How Do You Cook Quinoa?: Mushroom Quinoa Risotto

Are you ready for something new with quinoa?

I am nuts about mushrooms and quinoa, and I also like to experiment with combining quinoa colors, so this recipe was an easy sell for me.

Besides, I didn't have enough of either white or red quinoa to measure a half cup, so a mixture made sense to me. I had a package of aging portobellos that I had rescued from the produce markdown rack, so I seemed destined to cook this dish.

A Nuttier Quinoa

Prepared this way, the quinoa doesn't cook up to look like eggs and germs. Instead, the seeds remain intact much like the results you get from soaking quinoa, though much quicker.

This recipe is based on the Red & White Quinoa Mushroom Risotta entry in the 2010 November Favourite Food Fight. If you are reading this post in November 2010, and this looks like a recipe you would cook, please visit the voting page and vote to give the author a chance at the Kitchen Aid prize package.

My photos skills continue to improve in baby steps. I got a good close up shot of the quinoa today (see below), but the lighting was yellow. The quinoa looks pretty big there, eh? Would you believe there are 210 "grains" in a 1/4 teaspoon?

Mushroom Quinoa Risotto

I halved the recipe so I started by rinsing about 1/4 cup of red and 1/4 cup of white quinoa.

I heated a cup of water just to boiling and added a beef bouillon cube to dissolve in the water. I also added some cayenne pepper, perhaps 1/8 of a teaspoon. Everything can use a little cayenne.

Next, I melted a tablespoon of butter in my skillet and sauteed about 1/2 cup of onions and one pressed garlic clove until softened.

I added the quinoa to the saute and things really started to pop.

No, really, the seeds started popping all over the place so I quickly spooned in some of the broth I had made. When that water had been absorbed/evaporated, I stirred in some more broth and kept doing this until I had added all the broth.

When all the broth was gone, I stirred in 2 tablespoons of Parmesan cheese and about 2 1/2 cups of chopped portobello mushrooms. I think I could have added about 4 cups of mushrooms to this amount of quinoa and that would have been fine.

The finished dish was delicious, albeit very chewy with the quinoa prepared this way. I know from prior experience that some of this quinoa will not be digested, I am not sure whether this is a terrible thing or not. :-0 I drank a couple of glasses of water while eating my risotto in case the quinoa soaks up more water on its way through me.

I would love to try this recipe with wine.

Omnivorous Confessions

I admit I took a vegetarian recipe and added beef bouillon instead of vegetable broth. I had the bouillon on hand and I thought it would work well here. (It did.) If I doubled the recipe though, I would still use only one cube.

You can easily prepare this vegetarian by using vegetable broth and vegan by replacing the Parmesan cheese with nutritional yeast.

So, what do you think? Is this a quinoa recipe you would cook?

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