One dish wonder; cooking with quinoa

I’m all about one dish dinners. And I’m all about doubling the recipe so we can eat one dish for two nights {leftovers rock!}. Sometimes I’ll make a main dish with a side dish, but often, I stack it up {meats, veggies, etc} onto one plate or bowl.

Have you cooked with quinoa {keen-wah}? It’s high in protein and a great alternative to rice or pasta. We’ve been eating a lot of it lately and we’re loving it!

Last week I made an italian dish and substituted quinoa where we would usually have pasta.

I found this garlic quinoa at our Ralphs. It is prewashed and seasoned with garlic. It tasted great! They also carry a few other flavors. This week I am using their Mediterranean quinoa for Tuesday’s dinner.

While the quinoa was cooking, I prepared a meat sauce with marinara. Then in one bowl I stacked up fresh spinach, garlic quinoa, homemade marinara, parmesan cheese, and fresh tomatoes. Yum! We had leftovers to take for lunches.

Share with us! What’s your favorite meal to make lately?

22 comments

  1. i’ve been trying quinoa recipes with my family recently, but we’ve not hit upon a real keeper yet. i’m definitely trying this one — we all love italian, so maybe it will be a hit! thanks, ll! 🙂

  2. Love quinoa. Love it. Just finished up a Daniel Fast and quinoa was a big part of what got me through. But my latest craze is a black bean/corn type of dish with a whole wheat tortilla… mmm mmm good! Fresh and zippy and oh, so summery!!

  3. I LOVE QUINOA! My husband and I started tracking our vegan diet and, much to our chagrin, found that we weren’t getting anywhere near enough protein. We have started adding in delicious quinoa anywhere we can. If you have any recipes, I would love to read a post about more things to do with quinoa!

  4. My new favorite is quinoa too! I’m obsessed with it, and add all kinds of mixes of veggies and proteins to a bowl of it. Love seeing this post!

  5. Just letting you know. Organic quinoa is sold at Whole Foods in bulk. It cooks in about 10-12 minutes with ration of 1:2 with water or broth. It’s probably a lot more economical that way, and likely doesn’t have all the salt and possible additives of packages. I’m not familiar with the product you showed though.

  6. I have enjoyed making a one dish meal with a little olive oil, chopped garlic and onions, saute. Add some sun dried
    tomatoes, marinated artichoke hearts..saute a bit more.
    You can then add some chopped chicken breast or prawns to
    saute until cooked. While all this is cooking, start some water to boil to cook a whole wheat angel hair pasta.
    Add a handful of parmesan cheese and some chopped tomatoes to the cooked mixture finish heating a bit and serve over the angel hair. I usually use the prawns and everyone raves about this easy dish. I too was pleasantly surprised with the great taste of quinoa.

  7. Just had quinoa tonight! Made a simple chicken stirfry…half quinoa-half rice with mixed veggies & chicken cooked in a delicious Penzey spice called “Arizona Dreaming.”

  8. I like quinoa! It got this special kind of taste I think. As our supermarket ran out of couscous, what we really like, I bought quinoa, thinking it would taste not so much different. My daughter didn’t like it! BUT our son, just 10 months there really loved it so much! It was about the first meal he ate the same way we did and it was lovely to watch…he couldn’t get enough of that stuff!!!

  9. Not sure why trying quinoa has seemed “scary” to me. It’s not so much tasting something new as cooking something new. I heard it’s easy to screw up… true?

    1. yes in Phase 2 of the south beach diet because it is a great whole grain and it has a high protein content!

  10. I want to love quinoa. I really do. Sadly, the first time I tried it, I was 10 weeks pregnant and sick as can be. A friend of mine said that it was really easy on the stomach and good for you too, so I thought I would give it a shot. The first time I tried it, I loved it. The second time … well, I didn’t love it quite as much and sadly now, I have a bad mental connection to quinoa so that whenever I even think about it, I get nauseous. 🙁

  11. Hi Lisa,

    That does sound yummy! Lately I haven’t been cooking! I have been making very simple easy dinners; quesdillas and black beans seems to the go to lately!

    have a great day!
    xoTiffany

  12. yummers!! Haven’t done much with quinoa yet, but that looks delicious…my current one dish wonder is corn casserole (as they call it in South Africa, Mealie Tart) so yummy, but only a side dish, however I could eat the whole pan!

  13. Add me to the quinoa fans. Also loving wheatberries these days. My current fave, though, is a broccolini salad that I made last night. A-mazing!

  14. Yum, your dish sounds like a really good dinner. I love red quinoa and I put it in everything even oats. Lately we’ve been eating a lot of good spring veggies.

  15. LOVE quinoa! I just made a quinoa salad with fresh vegies,rice vinegar and a little olive oil for the dressing. My kids love it as well. How about quinoa chocolate chip cookies, made with no sugar. YUM!!!

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