Pesto Cous Cous Spinach Salad

bowls / meat free / quick meals

A gorgeous, green bowl or side salad that has pesto, cous cous, edamame, spinach, almonds, and sliced parmesan.

I’m such a fan of quick, easy to make grain bowls that can be used as a side dish or your entrée just by adding your protein of choice in it. This bowl uses edamame which definitely bulks it up and give it that protein you need, so it can be either an entrée or side dish! Up to you.

I love using cous cous because it’s filling and gives a different flavor that your typical brown rice or quinoa. It’s so fluffy and my favorite flavor is parmesan, so it was a no brainer to add the parmesan into this dish.

Pesto is the ultimate summer flavor, so I try incorporating it whenever I can. I used it in this recipe to coat everything and act as my dressing essentially. I’ve been on an Aldi’s kick recently so I used their store-bought pesto, but if you want to make your own, GO FOR IT! I love a delicious homemade pesto. For this recipe, I needed it to be quick and easy, hence the store-bought.

Some other add-ins that would be delicious in this recipe are grilled chicken or sliced chicken sausage.

Sub-ins could be goat cheese or feta for parmesan, crispy chick peas or white beans for edamame, arugula for spinach, or pistachios for almonds.

This recipe has the easiest instructions of all: just mix it all up! You can mess with the amounts of ingredients, if you want it to be more a salad, add more spinach. If you want to be more of a cous cous side dish, chop up the spinach smaller and add more cous cous.