Harvest Wild Rice Salad

This harvest wild rice salad with roasted butternut squash, pomegranate and feta is the perfect addition to your next holiday gathering. All the fall flavors go perfectly together!

With a nice sharpness from the arugula and plenty of veggies, you have the perfect healthy side dish for Thanksgiving, and the homemade dressing with olive oil and honey brings all the flavors together in this easy cold salad. Make it ahead and add the dressing later if you like!

I love serving a hearty salad with out holiday meals, because it’s such a refreshing dish next to all the more heavy holiday dinner sides.

This is perfect for all fall celebrations, with wild rice, roasted butternut squash and lots more goodies. And it looks so pretty on a beautifully decorated Thanksgiving table!

How to Make my Harvest Wild Rice Salad:

Read on for the detailed step-by-step instructions, or scroll down for tips and the printable recipe card.

Ingredients for this wild rice salad:

Please don’t let the long list of ingredients freak you out! I categorized the recipe according to component, so things like oil or salt may be listed twice. I promise this is an easy recipe!

For the Roasted Butternut Squash:

• butternut squash
• oil
• salt and black pepper

For the Dressing:

• olive oil
• orange juice
• white wine vinegar
• honey
• mustard
• salt and black pepper

For the Salad:

• wild rice mix
• chopped arugula
• pomegranate seeds
• crumbled feta cheese

You can use pumpkin or acorn squash in place of the butternut if that’s all you have.

The dressing ingredients are quite flexible – use apple cider vinegar in place of the white wine vinegar, apple cider in place of the orange juice or maple syrup in place of the honey.

For the mustard I recommend using a Dijon mustard, but any you have will work. Sometimes I switch things up and use a whole grain mustard, which is very delicious, too!

You can skip the arugula if it’s not your thing, or replace it with baby kale or baby spinach.

Likewise, use a different cheese if Feta isn’t your thing – diced cheddar or Colby Jack would be delicious here, too.

Key steps to make this wild rice salad:

1 Roast the butternut squash:

You’ll want to peel the butternut squash here. I don’t always do this (especially not for things like soup), but for roasting it’s best to remove the peel.

Then, simply toss it on a sheet pan with oil, salt and pepper (no need to do this in a separate bowl – less dishes o wash!) and place it in a preheated oven.

The time your squash needs to roast will depend on the exact size you dice it, but it’s usually done in around 15 minutes. Important here: Don’t over-roast it, or it will turn into mush in your salad.

Letting the squash cool before using it helps it stay firmer in the salad, too.

2 Make the dressing:

The dressing is super simple, just add all ingredients to a bowl, jar, measuring jug, your salad bowl… And whisk it together well until smooth.

You can even make this dressing 2 days ahead of time and keep it in a tightly sealed jar in the fridge.

Always taste-test your dressing before using it, so you can adjust if it needs more sweetness or acid etc.

In case your dressing doesn’t turn out smooth and the ingredients stay separated, try adding a little more honey or mustard. They act as emulsifiers and help create a smooth salad dressing!

3 Cook the rice

I think this step is self-explanatory. Just follow the instructions on your bag of wild rice 😉

Two things I want to note:

• do not overcook the rice – that’s especially important for a salad, it’s not attractive and it gets smushed pretty easily otherwise
• to cool the rice quickly, you can drain it in a fine-mesh sieve and then rinse under cold water until it has cooled; this will also help keep the rice form overcooking in residual heat

4 Assemble the salad:

Prep all the remaining ingredients, put everything together and serve!

If you’re using freshly… Plucked? Emptied? De-seeded? pomegranate, make sure to rinse the arils (seeds) under cold water, then drain them well. Otherwise your entire salad will be pink.

To make this salad appealing and to keep it from getting messy, be very careful when tossing it! And only toss it right before serving, or your arugula will wilt.

Make ahead instructions:

Roast the squash the day before and store it in an airtight container in the fridge once it has cooled.

Make the dressing in a small lidded jar and keep that in the fridge as well for up to two days.

And while you’re at it, get the pomegranate seeds ready and into the fridge for up to a day ahead as well.

Then the day of, all you have to do is cook the rice (I don’t like to keep cooked rice because it easily spoils), chop some arugula and assemble your salad.

Scale the recipe:

This is a recipe that works just as well for a large group as it does for a tiny celebration.

You can easily halve the recipe to serve only a few people. Or double, triple, quadruple… To serve a crowd.

Just what your Thanksgiving needs!

Make your thanksgiving feast side dishes complete:

Ok, I have never shared a turkey recipe here, so you’re going to have to find that elsewhere 😅 But here are some of my favorite Thanksgiving dishes from the blog 🍁

• Sweet Potato Casserole
• Cranberry Apple Stuffed Acorn Squash
• Butternut Squash Mac and Cheese
• Instant Pot Mashed Potatoes
• Cranberry Pecan Roasted Brussels Sprouts
• Maple Walnut Twice Baked Sweet Potatoes
• Maple Pecan Roasted Sweet Potato Slices
• Honey Butter Cornbread
• Pumpkin Cornbread
• Crockpot Glazed Carrots

Here’s the printable for this harvest wild rice salad recipe:

Try these salad recipes next:

Recipe first shared on Food Fanatic as Harvest Wild Rice Salad.