Vegan Orzo Salad with Pesto

A delicious mediterranean summer salad with pesto, tomatoes, chickpeas, olives and artichokes. Super easy to make and versatile, this Vegan Orzo Salad with Pesto is an absolute winner in our book.

With only 8 ingredients and very little actual cooking involved, this recipe is low-fuss and requires very little time. In this particular recipe, we’re using storebought pesto. Obviously you can also choose to make your own, which is very simple and relatively quick as well. If you want to try this recipe with homemade pesto, be sure to check out our pesto recipe. This is not a traditional pesto recipe though, so don’t expect it to taste like the well-known pinenut and basil pesto. For a more creative twist, our green pesto is made with pumpkin seeds and parsley. Anyways, back to the actual recipe here. We love the fresh, juicy sweet cherry tomatoes together with the saltyness of the olives, bite of the chickpeas and the slight bitternes and nutty flavour of the artichokes.

• Green pesto – use one that you like, but make sure it’s vegan (most storebought pesto’s aren’t vegan).
• Artichoke hearts – these are pre-cooked and canned which make them very convenient.
• Orzo pasta – a small type of pasta which is very suitable to use in salads such as this one.
• Olives – for a salty and mediterranean touch.
• Cherry tomatoes – sweet, juicy and utterly delicious. These cherry tomatoes really elevate this salad to another level.

• Be sure to break or cut the aragula into small(er) pieces. It has a relatively strong flavour and having large pieces of aragula in your salad will probably not improve your eating experience.
• We like our pasta to be cooked al dente, which basically means that it still has some bite and texture to it. You can naturally cook the pasta the way you like, but especially for salads we highly recommend cooking the pasta al dente. The easiest way to do this, is to look at the packaging instructions and take 1 to 2 minutes off of the cooking time on the package.

• Aragula – instead of aragula, you can use spinach or any other type of lettuce you like. Or you can choose to leave it out entirely.
• Olives – can sub with capers.
• Chickpeas – lentils or other beans such as cannellini beans also work fine.
• Green pesto – can sub with red pesto. Yes, it can be that simple :-).

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