Angry Trout Wild Rice Salad

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wild rice salad
Wild rice as a salad!

First, there’s no trout in this salad, angry or otherwise. The name comes from one of the best restaurants up along the North Shore. What, you don’t know where the North Shore is? All right, the North Shore is along Lake Superior in Minnesota. A beautiful area that we love to visit and drive. And, every time we do, we spend a night in Grand Marais, so we can walk down and have dinner at the Angry Trout Cafe.

We found the restaurant’s website the first time we were traveling the North Shore, and we really liked their commitment to their neighbors and to sustainability. That was enough to get us in the door. Of course, their food is so good, it’s our number one rated restaurant in the area. And now, fellow scratchers, you can see why.

Print Recipe
5 from 3 votes

Angry Trout Wild Rice Salad

Servings: 10
Author: Shawn

Ingredients

  • 2 cups uncooked wild rice
  • 4 cups water
  • 1/4 cup diced red onion
  • 1/2 cup diced celery
  • 4 ounces shiitake mushrooms stemmed and diced
  • 2 tsp canola oil divided
  • 1/4 tsp salt
  • 3/4 cup frozen peas
  • 1/3 cup dried cranberries
  • 2 Tbs tamari sauce
  • 1/2 cup chopped pecans toasted (the original recipe calls for hazelnuts)

Instructions

  • Rinse and drain wild rice. Place wild rice and water in a large saucepan over medium-high heat and bring to a boil. Reduce heat to a simmer, cover, and cook 30-45 minutes, or until grains are burst, but not soggy. Drain and place in serving bowl. Add peas, salt, and cranberries.
  • In a small skillet over medium-high heat, cook onion and celery in 1 teaspoon of the oil, until tender and just beginning to brown. Add onions and celery to rice and return skillet to the stove.
  • Put the remaining oil in the skillet and turn heat to high. Once oil is very hot, add mushrooms and cook for 2 to 3 minutes without stirring. Stir to turn mushroom pieces over, and cook, without stirring, an additional 2 to 3 minutes. Add mushrooms to the rice.
  • Add tamari sauce and stir to combine. Top with a garnish of chopped pecans.

Ingredient discussion.

Wild rice is not actually rice. Technically, it’s the seed of a grass. And, yes, we know that wild rice is expensive in the stores, but if you really like it, you might try finding it online and in bulk. Tamari sauce, what’s that? It’s basically a soy sauce made from real soy beans, not like the popular brands on most store shelves which are made from salty brown water (read the ingredients list so you know what you’re buying). Different brands have different flavors; the one we like is San-J Organic Tamari. We like it and it’s widely available. For the shiitakes, we used dried mushrooms that we rehydrated, about 8 medium caps total.

Procedure in detail.

draining wild rice
Once the wild rice is cooked, just drain off the excess water.

Cook wild rice. Wild rice takes longer to cook that regular rice; we’ll give you our method that seems to work pretty well. Rinse the rice once or twice, then put it in a large saucepan with 4 cups of water. Bring it to a boil, reduce heat to a simmer, cover, and simmer for about 40 minutes. Turn off heat and let rice stand for about 30 minutes more. The grains will have burst open, but will still retain some chewiness. Finally, drain off excess water and place rice in a serving bowl.

mise en place
You’ll need to cook the onions, celery, and mushrooms, too.

Cook celery and onion. In a small skillet over medium-high heat, cook the onion and celery, along with a teaspoon of the oil, until tender and just beginning to brown. Add to wild rice.

Cook mushrooms. Return the skillet to the stove, add the remaining tsp of oil, and turn the heat to high. We want to sear those mushrooms to bring out the flavor. Let the oil get nice and hot, then add the mushrooms. Spread them out in a single layer and let them sizzle away, undisturbed, for 2 to 3 minutes. Stir to turn over the mushrooms, and again let them sizzle for another 2 to 3 minutes. Add to wild rice.

wild rice salad
Once everything is cooked, it’s just combine and stir. Done!

Add everything else. Add the peas, cranberries, salt, and tamari to the wild rice and stir to combine.

wild rice salad
Our favorite way to eat wild rice. As a salad!

Serve. You can serve this dish hot, room temperature, or cold. It’s an all-purpose side.

We made this side for a party and selected it for four reasons. One, no one else is likely to bring a wild rice salad, at least not in Tucson. Two, it’s gluten-free, so those who avoid gluten can eat it. Three, it tastes good even if it has warmed up. And, four, you can make it ahead of time. We think this is one of the best ways to have wild rice, so, if you have a box in the cupboard that you just don’t know what to do with, consider making wild rice salad, the Angry Trout way (stop in next time you’re in Grand Marais, MN; we think you’ll enjoy your meal). Five stars.

Worth the trouble?

6 Replies to “Angry Trout Wild Rice Salad”

  1. We love this dish AND the Angry Trout Cafe. And we heartily recommend sticking with the original hazelnuts (instead of switching out to pecans) & stirring them in at the end, then serving hot (amazing) or cold as a salad (either way, so good!)

    1. Us too. When we are in the area, we generally stay at Nelson’s Travelers Rest and just walk down for dinner. It’s a great restaurant (we love that they source some much locally) and you can’t beat the setting right there on the lake. One time we even had an otter come swimming around while we were eating out back. Perfect!
      Thanks for commenting,
      Shawn

  2. 5 stars
    We love the Angry Trout and this was fun to try at home! We substituted wild ramps from the co-op (they are in season now) for the onion and avocado oil for canola, since we had it on hand. We also cooked our wild rice in the instant pot to speed things along, since we are a family of five with small children on the go. It was great! We were able to buy most everything in the bulk section of our co-op, but we live in the metro Minneapolis area, so are fortunate that wild rice is kept well stocked around here. Thanks for the great recipe!

  3. 5 stars
    Just returned to Denver from Grand Marais. Loved the Angry Trout and ate there two evenings. Was lamenting that we would not be served wild rice salad here in the Denver area. Bought a bag of rice and was wondering how I might try and replicate the salad. Thank you to the chef or whomever shared this post!

  4. 5 stars
    The Angry Trout is one of my favourite restaurants and I often order the Wild Rice Salad. Because of Covid, I’ve missed spending a lovely summer afternoon on the patio watching the activity in Grand Marais Harbour, sipping Chardonnay and feasting on the food. I”ll be there next summer, probably sooner once the border opens.
    The Angry Trout cookbook is excellent.

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