Quinoa recipes

November 23, 2005 7:25 PM

Tasty dishes I can cook with quinoa? Every time I eat quinoa I tell myself I have to learn to cook with it. I've finally bought some, but I don't know where to start. What are your favourite recipes?
posted by purplefiber to Food & Drink (11 answers total)

My favorite recipe is a simple quinoa salad. You cook a cup of quinoa for fifteen minutes, and let it cool in the refridgerator. Dice 3 plum tomatos, half a can of black olives, a few sprigs of parsley and then mix with the juice from half of a lemon and a dash of kosher salt. Toss in the quinoa and serve.
posted by extrabox at 7:36 PM on November 23, 2005

i like to sautee some veggies -- onions, mushrooms, and usually some yellow or green squash, but you could add whatever you want -- with salt and pepper, and garlic if I'm feeling ambitious. when the veggies are soft, toss them with cooked quinoa (cook it separately according to the package directions.) add in a few dashes of soy sauce, rice wine vingar, sesame oil, and tabasco. takes all of 15 minutes and it's good warm or cold.
posted by mandlebrotz at 7:44 PM on November 23, 2005 [1 favorite]

With quinoa I usually do pretty much what mandle does. The options are really endless, but I generally go with a ton of onions and garlic (my only rule) and ideally also a ton of butter, with peppers and whatever else. You could also add some cooked beans to the mix and use the whole mash to stuff peppers or whatever else with. That's just eating the quinoa though. Most of the time I just use it in place of rice to put cooked beans or soup on top of. I guess the truth is that I don't like quinoa enough to spend a lot of time cooking extravagant things with it, so simple is the key for me. Maybe you like it more :)
posted by flavor at 8:04 PM on November 23, 2005

I do a standard pilaf as I would with rice - cook diced onions or shallots in oil until soft, then stir in quinoa and let toast a bit. Pour in water or stock, stir, bring to a boil, cover, and let simmer until done. Quinoa is done when the germ line separates. Fluff with a fork and serve.

Make sure you wash quinoa before you use it, otherwise it will taste slightly soapy.
posted by Caviar at 8:28 PM on November 23, 2005

Best answer: My favorite is the following recipe: baked red peppers stuffed with quinoa filling.

Make a marinade. You can do a mediterranean one - with finely chopped garlic, balsamic vinegar, oregano, basil, a few chile flakes etc - or a more "eastern" one, which i personally love: garlic, ginger, sesame oil, tamari (soy sauce), olive or other oil, sambal or some other hot sauce, etc.. Play with the proportions, adding things until it tastes good - the good thing about a marinade is that you can always make it good, you just may end up with way more than you anticipated.

Grate firm tofu into the marinade and let it soak. If there's way too much marinade, reserve some of it.

Next, rinse the quinoa, then put it on the stove with water; 1.5 cups of water to 1 cup of quinoa, and a pinch of salt. Bring to a boil, then simmer until the water is absorbed. If the quinoa is too crunchy, add a little more water until it reaches the consistency you like. I like still with a tiny bit of crunch; the quinoa equivalent of al dente. Some people like it very soft.

Meanwhile, saute onions and garlic in olive oil, on low-medium heat until the onions are getting a little soft. Add mushrooms and cook until they're soft. Then add the tofu and, if you want, some beans. White kidney beans or flajolet are good for this, but you could also use regular kidney beans or whatever suits your fancy.

Next add the quinoa to the mix and saute for another couple minutes. Taste. If it's not flavourful enough, add salt, pepper, the marinade you reserved, and maybe some balsamic vinegar. Adjust it to your preferred spiciness level.

Make pepper boats. There are two ways of doing this that i like:.One, remove the top, pumpkin-style. Remove seeds and reserve the top; you'll put it back on as a lid. Two, Cut in half vertically without removing the top. Remove seeds and lie flat.

Either mix cheese in with the filling - old cheddar is good for this - or sprinkle on top after filling the pepper boats, in which case parmesan, romano, or feta are all good.
In either case, put in lots of filling. Cook at 350 until the peppers are soft.

The only danger is that the filling might get a bit dry before the peppers are soft. If you have that problem, you could cook the pepper boats in the oven for ten minutes, then remove and fill them, then put them back in the oven.

If you're a meat-eater, it might be good with something like ground beef instead of the tofu and beans, but I don't really know.
posted by louigi at 8:55 PM on November 23, 2005 [2 favorites]

You might like this corn chowder with quinoa recipe. I made it a while ago and it really was yummy. My favorite thing about quinoa is how it "uncurls" when cooked. So cool, and healthy, too!
posted by acridrabbit at 9:23 PM on November 23, 2005

I make stuffing, that doesn't actually get stuffed into anything, with chicken.

Make a marinade of orange juice, pepper, onion, and garlic, and chicken broth powder. (I really like lipton cup-o-soup for this). I like it pretty peppery.

Now dump into your bowl of marinade some chicken cut into chunks, plus finely chopped red peppers, orange peppers, yellow peppers and mushrooms (lots and lots of mushrooms it's amazing how much finely chopped mushroom can get lost in there), shredded carrots, raisins, and chopped up walnuts. Sometimes I finely chop some dried apricots, too.

Let marinade. Now get a big pot, fish the chicken out of your marinade and brown it quickly in a little oil. Fish the veggies out of the marinade and stir fry them a little, too. Now dump the marinade in and add your quinoa (I use half red, half regular quinoia to total a cup, with the veggies being about one large mixing bowl full of veggies, about half of that being mushrooms). Add as much water as it takes to get an appropriate amount of liquid once it's combined with the marinade. This should be a little more than it would have been with just the quinoa, since it seems like the mushroom sucks up some liquid.

Stir it all up. Boil. Simmer. I like to stir it up at some point in the middle just because the mushrooms float, so if you don't stir it up after the water has gone below floating level, I think all the mushrooms would be at the top. Simmer when liquid is absorbed. Add liquid as appropriate. Eat.

Makes: Lots. Also works with rice.
posted by duck at 9:53 PM on November 23, 2005 [1 favorite]

I think quinoa makes a better tabouli than bulghur wheat.
posted by O9scar at 11:25 PM on November 23, 2005

Not really a recipe, but I use quinoa in most anything that normally calls for rice. I often have it plain, paired with a curry.
posted by cior at 5:48 AM on November 24, 2005

Here is what I do. . .

I first cook it like rice. . . 2 parts water. .one part quinoa, it takes less then half the time that rice takes. .

Then I heat some olive oil in a pan, put in onions and garlic, some wine, cooking them to clarity, then the cooked quinoa. Cilantro, basil, kale, spinach, any of these may be added for flavor, as well as lemon juice or zest of orange juice or zest.

This usually goes with sauteed tofu, with soy sauce, lemon juice, and scallions added right at the end.

Then a choice of steamed veggie on the side.
posted by Danf at 9:06 AM on November 24, 2005

Indeed, the tabbouleh recipe in Lorna Sass's Recipes from an Ecological Kitchen is definitive, also time-consuming (if you’re perfectionistic about clean, dry parsley leaves without holes).

A pressure cooker (two minutes’ total time from locking the lid down) is the preferred method to cook quinoa. You do not in fact want it to explode.
posted by joeclark at 11:31 AM on November 24, 2005