Quinoa is my new favorite thing to cook! It's quick and easy. The texture is out of this world, kind of like couscous but with a snap. The taste is a little nutty mixed with a brown rice.
The first thing you need to do is prepare your quinoa. That means rinse, rinse, and rinse. Whatever is on the outside of quinoa makes it taste very bitter. So you need to make sure and get all that stuff off.
To cook add 1 cup quinoa to about 1 1/2 cups water. Bring that to a boil, reduce the heat to a simmer and cover that pan. 10-15 minutes later the water should be all gone and the quinoa should be tender.
To flavor the quinoa I added some chicken bouillon, garlic powder salt and pepper to the water and raw quinoa mixture.
The magical thing about quinoa is you can pretty much use it for anything. Replace any of your other grains with it, make a salad out of it, use it to bake pizza bites, add egg and fry to make quinoa patties. In my case I sprinkled it with cheddar cheese and added an over easy egg on top. The yolk dripped into the cheddar and quinoa and it was perfect !
Have you tried quinoa ? How would you describe the taste and texture?