onions scallions, finely sliced
- 1 red bell pepper finely chopped
- 2 red chilies deseeded and finely sliced
- 1 mango peeled, de-stoned, and diced finely
- 150 g / ¾ cup dried apricots finely chopped
- 150 g / 1 cup dried cranberries
- 150 g / 1 cup chopped macadamia nuts
- 150 g / 1¼ cup chopped walnuts
- 100 g / 1¼ cup toasted flaked almonds
- 180 g / 2 cups pomegranate seeds roughly 2 pomegranates
Instructions
- Cook the rice according to the instructions on the package.
- Spread the rice onto a large cookie sheet and leave to cool slightly before transferring it to the fridge to cool completely.
- To make the dressing, mix the olive oil, lemon juice, herbs, salt, and pepper together in a bowl and set aside.
- When the rice is cold, place into a large mixing bowl and stir in the spring onions, bell pepper, chilli, mango, dried apricots, dried cranberries, macadamia nuts, walnuts, almonds, and pomegranate seeds and mix well.
- Pour the herby olive oil dressing over the rice and other ingredients and stir through. Check the seasoning and add more lemon juice, salt, and pepper as required.
- Can be served chilled or at room temperature.
Notes
SUGGESTED PRODUCTS
Nutrition
Nutritional information is always approximate and will depend on the quality of ingredients used and serving sizes. If you need exact calories and macros, please do your own calculations.
Make It A Meal!
You’ve made the side dish (it also makes a delicious vegetarian main dish too), but what about the rest of the courses?
Here are additional recipes to make a full meal!
- Appetizer: Black Bean Salsa Cups Appetizer
- Main Dish: Hawaiian Barbecue Chicken
- Beverage: Frozen Mango Margaritas
- Dessert: Mini Blueberry Cheesecakes with Crumble Topping
There are 500+ Recipes on The Purple Pumpkin Blog for you to enjoy – please feel free to check them out too!
New Mum Online
May 1, 2014 @ 8:13 pm
Oh that is spectacular – gotta try it xx
Michelle Ordever
May 1, 2014 @ 8:14 pm
This salad is one of my favourites – it looks so pretty and is so delish! xx
Sarah Mcknight
January 28, 2014 @ 9:55 pm
This looks lovely, i will have to try it :)
Michelle Ordever
January 30, 2014 @ 5:00 pm
Really tasty – love this salad!