Two refreshing rice salad recipes

(Photo by Taste of Home)

Recently I've made a couple of different rice salads for potlucks at church.  I like to make rice salads because they seem easier than pasta salads, and of course they can be gluten free less expensively than making salads with gluten-free pasta.  Both of these salads are intended to be main-dish salads, but I made one of them meatless for more of a side dish.  Both were delicious and went over very well.

Here's the link to the first one: North Shore Chicken Salad.  I found this recipe in one of my favorite cookbooks, Among Friends with Heart & Soul, which has recipes by Roxie Kelley and Friends, and beautiful illustrations by the incomparable Shelly Reeves-Smith.  If you can locate a copy of this cookbook, I'm sure you would enjoy both the recipes and the artwork. 

The cookbook says that this North Shore Chicken Salad is a recipe from Judy Goplerud, owner of Home Sweet Home and The Cottage Sampler in St. Ansgar, Iowa.  I was able to locate the recipe online at Better Recipes.com, so could link to it for you.  The only difference is that the original recipe uses 2 cloves of garlic rather than one, 1 Tblsp. of Dijon mustard rather than 1 tsp., and rice wine vinegar rather than white wine vinegar.  When I made the salad, I used seasoned rice vinegar. 

The second recipe, which I made for Sunday's potluck, is this one:  Texas Confetti Rice Salad.  It calls for 4 cups of chopped turkey, which I left out as I intended the salad to be a side dish.  I also left out the chopped red onion and added some dried minced onion instead.  In the dressing, I reduced the olive oil to 1/2 cup (which was more than enough), the cumin to 2 tsp. and the red pepper flakes to 1/4 tsp.  It also was a very delicious salad.  I think next time I might use 2 avocados rather than the one.

With all the hot weather we've been having, perhaps your family might enjoy one of these refreshing salads, too!  I will definitely be making both of them again before the summer is over.