Italian Basil Rice Salad! Still looking for a refreshing summery salad that feels light and filling all at the same time? Look no further than this veggie packed goodness right here!

Comes together quickly using leftover rice, this healthy Italian Basil Rice Salad is brimming with all the musts haves: texture, nutrition, and flavor. This tasty rice salad features cooked brown rice, nourishing veggies, hearty beans and fresh basil all coated in a light Italian vinaigrette dressing. It’s perfect for lunch, light dinner, potlucks, or picnics!

Whole Food Plant Based, Vegan, plant based, oil free, refined sugar free, no highly processed ingredients and gluten free.

Hi there, Ameera here!

We are fresh basil fiends; we love it. It always grows in abundance in our garden. Mom and I are continuously trying to find ways to incorporate fresh basil into our meals.

In the summer we devour fresh garden tomato and basil salads. This tasty salad is a great way to utilize fresh basil and summer produce. We devoured it!

You gotta give this one a try!

Tips for Success:

• Flavor Profile: This rice salad is all about basil and the tangy Italian dressing. It has a great contrast of crunchy (salad ingredients like red bell pepper and cucumber) against the soft rice and beans.
• Cooked and Refrigerated Rice: Cooked and refrigerated rice works best when making this dish.  If you use recently cooked rice, it will be too gummy and sticky. Using cooked and refrigerated rice (preferably made the day before or earlier in the day) allows the rice to dry out enough to showcase distinct individual grains of rice making a better textured dish.
• Taste Testing Salad Dressings: There is an art to arriving at the salad dressing that perfectly suits your tastes.  The best way to test salad dressings is to place a small portion of the salad in a tiny bowl, put a tiny bit of the salad dressing over top and mix really well, then taste test.  Some salad dressings taste amazing before you dress the salad, then once dressing the salad, the salad falls flat.  That is because the salad dressing has to cover all the salad ingredients which then flattens the flavor of the dressing.  Additionally, some salad dressings taste really tangy or overly strong before dressing the salad, but once you dress the salad, it coats all the ingredients and tastes amazing.
• Tahini: You can substitute the tahini with other nut or seed butters, or you can use white miso paste. You may need to adjust flavors to compensate. We have no tested any substitutions.
• White Beans: We used canned navy beans, you can use your favorite white bean. Just be careful if you add too many beans then it flattens the flavor of the salad dressing. Start small and slowly add if you want more beans.
• Fresh Basil: This refreshing salad is all about the fresh basil. You can use a dried basil (1 to 2 teaspoons), but the culinary experience will change significantly.
• Cherry or Grape Tomatoes: We used small orange cherry tomatoes. They are very flavorful and do not have a lot of “juice”.  If you need to use larger tomatoes, we suggest that you seed them and remove the juice first to prevent watering down the dressing.
• Amount of Salad Ingredients: We suggest not going over the amounts listed in the recipe, or you can end up with a dry or flavor-flattened salad. If you add a new ingredient, then decrease another ingredient proportionally. If you found yourself in the situation where you accidentally added too many ingredients, you can add a splash or two of red wine vinegar to liven up the tang in the salad.

Leftovers and Freezing:

Leftovers will generally keep 3 days in the refrigerator.  Store in a covered container.

This salad cannot be frozen.

Pantry Products:

• Brown Rice:  We used Uncle Ben’s Whole Grain Brown Rice.  Feel free to use your favorite rice.

Kitchen Products:

• Whisk

If you try this light and hearty salad, we would love to know if you enjoy it as much as we do! Please leave us a review! Post a picture on Facebook or Instagram and tag us! We would love to hear from you.

Italian Basil Rice Salad

5 Stars 4 Stars 3 Stars 2 Stars 1 Star No reviews

• Author: Monkey and Me Kitchen Adventures
• Prep Time: 20 Minutes
• Total Time: 20 Minutes
• Yield: 5 1/2 Cups 1x
• Category: Salad
• Cuisine: Italian Inspired
• Diet: Vegan

Print Recipe

Pin Recipe

---

Description

Comes together quickly using leftover rice, this healthy Italian Basil Rice Salad is brimming with all the musts haves: texture, nutrition, and flavor.

---

Ingredients

Scale 1x2x3x

Base Ingredients:

• 3 cups cooked and refrigerated brown rice *
• 1 cup small dice baby Persian cucumbers, unpeeled *
• ¾ to 1 cup cherry (or grape) tomatoes, quartered *
• ½ cup sliced green onions
• ½ to ¾ cup small dice red bell pepper
• ½ to ¾ cup white beans *
• ½ cup chopped fresh basil *

Dressing Ingredients:

• 1/3 cup red wine vinegar (+/-) *
• 1 Tablespoon lemon juice
• 2 Tablespoons tahini
• 1 Tablespoon nutritional yeast
• 1 Tablespoon pure maple syrup (+/-)
• ½ teaspoon Italian seasoning (+/-)
• 1 teaspoon garlic powder
• 1 teaspoon onion powder
• ½ to 1 teaspoon sea salt (+/-) *

Optional Ingredients:

• Kalamata olives

Cook Mode Prevent your screen from going dark

---

Instructions

1. Make the dressing by placing all the Dressing Ingredients into a small bowl, whisk to incorporate all the ingredients until smooth and emulsified, set aside.
2. Place all the Base Ingredients into a large bowl, mix to evenly distribute the ingredients.
3. Pour the dressing over the salad ingredients, gently toss. Taste test for flavor.  Add more seasoning, if needed. Best if served immediately at room temperature. If serving cold from the refrigerator, remove from the fridge approximately 20 minutes before serving to wake up the flavors.

---

Notes

*Please reference the blog post for Tips for Success, Pantry Items Used, Storage and Freezing, and Kitchen Products Used. 

*Sea Salt:  Please adjust the sea salt based upon your family’s sea salt preferences and/or based upon dietary needs.

*Serving:  4 to 6  Makes 5 to 5 ½ cups

This post contains affiliate links, and we may receive a very small commission if you purchase through those links at no additional cost to you. Thank you for supporting Monkey and Me Kitchen Adventures! For more information, see our disclosures here.