Vegetarian Recipes

How To Cook Quinoa

If you know how to cook quinoa perfectly, you’re on your way to a wide range of amazing meals. It’s a fantastic adventure to cook your way through the world’s wonderful heirloom grains (and grain-like seeds), and quinoa is one of them. The trick to nailing the perfect fluffy pot of quinoa is using the right ratio of water to quinoa and knowing a few little tricks. While I initially purchased quinoa for its nutritional perks (of which there are many) I kept purchasing it for its grassy taste and fluffed up, creamy-while-crunchy texture.

What is Quinoa?

Quinoa [Keen-wah] is a fantastic grain to utilize in year-round cooking. It has long been celebrated as a nutritional powerhouse – protein-rich, delicious, and charmingly versatile. Technically not a true grain, it is related botanically to Swiss chard and beets, but it is grain-like in spirit when it comes to cooking.

Which Color Quinoa is Best?

Quinoa grows in a wide range of colors. The most commonly available in the U.S. are red, brown, black, and ivory. You can also buy tri-color blends of quinoas. Most quinoa tastes very similar to me. White often cooks up fluffiest. The colors have very similar nutritional profiles, although I suspect red and black quinoa have increased phytonutrients. Black can also take a few extra minutes to cook. The biggest difference to me is visual impact. I tend to go with the ivory quinoa if making a meal for someone who might not be a very adventurous eater, or picky kids. The light colored quinoa tends to blend or bake right into things seamlessly. That said, I love the visual punch colored quinoa delivers to pizza crusts, muffins, grain bowls, and the like. So that’s usually my choice.

Why Do I Need to Rinse Quinoa?

This is a thing. Always rinse quinoa before using to remove bitter saponin coating (which the plant produces to deter birds and insects).

Quinoa Cooking Basics

What kind of quinoa should I buy? Consider sourcing fair-trade and organic quinoa. This supports local farm communities, and helps preserve the health and integrity of the land and farming communities.
Can I use a rice cooker to cook quinoa? Yes, absolutely. Use the following water (or broth) to quinoa ratio and follow the manufacturer’s instructions.
Can I use a donabe to cook quinoa? Yes! I use my clay pot donabe to cook quinoa often. Use gentle heat, the ratio below, and the same technique you would use to cook rice.
How much water to quinoa should I use? This has been an ever-evolving issue for me over the years. And I’ve landed on 1 cup quinoa to 1 2/3 cups liquid. A steady, gentle simmer for about 20 minutes, covered, will result in a beautiful pot of quinoa. Just fluff with a fork and enjoy.

Get Creative! Cook Your Quinoa with Flavor

Nearly every basic quinoa recipe will instruct you to use water to cook your quinoa. I think this is great advice your first few times through. You can get a real sense of the flavor of quinoa by keeping it simple. Just know, there is a world of flavor to explore beyond that! I love to cook my quinoa with strong broths. A dollop of curry paste is always welcome for a jolt of flavor. Or you can experiment with spices like turmeric, powdered chiles, or seaweeds, or mushroom powders. Chopped garlic? Yes! Miso? So good. The realm of possibilities is endless.

How Can I Add Quinoa to My Baking?

Stir leftover quinoa into all your favorite baked goods for more interesting flavor, texture, and nutritional punch. The key here is experimenting. Stir a cup of cooked, room-temperature quinoa into your favorite muffin mix. Or cut it into your best pie crust, or biscuit dough. This amount is usually a good place to start until you get a feel for things. Make notes! Then, add more or less quinoa the next time through. This is one of my favorite baking pro-tips. Once you start adding things like quinoa or millet to your baking, all-white flour baking gets less and less interesting.

How to Store Cooked Quinoa

Store leftover quinoa in the refrigerator for up to a few days, beyond that, transfer it to the freezer. It freezes beautifully. When you’re ready to use it, bring to room temperature and then transfer to a bowl. Use a fork to break up clumps and make uniform. My motto here is: Fridge, freeze, fluff.

Twenty Favorite Quinoa Recipes

If you’re looking for great quinoa recipes, you’re in the right place!

Double Broccoli Quinoa

Broccoli lovers delight, with a broccoli pesto, quinoa, sliced avocado and a drizzle of feisty chile pepper oil.
Mung Quinoa Power Bowl Recipe

Simply mung beans and quinoa with deeply sautéed and spiced celery.
Spicy Instant Pot Taco Soup Recipe

A hearty melding of beans, and corn, and taco spices, and quinoa.
Super Green Vegan Quinoa Burritos

Vegan burritos packed with all the good stuff – quinoa, mung beans, and lots of kale.
Vegan Double Broccoli Buddha Bowl

Double up on broccoli through a coconut green curry pesto and florets, then toss with a quinoa base.
Kale Quinoa Bites

The perfect on-the-go snack or mini meal.
Life Changing Green Rice Porridge

A one pot, effortless, green, nutrient-packed twist on one of my favorite things to eat.
Super Natural Vegan Sushi

Vegan sushi made with sweet potato fries, seasoned tofu, avocado, kale chips, and a quinoa-sushi rice blend.
Rustic Tomato Tart

The crust of this tart deploys a favorite baking trinity of mine – rye, cooked quinoa, and all-purpose (or bread) flour.
Warm and Nutty Cinnamon Quinoa

A berry-studded breakfast quinoa with pecans and blackberries, sweetened with agave nectar or honey.
Coconut Quinoa Bowl

The next time you have leftover quinoa (other other favorite grain) give it a try – coconut, garlic, almonds, kale, topped with salted yogurt and avocado.
Quinoa Skillet Bread

A rustic, minimally structured, custard-topped, crusty-edged, herb-scented corn-quinoa skillet bread.
Heather’s Quinoa

A one-skillet quinoa recipe – quinoa, corn, chopped kale and pan-toasted tofu tossed with a big dollop of pesto and finished off with a few roasted cherry tomatoes.
Quinoa Hemp Snack Balls

A quick way to get quinoa, hemp seeds, chia, and coconut into one naturally sweetened, no-bake snack.
Perfect Healthy Granola

Deeply chocolate-flavored with dark black cocoa and cocoa nibs, this granola is packed with heart-healthy oats, quinoa crispies and seeds.
Lemon-scented Quinoa Salad

An impromptu quinoa salad recipe made by tossing a quick tahini dressing with chickpeas, red onion, and cilantro.
Lemon-scented Quinoa Salad

This quinoa and grilled zucchini recipe is tossed with a pretty, pale green cilantro-flecked avocado dressing.
Quinoa Cloud Cookies

Cookies made from toasted quinoa and wheat flours, flecked with chocolate shavings, rolled and stamped into cloud shapes.
Quinoa with Currants, Dill, and Zucchini

A quinoa salad made from a quirky combination of quinoa, dill, shredded zucchini, and currants.
Tokyo Five Grain

A colorful grain blend inspired by a trip to Japan.

Have fun cooking with quinoa! Use it in soups, on salads, as a base for all sorts of quinoa bowls, and as a nutrient-packed alternative to white rice or pasta. Stir it into your batters and fold it into your bread and pizza doughs. If you find you enjoy recipes featuring whole quinoa, there are also other forms of quinoa available. Keep an eye out for quinoa flakes, popped/puffed quinoa as well as quinoa flour. All are delicious, interesting, and easy to incorporate into your cooking. Have fun!

How to Cook Quinoa

Quick and easy, quinoa is great on its own, as well as the basis of many fantastic recipes!

INGREDIENTS

2 cups quinoa well-rinsed and drained
3 1/3 cups water
1/2 tsp fine grain sea salt

INSTRUCTIONS

To cook quinoa combine the quinoa with water and salt in a medium saucepan.
Bring to a boil, cover, decrease the heat, and simmer for 20-ish minutes, covered, or until the quinoa is tender and you can see the little quinoa curlicues. Fluff with a fork and enjoy!

NOTES

Serves 6.

The post How To Cook Quinoa appeared first on 101 Cookbooks

Vegetarian Recipes

Homemade Kimchi

Once upon a time, I auditioned for one of those reality food shows, and my kimchi spring rolls got me to the next level of auditions (If you haven’t tried them yet, I posted a budget-friendly version here on the blog!) Why would a recipe like that get me flown to Los Angeles, you ask? Well, the judge asked me how I made my kimchi, and apparently, I aced his test; it’s not simply pickled; it’s fermented! I’ve always loved fermented foods, and this Homemade Kimchi is easy, vegan, budget-friendly perfection—the longer it sits, the better it gets! However, the process is super important, so let’s dive in!

Easy Recipe for Homemade Kimchi

Kimchi is a spicy, tangy, and veggie-packed Korean side dish made by fermenting fresh vegetables (think of it like pickles with a probiotic boost!). Instead of vinegar, the magic happens through lacto-fermentation, where good bacteria (the kind that’s great for your gut) naturally preserve the veggies and build the signature sour-savory flavor. I love serving it on rice bowls, tucked into wraps, or eaten straight from the jar as a quick snack. 😋

When I was in my 20s, I took a holistic nutrition course with a Naturopath Doctor in Indonesia. On my sojourn, I had a very long layover in South Korea, where I swear I ate 100 different kinds of kimchi. It helped me pinpoint the veggies I love most in my homemade recipe, but you can use just about any hardy vegetable you have on hand; I like to do a seasonal version as well, using raw pumpkin or butternut squash in the fall. Veggies like cucumbers and zucchini can be used, but because of their super high water content, they turn too mushy for my liking. Cabbage truly helps the texture no matter what else you add, so be sure to pick out a nice fresh head of cabbage!

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Homemade Kimchi Recipe

This easy Homemade Kimchi recipe is made with fresh veggies and simple ingredients. Tangy, fermented, and budget-friendly—no special tools required!

Step-by-step photos can be seen below the recipe card.

Course Salad, Side Dish

Cuisine Korean

Total Cost $6.41 recipe /$0.17 serving

Prep Time 30

Fermentation 2

Servings oz (3 x 12 oz jars, 1 oz per serving)

Calories 11kcal

Author Jess Rice

Equipment

3 12 oz Canning Jars
Food Processor
Large Mixing Bowl

Ingredients

1 Tbsp agave $0.14*
1 jalapeno seeded, $0.41
1 red bell pepper seeded and divided, $1.48
½ red onion divided, $0.54
2 inch piece fresh ginger peeled, $0.24
2 large cloves garlic $0.06
½ green cabbage mine was about 1 ¾ lbs, $1.66
¼ red cabbage mine was about ¾ lb, $0.86
4 green onions $0.48
2 ribs celery $0.30
2 carrots $0.16
1 Tbsp sea salt $0.08

Instructions

Begin by sanitizing your workspace and running three 12 oz canning jars through your dishwasher on high heat to sanitize them. Alternatively, you can also sanitize your jars by submerging them in boiling water and then allowing them to air dry.
Meanwhile, in a food processor, combine agave syrup, 1 jalapeno (seeded), ½ red bell pepper (seeded), ¼ red onion, peeled ginger, and garlic cloves.
Pulse vegetables and agave in a food processor until all vegetables have been broken down into a paste-like consistency, with any visible vegetables all being the same size, minced. Set aside.
Prep all the vegetables: roughly chop or slice both cabbages, roughly chop the green onion (discarding only the very tip of the root), dice celery, julienne carrots, remaining ½ red bell pepper, and remaining ¼ red onion. This step is a great time to practice your knife skills or skip laboring over cutting everything and just chop it up coarsely. Kimchi is very forgiving, and it’s fun to have a lot of different shapes that will contribute to the texture once it is fermented later.
In a large mixing bowl, combine all prepared veggies and salt. With clean hands, massage the salt into the prepared vegetables until they are all very soft. (It’s arm day, y’all! Use those muscles, and don’t stop!)
After at least 10 minutes of massaging the vegetables and salt, add the prepared, processed vegetable and agave mixture. Continue to massage the vegetables and the spicy-sweet processed mixture together for another 5-10 minutes, or until a significant amount of water is released from the veggies, and you can see it pooling at the bottom of our bowl.
With clean hands, spoon your mixture into jars and push it down firmly with the spoon once full. You should see a significant amount of liquid brine rising to the top, covering your vegetables whenever you push it down with the spoon (or clean fingers!) Don’t waste the brine; top off the jars as much as you can to cover the veggies.
Place lids on jars loosely and wipe down the jars. Transfer the jars to a dark place in your kitchen for 24 hours. I like to place my jars in a spare Tupperware container and keep them under the sink, so they are contained and in a warm(ish) place to help with the early fermentation process.
After 24 hours, carefully “burp” each jar by simply removing the lid to allow some of the naturally occurring gasses to escape. If your kitchen is particularly warm, you may want to burp your kimchi after just 12 hours to avoid a small (potent!) explosion. 🙂
After the initial 24-hour fermentation period, burp your kimchi every 8-12 hours until you see consistent, active bubbles every time you open the lid. Once you see a lot of bubbling on a regular basis, you can screw the lid on tight and transfer the jars to your refrigerator. It’s done!

See how we calculate recipe costs here.

Notes

*I like to add a little agave to balance the flavors of my homemade vegan kimchi, but I also find it helps speed up the fermentation process and helps create more brine. The touch of agave helps the enzymes from the healthy bacteria really get going! Personally, I wouldn’t skip it. But it is a very small amount of sweetener when considering the high yield on this recipe, so you could omit the agave altogether if you don’t have any on hand.

The total amount of time for fermentation to take place can depend on various factors, such as the temperature of your kitchen. Keep burping the jar every 8-12 hours after the initial 24-hour (or 12-hour) fermentation period until you see consistent bubbles.

Nutrition

how to make Homemade Kimchi step-by-step photos

The ingredients to make homemade kimchi.

Gather all of your ingredients. Before starting, completely sanitize your workspace and run three 12 oz canning jars through your dishwasher on high heat to sanitize them. Or, you can alternatively sanitize your jars by submerging them in boiling water and then allowing them to air dry. I’ve also shared more on this below the step-by-step photos for reference.

Jalapeno, red bell pepper, red onion, ginger, and garlic in a food processor.

Prep the veggies: While you wait for your jars to sanitize, you can get started on the vegetables. Add 1 Tbsp agave syrup, 1 jalapeno (seeded), ½ red bell pepper (seeded), ¼ red onion, 2 inch peeled fresh ginger, and 2 large garlic cloves to a food processor.

Processed vegetables in a food processor.

Pulse them in the food processor until all the veggies break down into a paste-like consistency. Any visible veggies should roughly be all the same size, minced. Set this mixture to one side for now.

Sliced green cabbage, sliced red cabbage, sliced green onions, chopped carrots, red bell pepper and red onion on a wooden cutting board.

Now roughly chop or slice ½ green cabbage and ¼ red cabbage, roughly chop 4 green onions (discarding only the very tip of the root), dice 2 ribs celery, julienne (thinly slice) 2 carrots, remaining ½ red bell pepper, and remaining ¼ red onion. You can also chop up everything coarsely if desired (this recipe is very forgiving!)

Prepped kimchi veggies in a mixing bowl.

Massage the vegetables: Add the prepped vegetables to a large mixing bowl and sprinkle with 1 Tbsp salt. With clean hands, massage the salt into the vegetables until they are all very soft (about 10 minutes).

Processed vegetables and prepped vegetables in a mixing bowl.

After at least 10 minutes of massaging, add the processed vegetables and agave mixture from your food processor to the bowl.

A hand massaging salt into prepped vegetables in a bowl.

Massage the vegetables with the spicy-sweet processed mixture for a further 5-10 minutes or until a significant amount of water has been released from the veggies.

You should see it pooling at the bottom of your bowl, as shown in the photo above.

Prepped and massaged kimchi vegetables in a mixing bowl, with a spoon portioning some into a glass mason jar.

Add to jars: Again, with clean hands, use a spoon to add your veggie mix to the sterilized jars.

Extra vegetable brine being added to a jar of homemade kimchi.

Push the mixture down firmly with your spoon once full (a significant amount of liquid brine should rise to the top, covering the homemade kimchi as you push down).

Don’t waste any of the brine from the bottom of the mixing bowl! Try to top off each jar with as much as you can. You ideally want all the veggies to be submerged in the brine for fermentation.

Lids added to three jars of homemade kimchi.

Ferment: Place the lids on the jars loosely and wipe down the sides of the jars. Now, place the jars in a dark place in your kitchen for 24 hours. (I like to place my jars in a spare Tupperware container and keep them under the sink so they are contained and in a warm(ish) place to help with the early fermentation process.)

Once it’s been 24 hours, carefully ”burp” each jar by removing the lid. This allows some of the naturally occurring gases from the fermentation process to escape the jars. If your kitchen is quite warm, you may want to ”burp” your jars after 12 hours, not 24, to release the gases and avoid any small explosions!

After the initial 24-hour fermentation period, you want to burp your jars every 8-12 hours until you see consistent and active bubbles whenever you open the lid. As soon as you see lots of bubbling on a regular basis, screw the lid on tight and transfer the jars into your refrigerator. Now it’s ready to be eaten!

Overhead view of homemade kimchi on a bed of white rice.

What is lacto-fermentation?

I mentioned lacto-fermentation earlier, but I just wanted to touch on what that actually means. It’s a natural preservation process where good bacteria (lactobacillus) feed on the sugars in the veggies and produce lactic acid. That acid gives kimchi its tangy flavor and helps keep it safe to eat. This is the same process used when making sauerkraut and dill pickles. But before that can happen, we need to salt the veggies.

Salting helps draw out moisture, slows the growth of harmful bacteria, and creates a brine that sets the stage for fermentation. So, yes, all that massaging the veggies isn’t just a good workout—it’s vital for the lacto-fermentation process!

CLEAN CLEAN CLEAN! Whether you’re experimenting with this recipe, sauerkraut, pickling, brewing beer, or making kombucha, you want to make sure you’re always working with clean materials when it comes to fermentation. We are trying to promote healthy bacteria, not the bad kind!
Sanitize your jars. Following on from the previous point, you must sanitize your jars before starting this recipe. Run them through the dishwasher on high heat, submerge them in boiling water and let them air dry, or give them a bath in a food-grade hydrogen peroxide and water mix (follow the label for the correct ratio and instructions).
Keep it submerged. You can use the rough ends of your cabbage and red onion or the butts of carrots to help keep the prepared vegetables submerged in the brine during the fermentation process. Just put the lid on top after you add the rough vegetable ends. Before you get to the refrigerator step, discard those pieces of veggies that didn’t go beneath the brine. If you skip this tip, you can scrape off the top of the kimchi if it doesn’t sit underneath the brine. (Sometimes this happens if you are short on brine.) Everything underneath will be fermented just right and safe to eat!
Don’t tighten the lid during fermentation. Make sure to leave the lid loose while your vegetables ferment. Tightening the lid too early can lead to pressure buildup (and possibly a kimchi explosion…not fun!)
Use a sea salt with no additives. Stick to plain sea salt with no additives. Additives can interfere with fermentation, and I want you to give those good bacteria the best chance to thrive!

Serving Suggestions

I love piling this recipe for kimchi on scrambled eggs…it adds just the right kick to a simple breakfast. For lunch or dinner, I’d toss it into fried rice or add it to an easy rice bowl (our Bibimbap recipe is perfect for this!). And, of course, I couldn’t make my kimchi spring rolls without it. Or, if you want a comfort food twist, it’s amazing in quesadillas with some melty cheese. You can also spoon it over grain bowls, stuff it into wraps and sandwiches, or add it to any salad for an extra punch of flavor.

How to Store

This recipe can last for several months in an airtight jar in the fridge. Be sure to use clean fingers or utensils whenever you grab some, as introducing new bacteria can shorten its life span or throw off the flavor. Also, make sure the top layer is always submerged under the brine to keep everything fresh and safe. If anything starts to look or smell off, it’s best to toss it and start a new batch.