Farro

Farro is the Italian word to describe three wheat spices: spelt, emmer, and einkorn.

In most supermarkets, you can easily find it as Farro or pearled Farro, a type of farro often imported from Italy.

Pearled farro is our favorite for farro salad because it takes only 15 to 25 minutes to cook, and it keeps “al dente”.

Farro is sold dry and, like other grains, needs to be boiled in hot water or broth before you can eat it.

In this recipe, you can substitute other whole grains or pseudo-grains such as brown rice, barley, quinoa, and buckwheat for the farro, although they won’t have the same satisfying chewy texture.

Vegetable broth

For this Farro Salad recipe, we boil the farro in lightly salted vegetable broth to infuse more flavor into the grain.

For even more flavor, add a couple of thyme sprigs or bay leaves into the broth to cook with the farro.

Vegetables

Farro has a slightly nutty but overall neutral flavor that goes well with most veggies.

In this recipe, we use green bell pepper, cucumber, cherry tomatoes, canned corn kernels, black olives, and red onion.

Take these veggies as a guideline. Then, feel free to swap them around with your favorite veggies, including as many colors and textures as possible, to make a tasty and nutritious salad.

Some good alternatives are fresh arugula, apples, garlic, radish, and roasted veggies such as zucchini, eggplant, and sweet potato.

Fresh herbs

We use plenty of flat-leaf parsley to give the salad a Mediterranean spin. You can substitute dill, chives, cilantro, and basil for the parsley.

Seeds

Pepitas or pumpkin seeds are a great way to add crunch and healthy fats to this farro salad recipe.

You can substitute sunflower seeds, toasted pistachio nuts, crushed walnuts, pinenuts, shaved almonds, or pecans.

Feta

Although optional, we recommend adding crumbled feta cheese to this farro salad recipe to add a popping, savory flavor. We use dairy-free feta.

Chickpeas

Chickpeas are also optional. They add a nutty flavor and make this salad a fulfilling meal. We add drained canned chickpeas.