Wild Rice Recipes ~ Healthy Salads, Soups & Sides

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When was the last time you made wild rice? Can’t remember or think it’s only for holidays? This versatile ingredient deserves more attention and a place in your meal rotation. Once you check out these delicious and healthy wild rice recipes, you’ll be adding wild rice to your repertoire regularly.

Not yet wild about wild rice? Get to know this healthy, versatile, and delicious ingredient and you will be…

Why You’ll Love These Wild Rice Recipes

A 1-cup serving of wild rice has only about 160 calories and more than 6 grams of protein, twice as much as in most rice. (See more vegan protein sources here.)

Wild rice also has a decent amount of fiber, magnesium, and potassium, things most of us fall short on. It also serves up a healthy dose of antioxidants.

Wild rice is gluten-free and technically not a grain but the seed of a marsh grass, so those avoiding grains can enjoy it as well.

It’s easy to cook (more forgiving than regular rice as well as more nutritious).

And there are so many ways to use it!

• Plain, wild rice is a tasty simple side dish for chicken or fish.
• Throw some of your leftover wild rice in broth with some veggies for a delicious and easy soup.
• Then use more leftover wild rice for a tasty salad (recipe below).

Cooking with Wild Rice

Wild rice takes a while to cook, so I like to make a large batch when I cook something like salmon and serve it as a simple side with a vegetable like roasted asparagus.

The leftovers are then transformed into numerous other dishes: A couple nights later, I toss it with vegetables and spices and maybe some of the leftover fish for a filling and easy salad. Another night kids mix it into chicken broth. I freeze some for nights when I need a quick side for the sometimes fussy little diners in my house.

I like to soak wild rice ahead to reduce cooking time. It’s pretty straightforward to cook on the stovetop and doesn’t require much attention, great for busy cooks who still want to serve delicious and healthy food. (If you want more info on cooking wild rice, here’s a post from the Kitchn with the deets.)

If you prefer crockpot cooking, check out these instructions for crockpot wild rice.

Wild Rice Recipes

Since this site’s all about practical, and the rice itself takes awhile to cook, I did some careful snooping to find a few wild rice recipes that wouldn’t take too much time or effort.

I don’t know about you, but when the ingredient list takes up most of the page, I move on. 

You’re on board with easy, right?

My absolute favorite thing to do with leftover wild rice is transform it into an incredibly easy but completely satisfying protein-packed salad. Call it a bowl, if you like, it’s filling enough to work for dinner and packs well for lunches, picnics and so on. Here’s my easy-peasy template for wild rice salad.

You might use up all your wild rice on that, it’s so good, but if you have more, here are some tempting-looking, not-too-complicated wild rice recipes.

Several of these call for a wild rice blend, but there’s no reason you couldn’t go 100 % wild rice.

♦ Wild rice is native to my now-home state of Minnesota, where they call casseroles “hotdish.” So I had to include a hotdish recipe here. One of the few that didn’t call for the traditional canned soup (no thanks — here’s one of many reasons to avoid canned food) was a chicken and wild rice casserole from Well Plated. Wild rice goes wonderfully with sweet autumn veggies like butternut squash.

Chicken and Wild Rice Casserole by Erin Clarke of Well Plated

♦ Iowa Girl Eats shares a simple-to-prepare but tempting crock pot chicken and wild rice soup.

♦ Gimme Some Oven adds in lots of fall vegetables to her cozy autumn wild rice soup.

♦ Mushrooms and wild rice go SO well together, and this slow cooker mushroom wild rice soup from Easy Cheesy Vegetarian looks just perfect for a cold winter night. I will definitely be trying this when the weather cools again.

Slow cooker wild rice and mushroom soup Easy Cheesy Vegetarian

♦ Pinch of Yum has a tempting recipe for Thanksgiving salad that I definitely would not save for holidays. It features mangos and looks like a wonderful anytime lunch.

♦ Detoxinista uses fruit, nuts, and an orange vinaigrette in her wild rice salad.

♦ Some folks even like wild rice for breakfast! Check out these recipes for a wild rice breakfast bake, a crockpot porridge and a wild rice breakfast pudding.

Mmmm… What’s your favorite way to use wild rice? Share your favorite wild rice recipes in the comments!

Other recipe collections to up your intake of super-healthy foods:

♦ 75+ Healthy Pumpkin Recipes

♦ 50+ Delicious & Healthy Bean Recipes

♦ 25 Healthy Kale Recipes that Will Make You Crave Kale

♦ Health Benefits of Sweet Potatoes + Delicious Recipes

Pin to save these wild rice recipes for later!

I share inspiring ideas for healthy food, gardening, and natural remedies from across the blogosphere several times a day. Follow me on Pinterest to see more awesome finds from other great green bloggers!

Other photo credits: Meal Makeover Moms, Whitney

Susannah

Susannah is a health and environmental writer focusing on gardening, foraging, medicinal plants, and sustainability. Her work has appeared in Mother Earth Living, Ensia, Northern Gardener, Sierra, and on numerous websites. Her first book, Everything Elderberry, released in September 2020 and was a #1 new release in holistic medicine, naturopathy, herb gardening, and other categories. Find out more and grab your copy here.