Quinoa with veggies- Fried Rice alternative
Ingredients:
1 cup quinoa (tri-coloured, white, red–you can use any)
Veggies in your fridge 🤷🏼♀️—I used spring onions, red and yellow bell pepper, capsicum, cabbage, peas, carrots, red onion. You can go creative and use any vegetables.
Garlic- 4 cloves crushed
Ginger- 4-5 thin slivers
Green chilli- 1 split vertically
The very first and important step is to rinse the quinoa thoroughly under running water while rubbing the grains to remove an outer coating of saponin. Saponin makes the quinoa taste bitter and contains some toxins which could irritate some people or cause an allergic reaction.
Next, boil the quinoa in a pan using 1:5 portion water and keep stirring occasionally. The grains will fluff up and look a little like cooked porridge. You can remove from heat and drain the excess water, if any. Now take a wok, add some olive oil, garlic and green chilli. Sauté in some red onions followed by bell pepper, capsicum, spring onions, peas and carrots(which have been steamed earlier), cabbage. All in this order. Add salt, pepper to taste. Don’t cook for too long because we want the vegetables to retain some crunch 🥕 Mix in the quinoa and ginger.
I only added some vinegar and green chilli sauce to give that umami flavour and avoided use of soy sauce to keep the dish completely gluten-free. Yup, most soy sauce available in the market contains gluten but if you happen to be in possession of a gluten-free soy sauce, you can add a tablespoon of that.
Finally, here’s a complete, balanced, gluten-free, vegetarian dish with an assortment of veggies, simple ingredients and protein from quinoa. Perfect for vegetarians and a good replacement to fried rice. Taste and health, both in check. Enjoy with your family and friends.
- In case you want to add egg, you can make an omlette and cut into strips and add int he end.
- You can also make some shredded chicken or steamed fish and serve with this.